Particular houses and buildings in Moscow

The house of Arseny Morozov
When Arseny Morozov, a person from the wealthy Morozov family, decided to build a house in the Moorish style, similar to the famous Pena National Palace in Portugal, many people in Moscow, including his mother, laughed at him. The very construction of this eclectic house seemed like a real eccentricity at the end of the 19th century, an unusual style for a city like Moscow.
Now we can see that Arseny Morozov's building, not far from the Kremlin and the Arbat, looks really exotic, with all those shells, reminiscent of the Casa de las Conchas in the city of Salamanca in Spain.
“I used to be the only one who knew you were crazy and now all of Moscow knows.” This is how V.A. Morozova, Arseny's mother, commented on the design of the house built by her son.

The Melnikov House
This unusual house that looks like a tube with geometric windows is a truly unique building. It is not only an apartment, but also a studio. It was built by the Russian architect Konstantin Stepanovich Melnikov, for him and his family. He dreamed of a separate single house and often thought about rebuilding another house to use as a studio.
Little by little he approached the idea of an innovative house, which could combine the creative atmosphere with familiar comfort because he could not live without the closeness of his family.
Melnikov designed all these windows along the walls to ensure that, in his study, the shadow of his hand would never fall on one of his designs. The internal surface area of the house is quite modest: only 250 m². Melnikov's descendants still live in this house today.
He managed to build this house in the late 1920s and the project was an experiment because Melnikov tried to prove the idea that a house could be round. The idea caused a lot of controversy at the time of construction, later it became a topic of discussion as underground waters could affect the stability of the building. In 2014, the Melnikov House became part of the Museum of Konstantin and Victor Melnikov.

The Academy of Sciences
Construction of this 22-story building began in 1974 and was completed 20 years later. The project was unique, there were no other similar buildings in all of Moscow, it showed the USSR's commitment to science.
The main decorative element was made of a composition of metal and glass. The buildings were nicknamed "The Golden Brains" and there were legends about its true mission, including "the plot theory".
However, the appearance of these two buildings hides a certain practicality: the shiny metal and glass elements cover some communication systems that come out of the roof. This extravagant building could be considered a crossover between Soviet modernism and semi-abstract monumental art.

The "house-ship" at ulitsa Bolshaya Tulskaya 2
Built in 1981 by the Soviet Union's Ministry of Atomic Industry, it is one of the few buildings in Moscow that could withstand a nuclear explosion.
The foreman who supervised its construction had spent his entire life building nuclear reactors, and this was greatly reflected in the structure of the house in question.
To prevent it from collapsing in the event of an explosion, in this seismically stable house, there are no 90° angles, only 87° or 93°; the thickness of the windows is unique and reaches 0.6 centimetres.
It is called the "ship house" because of its wraparound balconies that are similar to bridges and its enormous size (it is 400 meters long and 50 meters high).

The Tea House on Myasnitskaya Ulitsa
This Chinese-style house was built for tea merchant Sergei Vasilievich Perlov who abandoned the family tea company to start his own business. In 1875 he purchased land on Myasnitskaya Street in central Moscow and began building the new house in 1891.
The construction was finished in 1893. On the first floor was located Mr. Perlov's tea shop, two other floors were used for apartments and also for the owner's house.
The front side of the newly built house has been renovated in Chinese style in a few years. The small pagoda-shaped tower, which appears on the front side, was decorated with dragons, snakes, Chinese umbrellas and lanterns. Some materials were brought directly from China.
The Chinese ambassador Li Hongzhang, who was in Moscow for the coronation of Nikolai II and Alexandra Fyodorovna, was thought to want to visit Mr. Perlov's house, which was useful for his business, but unfortunately the ambassador stopped at his brother's house, as well as Perlov's competitor. Anyway, thanks to him we have a beautiful exotic building right in the center of the city, as if it came here from another part of the world.