Narkomzem Building
Alexey Shchusev · Moscow, Russia · 1933
The former People’s Commissariat of Agriculture is a major Moscow example of interwar Soviet modernism. Alexey Shchusev organized the administrative complex around a long horizontal façade, rounded corner elements and strong bands of glazing, while internal circulation and office wings reflect the bureaucratic scale of the new Soviet state. The building sits close to Krasnye Vorota and differs markedly from the monumental classicism Shchusev would later employ elsewhere. Completed in 1933, it demonstrates the brief period when constructivist and functionalist ideas were still shaping major state institutions.