Khrushchyovka

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Panel khrushchovka in Tomsk

Brick khrushchovka

Khrushchovka (Russian: хрущёвка) is a type of low-cost panelled or brick three to five-storied apartment building which was introduced in Nikita Khrushchev's time in the USSR.

1 History
2 Inside khrushchovka
3 Present day
4 References

[edit] History

Traditional masonry Stalinist architecture was expensive and labor-intensive. Individual projects were slow and not scalable to the needs of overcrowded cities. To tackle housing crises, in 1947-1951 Soviet architects evaluated various technologies attempted to cut costs and completion time. In January 1950 an achitects' convention, supervised by Khrushchev (then the party boss of Moscow city), declared low-cost, high-speed technologies the objective of Soviet architects. This was followed by setting up two prefab concrete plants in Moscow (Presnensky, 1953; Khoroshevsky; 1954). By this time, competing experimental designs were tested in real-life construction, and prefab concrete panels emerged as a clear winner. Other possibilities, like in situ concrete, or encouraging individual low-rise construction, were discarded as heresy.

In 1954-1961, engineer Vitaly Lagutenko, chief planner of Moscow since 1956, designed and tested the mass-scale, industrialized construction process, relying on concrete panel plants and a fast-track assembly schedule. In 1961, Lagutenko’s institute released the infamous K-7 design of a prefab 5-storey that became a symbol of khrushchyovka. Only 3 millions square meters (64 thousand units) of this type were built in Moscow in 1961-1968, but it was just a beginning. In Moscow, space limitations forced a switch to higher, 9 or 12-story buildings (of the same low quality), the last 5-story khrushyovka completed in 1971. But the rest of USSR continued building khrushyovka until the fall of socialism; millions of such units are now past their design lifetime.

This cookie-cutter architectural approach is satirized in the 1975 movie "Irony of Fate or Enjoy Your Bath " directed by the famous Russian film director Eldar Ryazanov.

[edit] Inside khrushchovka

This was an early attempt at industrialised and prefabricated building, the elements (or panels) made at concrete plants and trucked to the site just-in-time. Elevators were considered too costly and time consuming, and according to Soviet health/safety standards, five storeys was the maximum height of a building without an elevator. Thus, almost all khrushyovkas have five storeys.

The Khrushchyovkas also introduced the combined bathroom to mass construction. It had been done before (Ivan Zholtovsky's prize-winning Bolshaya Kaluzhskaya building), but Lagutenko perfected the space-saving idea, replacing regular-sized bathtubs with 120 centimeter long sitting baths. Сompleted bathrooms cubicles, assembled at Khoroshevsky plant, were trucked to the site; construction crews would lower them in place and hook up to mains pipes. Some theorists even considered combining toilet bowl functions with shower sink, but this was too much even for Khrushchyov. Kitchens were also small, usually 6 square meters^[1]

Typical apartments of K-7 series have a total area of 30 (1-room), 44 (2-room) and 60 (3-room) square meters. Later designs further reduced these meager areas. Rooms in K-7 are fully isolated in the sense that they all connect to a tiny entrance hall, not to each other. Later deigns (П-35 et al.) disposed with this redundancy - residents had to pass through the living room to reach the bedroom. These apartments were planned for small families, but in real life it was not unusual for three generations (6-7 people) to live together in a two-room flat like this. Some apartments had a "luxurious" storage cubicle; in real life, it served as another bedroom, without windows and ventilation.

[edit] Present day

Typical khrushchyovka yard (Kazan)

These buildings are found in great numbers all over the former Soviet Union. They were originally thought of as being only temporary houses for the people until the housing problem would be finally solved with the arrival of complete communism, when shortages of all kinds of things would have disappeared. This was planned to happen around 1980. As we know today it never happened, and people continue to live in the Khrushchovkas.

Khrushchovka standard types are classified into disposable, with a planned 25-year lifetime (сносимые серии) and permanent (несносимые серии). This distinction is important in Moscow and other affluent cities, where disposable khrushchovka are being demolished to make way for new, higher density construction. City of Moscow plans to complete this process in 2009. Less wealthy communities are stuck with their crumbling khrushchyovka stock for an indefinite time.