Pages of Soviet town planning: "The tower of Vulikh"

In the sixties of the 20th century, witty Muscovites gave the nickname "Tower" to single-section apartment houses and other buildings with a height of 9-12 floors or more. They appeared in every area of Moscow's new buildings. This word was firmly entrenched and behind one of the typical series of apartment houses, which became known as the "tower of the Woolen" by the name of the city planner who designed it.

E.P.Vulykh, a well-deserved Russian architect awarded many prizes, orders and medals, exerted a great deal of effort to shape the appearance of the Soviet capital. The series of the house "Vulykh Tower" is not his only contribution to the architectural environment of Moscow. The ensembles of residential buildings on Frunzenskaya and Dorogomilovskaya embankments and Komsomolsky Avenue, a 450-apartment residential building on Leningradsky Prospekt were considered at that time to be real achievements in town planning.

Vulikh - the author of the building of the State Circus on Vernadsky Avenue, built in 1971. The project of this building with a lot of complicated at the time engineering structures, removable arenas, etc., was nominated for the State Prize. The circus with the sky hanging in the sky, illuminated from the inside by the dome, still adorns the south-western part of the capital.

"Tower of the Wool" - a series of single- brick houses, the most common not only in Moscow, but in many other cities. In comparison with the first series of panel houses and "Khrushchev" five-story buildings, these houses were distinguished by the convenience of internal planning and comfort, elegant facades. Quite modern, they look and now, and in those days and were considered an elite housing. It is noteworthy that most of the apartments distributed around the municipal line to venerable officials, "siloviki", artists and other high-ranking officials, were located in the houses of the "Vulykh Tower" series. The layout in them was considered the most progressive and the most successful among the other typical series of houses. Not surprisingly, housing in them was considered prestigious and was the limit of many Russians' dreams.

The houses of the "Vulikh Tower" series were built from sandy-colored brick, with loggias on the facade. Inside, since the houses are high-rise, two elevators are provided - one for the transport of goods, the other for passengers - in addition, a garbage disposal with a loading valve on each floor. Heating water, centralized, water supply from the city network (hot and cold water). In the kitchen and in the bathroom there are ventilation units. The external walls of brick have a thickness of 510 mm, which is an undeniable advantage over modern houses. Internal walls and partitions are made of gypsum-concrete panels with a thickness of 200 and 80 mm, respectively. Multiple hollow panels serve as overlaps. In contrast to the "Khrushchev" with low ceilings (2.48), in the houses of the "tower Vulikh" series, the ceilings have a quite decent height of 2.7 m.

In the section there are 8 apartments: 1 three-room, 4 two-room and 3 one-room. All of them are planned quite conveniently, they have spacious kitchens, large hallways and loggias, separate bathrooms.

Due to the successful arrangement of rooms such a property is still in good demand in the secondary housing market today, the cost of apartments is even higher than in newer houses. The period during which the "Vulikh Tower" was built was 40 years, from 1963 to 2003. It should be noted that this is a worthy page of the history of Russian urban development.