Moscow’s Most Unusual Buildings (Part I)
I was very excited when I was approached yesterday by imm cologne to write for their upcoming project. The concept will be the following: discover design and architecture and the way people leave and reside on five continents – as well as the resulting cultural and individual diversity that will be inspiring for every home.
The idea is to show how people actually live in various countries all over the world. The virtual trip will be rounded off by international trend reports: bars and clubs in South America, design and food culture from Japan, Arabian hospitality, spas & wellbeing in the U.S.A., retail design from Africa and many more.
Naturally I will be writing about Moscow, Russia. The article will be about the design and architecture in my home country and will cover the following aspects:
What‘s typical?
What are the latest trends?
Which cultural/historical aspects affect the way people live and furnish?
And most important: what do you like about the design and architecture in your country? What are the hotspots you have to visit?
Today I have already started to gather material and took some photos, but I will need your help. Please tell me in the comments, whether you feel my finds are worth including in this article or not. Today I have found two interesting buildings in Moscow, but there will be more posts coming with more finds. Of course, I could have written about our famous landmarks – Red Square and Kremlin, but instead my goal will be to rediscover my home city and show it from an unknown perspective.
- “House-Egg” on Mashkova street. It was built in 2002 and this project has quite difficult and long history. First of all the Moscow government was afraid that it will not blend into surrounding architecture and construction was many times postponed, then preparing project took more then three years and finally two more years were spent for construction. It is a four-storey mansion, its “shell” is 640 mm thick and is covered with red tiles. The house was sold right after the completion, but who is the lucky owner remains the secret until now. It is said that the price was 1.2 million USD, but then in 2007 he decided to sell it and asked already 10 million USD. So far he didn’t succeed to sell it but he doesn’t want to reduce the price as well.
- Arseniy Morozov’s mansion on Vozdvijenka street. It was built by architect Victor Mazyrin in 1899. It is a unique example of Neo-Mauritanian style architecture, which combines the elements of eclecticism and Art Nouveau. Honestly, I haven’t seen something like that anywhere in the world:
