The Moscow circle home, also called Bublik, was built during a tough time in the USSR when there weren’t enough homes for everyone. Because it is round, it is a Khrushchyovka construction, which is different from the regular, repeated buildings of that time.

A classification caused by the housing crisis

After World War II, a lot of people left the countryside in Eastern Europe. This was a continuation of a trend that began in the 1930s. This happened right after new plans for industrialization and collectivization were put in place. People who used to live in the countryside moved to cities, which forced the Soviet government to make metro areas bigger and build huge structures. 

This was the start of living together as a community and the creation of a new type of building called the Khrushchyovka, which is an informal name taken from Nikita Khrushchev. This type of architecture came about after the time of Stalinist architecture, which was made up of expensive, high-quality buildings that only a select few could afford. The Khrushchyovka are low-cost buildings made of bricks or concrete blocks. 

These buildings were first built as temporary homes to make up for the lack of housing in the USSR. They were meant to last for about 25 years. A good number of them were eventually built as permanent structures, though. The focus is on keeping things simple and lowering building costs, which means that functionalism, beauty, and uniqueness are all lost, leaving a bland result. People noticed how big these buildings were, but they never went over 5 stories. In fact, this choice meant that an elevator could not be included because it was too expensive.

Using circle architecture will help you make the community homes more varied.

The Soviet architect Eugene Stamo and engineer Aleksandr Markelov came up with a new plan for these buildings in response to the fact that they were becoming more similar. In 1972, a circle housing building was built to break up the monotony of the Ochakovo-Matveevskoe area. The outside of this building is 155 meters around, and it has 26 openings to fit a total of 913 units spread out over 8 stories. 

Shops, hair salons, pharmacies, bookstores, libraries, and a kids’ club are the only businesses that can be found on the ground floor. The patio, on the other hand, is meant to be a park and playground, offering a place away from the city. The real estate project, which was called “Bublik” (Russian for “bagel”) because of its unique shape, did not make a lot of money. Because it used technology that was different from standard buildings, this building took a lot longer and cost a lot more to build than the buildings next to it.

The circle is a geometric shape that can show both joining and dividing.

Still, the center, which was meant to feel like the atmosphere of the old Soviet residential courtyard, has important symbolic meanings that the officials liked. In the 1970s, Moscow was able to build two more circle apartment buildings, each with the same number of apartments, because they were close to a lot of different services. However, even though the flats’ general usefulness was acknowledged, their trapezoidal shape led to a buildup of problems. 

At first, it’s hard to put walls on a surface that aren’t all at right angles. Additionally, it was tough to make fixes in these non-standard units. Additionally, the large center area made the steady wind worse instead of better, which caused a problem with echoes. This project did, however, have a big effect on the cities of the Soviet Union, and the circle shape is still commonly used in architecture today.