A Gentleman in Moscow

*What sort of topsy-turvy circumstances could lead to a boom for builders and a bust for architects? Simple:

In January, the mayor of Moscow had called a convention of the city’s architects to discuss the needs of the capital given the rapid growth in its population. Over the course of three days, an excited consensus had quickly formed across the various committees that the time had come for bold new steps. Taking advantage of the latest materials and technologies, they proposed that the city erect towers forty stories high with elevators that shot from the lobby to the roof, and apartments that could be configured to suit every individual need, each with a modern kitchen and private bath and plate-glass windows emitting natural light!

At the closing ceremony of the convention, the mayor—a bald and brutish sort, whom we will have reason to revisit later—thanked the attendees for their artistry, their ingenuity, and their dedication to the Party. “It is satisfying to discover that we are all in agreement,” he concluded. “In order to house our fellow comrades as quickly and economically as possible, we must, indeed, pursue bold new steps. So, let us not get bogged down with elaborate designs or bow to aesthetic vanities. Let us apply ourselves instead to a universal ideal that is fitting for our times.”

Thus was born the golden age of the prefabricated, cement-walled, five-story apartment building—and the four-hundred-square-foot living spaces with ready access to communal bathrooms boasting four-foot tubs (after all, who has time to lie down in a bath when your neighbors are knocking at the door).

So ingenious was the design of these new apartment buildings, so intuitive their architecture, they could be built from a single page of specifications—regardless of which way the page was oriented! Within six months, thousands of them had sprung up on the outskirts of Moscow, like mushrooms after a rain. And so systematic was their realization, you could mistakenly enter any apartment on your block and feel immediately at home.