Khrushchyovki

Khrushchyovka is a type of low-cost, concrete-paneled or brick three- to five-storied apartment building which was developed in the USSR during the early 1960s, when Nikita Khrushchev directed the Soviet government.

History

Traditional masonry is labor-intensive; individual projects were slow and not scalable to the needs of overcrowded cities. To ameliorate a severe housing shortage, during 1947-1951 Soviet architects evaluated various technologies attempting to reduce costs and completion time. During January 1950 an architects’ convention, supervised by Khrushchev (then the party director of Moscow), declared low-cost, quick technologies the objective of Soviet architects.

Prefabricated concrete panels were considered superior for these purposes. Other possibilities, like in situ concrete, or encouraging individual low-rise construction, were discarded.

During 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 quick assembly schedule. During 1961, Lagutenko’s institute released the K-7 design of a prefabricated 5-story building that became typical of the Khrushchyovka. 64,000 units (3,000,000 m2 (32,000,000 sq ft)) of this type were built in Moscow from 1961 to 1968.

In Moscow, space limitations forced a switch to 9 or 12-story buildings; the last 5-story Khrushchyovka was completed there during 1971. The rest of the USSR continued building Khrushchyovkas until the end of communism; millions of such units are now past their design lifetime.

Design

The Khrushchyovka design represented an early attempt at industrialised and prefabricated building, with elements (or panels) made at concrete plants and trucked to sites as needed. Planners regarded elevators as too costly and too time-consuming to build, and Soviet health/safety standards specified five stories as the maximum height of a building without an elevator. Thus almost all Khrushchyovka have five stories.

Kitchens were small, usually 6 m2 (65 sq ft). Typical apartments of the K-7 series have a total area of 30 m2 (323 sq ft) (1-room), 44 m2 (474 sq ft) (2-room) and 60 m2 (646 sq ft) (3-room). Rooms of K-7 are “isolated”, in the sense that they all connect to a small entrance hall, not to each other.

The 1975 Soviet comedy movie Irony of Fate or Enjoy Your Bath (directed by Eldar Ryazanov) satirizes the “cookie-cutter” architectural method: it shows a Moscow-dweller flown by mistake to Leningrad; the taxicab drives him to his home street address (which happens to exist in Leningrad as well), and the building and the apartment – and even the key to the apartment – are exactly the same as his own.

Present dayKhrushchovka_yard_Kazan

Typical Khrushchyovka yard (Kazan). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khrushchyovka

These buildings are found in great numbers all over the former Soviet Union (and former communist states in Eastern Europe as well). They were originally considered to be temporary housing until the housing shortage could be alleviated by mature Communism, which would not have any shortages. Khrushchev predicted the achievement of Communism in 20 years (by the 1980s). Later,Leonid Brezhnev promised each family an apartment “with a separate room for each person plus one room extra”, but many people still continue to live in Khrushchyovki today.