MOSCOW â€" The Russian avant-garde architect Konstantin Melnikov’s seminal cylindrical house in Moscow, which has inspired architects around the world for nearly a century, is gravely threatened by construction of a large multipurpose complex abutting its tiny backyard, Russian and international preservationists say.
The work has led to “numerous new cracks†to the building’s load-bearing and partition walls and signs of damage to its foundation, according to an appeal that Russian architecture and heritage experts addressed to President Vladimir V. Putin and other officials.
The house is on a side street just off of the central Arbat pedestrian mall, which is known as a busy tourist trap. Real estate continues to be at prime value in Russia even as the country’s oil boom has waned. The construction project is the latest to take place in the vicinity of what is regarded as one of modernist architecture’s most famous works, completed in 1929 and used by Melnikov as a home and studio when the very act of building a private house in Soviet Russia was revolutionary.
The letter to Mr. Putin was posted this month on the Web site of Archnadzor, a Moscow-based preservation watchdog group that is battling developers across the Russian capital. It was accompanied by photographs of the damage, and warned that the “risk of losing a masterpiece of 20th-century world architecture†had “grown significantly†and was magnified by a failure to take measures to prevent the house’s collapse.
“The eyes of the world are on Russia in this important case,†Ana Tostoes, the chairwoman of Docomomo International, a grassroots architectural heritage organization, said in a joint statement released with the International Council on Monuments and Sites. The organizations have also appealed to Mr. Putin to intervene.
Natalia Melikova, a recent master of fine arts graduate from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, posted a detailed report on the Web site of the United States branch of Docomomo. In it, Konstantin Melnikov’s granddaughter, Ekaterina Karinskaya, who lives in the house, says that the construction is part of a willful plan “to simply destroy the house.â€
Ms. Melikova has returned to Moscow, where she has started the Constructivist Project to try to save the Melnikov house and other endangered sites.
A prolonged dispute over ownership of the house, still not resolved, has kept it from being given official landmark status and the latest in a series of stalled efforts to turn it into a museum is in the earliest stages.
Architectural heritage is in danger around Moscow. The great-grandson of the Russian engineering design pioneer Vladimir Shukhov warned last month that his grandfather’s early Soviet-era radio tower, which architects including Norman Foster have named as one of their greatest sources of inspiration, could soon collapse from neglect.
Tsarist-era buildings are also under constant threat. Archnadzor is fighting to save a mansion that served as the setting for scenes in “War and Peace†and “Anna Karenina.†An organization with Kremlin connections has been reconstructing the building. And just outside of Moscow, preservationists are fighting development around Arkhangelskoye, a palatial estate that was once home to Feliks Yusupov, a prince who took part in the killing of Rasputin. They say that construction projects promoted by Russia’s defense ministry and the billionaire Viktor Vekselberg would destroy the estate’s grounds.
