Smolensk House Commune, Constructivist housing tower in Smolensk, Russia.
The Smolensk House Commune is a seven-story residential building featuring rounded corners and decorative brickwork patterns, with a distinctive zigzag design on its southern wall. The structure sits prominently on Resurrection Hill, providing views across the Dnieper River.
The residential complex was designed by architect Oleg Vutke and opened in 1933 as a Soviet communal housing experiment with shared facilities for workers. It marked a turning point in Smolensk's construction history as the city's first high-rise residential building.
The building embodied Soviet ideals of shared living through communal dining halls, nurseries, and libraries designed to encourage residents to interact together. These shared spaces represented the belief that people should organize daily life as a community rather than as individual families.
The location on Resurrection Hill makes the building easy to reach on foot and provides clear reference points from various parts of the city. Visitors should note that internal areas may not always be accessible for tours, so exploring the exterior and its architectural details from outside is often more rewarding.
Internal temporary partitions allowed flexible room arrangements, while decorative patterns in red and silicate bricks set it apart from typical constructivist buildings. This combination of practical design and craft details was unusual for Soviet residential blocks of that era.
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