The communal block of Moscow’s Narkomfin Building has tall ceilings and looks out onto a lush courtyard. Two layers of glass, a few inches apart, mediate views between inside and outside, a typical solution for Constructivist buildings in cold climates, like Melnikov House. The building was completed in 1930 by Moisei Ginzburg, Mikhail Okhitovich, and Ignaty Milinis. Today, it is home to a new cafe designed by architect Michael Khvalebnov.
Narkomfin cafe is owned and operated by Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. Garage’s Maria Kruchinskaya, an architect, designed the cafe with Khvalebnov. Together, the team ultimately delivered new furniture, a bar area, and lighting fixtures. The lamps run on batteries, because you can’t put wires into the floors.
The communal block was where Ginzburg originally envisioned a kindergarten, shared kitchen, and laundry room for Narkomfin residents. Garage acquired it in 2020, and installed a cafe and bookstore there in 2022. Ginzburg’s grandson, Alexei, had just finished a major renovation of Narkomfin together with developer Liga Prava.
For ages, prior to Garage’s acquisition, the communal block was a squatters commune; paint peeled off the walls, and debris was everywhere. Kruchinskaya remembers those days—she describes this period as Narkomfin’s “anarchy years,” when ad hoc doors were punched into walls.
After the cafe opened, vintage furniture was speckled throughout the space—nice stuff from Finland. Then Khvalebnov came on board to ideate bespoke ephemera for it. Consultants specified plant types to maintain historical accuracy. Kruchinskaya likened the design process to an archaeological dig.
“Photographs of the building at the time of completion are all in black and white, so we don’t know what the original interior colors were,” Kruchinskaya said. “There are also no surviving documentary descriptions. Therefore, conceptual assumptions about the wall colors were based on stratigraphic uncovering of plaster layers.”
“This is a very important historical space,” Khvalebnov told AN Interior. “Our approach was to be as delicate as possible. I wanted the furniture to be almost invisible—in a semantic sense. I also didn’t want to pretend that this furniture was old. These are modern pieces.”
Khvalebnov ideated two sets of chairs—tall ones for the bar and short ones for the tables—with backs made of leather typically used for handbags. The table surfaces are textolite, a composite material of cotton and thermosetting phenolic resin that looks sort of like dark plywood.
Finalizing the details and finishes was a yearlong process. Narkomfin’s original architects didn’t necessarily set out to create something “aesthetically pleasing,” Kruchinskaya added. “The original idea was to create a multifunctional, diverse, experimental living space. And at the same time, this produced a certain aesthetic. So our approach was structured in a similar way. We created functional pieces that interact organically with the Constructivist space.”