Mass housing across the former Soviet Union is in varying states of disrepair, having lasted much longer than it was expected to when built in the 1960s. Treatment of the buildings varies greatly depending on context, as some are replaced, others are renovated, and many are neglected. But in most places, residents own their apartment units, having obtained them at a minimal cost following the collapse of the USSR. While this leaves many apartment owners responsible for common amenities that they don’t have the means or incentives to maintain, it also puts them in a position to leverage the latent value of the Soviet structures they live in.
Current trends do not take full advantage of these circumstances, and it is often external developers who manage to profit from the land value of Soviet housing, leaving residents with inadequate compensation. No matter what happens to the buildings, the legacy of mass housing is deeply entrenched and will continue to shape the built environment for generations to come. We argue that it is essential to keep the original structures — with modifications and updates — to create agency for residents in how this legacy is carried into the future.
This thesis demonstrates three scenarios in which residents of the same type of prefabricated modernist housing — in sites spread across the former Soviet territory — collectively leverage their apartments to create renovations that serve their common interests. Using contemporary mass timber construction technology and taking full advantage of local real estate markets, residents can self-organize to improve their living spaces.
The project was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - advisor: Ana Miljački.
KOOZ What prompted the project?
EL | BH We became interested in the topic of social housing preservation in Eastern Europe when we took a studio with Prof. Ana Miljački at MIT in 2019. The studio investigated collective design strategies that emerged in Yugoslavia during the communist era. We traveled to Belgrade, Serbia where we discovered the remnants of a world that no longer exists but has not totally disappeared either given the massive infrastructure that was deployed by the state over several decades. We soon became fascinated with the following question: what will happen to all post-war mass housing around the world, as the condition of buildings deteriorates, as governments have become too weak to pay for their retrofit, and as they have become socially stigmatized?
Given our concerns for construction waste reduction, we decided to explore mass housing renovation a little further. After some research, we learned that the Soviet Union had been the stage of the world’s largest mass housing project in terms of people housed. Furthermore, we found out that Moscow was undergoing Europe’s largest urban renewal, replacing entire housing districts from the Soviet era. Mass housing in the New East (the region comprising Russia, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Central Asia) is special compared to the rest of the world because after the fall of the USSR, most residents became owners of the apartments they live in, whereas mass housing dwellers in the West are still renters for the most part.
"Still Standing" truly emerged when we had the opportunity to spend the summer of 2019 in Russia thanks to the MIT-Russia program. We first took the Transsiberian railway to observe the transformation of public space in various Russian cities. We then spent 2 months in Moscow, where we researched the evolution of prefabricated housing since WW2 through site visits, interviews, and archive documents. Eventually, we traveled to Georgia where we witnessed another application of Soviet mass housing.
KOOZ What questions does the project raise and which does it address?
EL | BH "Still Standing" essentially asks the following questions: What will happen to modernist mass housing after public actors become disengaged from its maintenance? Is demolition the optimal solution for derelict mass housing from an economic, social, and environmental perspective? What role could designers take in a renovation process to ensure the best outcome for all parties involved? Through this project, we wanted to highlight the untapped potential of buildings that are already owned by their inhabitants who have not found ways to come together and update the things they share outside of their apartments.
KOOZ What is for you the value of these architecture within the immediate context of Russia and within the wider typology of social housing worldwide?
EL | BH Soviet mass housing still shelters millions of people in Russia and the rest of former Soviet countries. In a few places like Moscow, there is a strong political will to replace the buildings, coupled with enough potential to demolish and rebuild denser constructions that will create immediate value for investors and buyers. But in most of the former Soviet space, modernist mass housing is here to stay for the foreseeable future, as there is simply not enough demand to justify the replacement of the buildings. However, these architectures offer the potential to be improved, through the creation of shared spaces and thermal improvements financed by densification and additional apartments.
KOOZ How does the project redefine the notion and act of preservation as one with "active" connotations?
EL | BH Architectural preservation may appear as a very theoretical operation, especially in the context of academic intuitions. However, buildings require extremely physical actions to be surveyed, understood, and fixed. In Still Standing, we wanted to highlight the interactions that are required to deploy a preservation project. Beyond designing something, we were interested in understanding how this design would come to be, in each of the three sites we studied. We therefore had to understand all parties that would be involved in the making of such projects, from the factory where parts are prefabricated to the actor that would finance the operations.
With this research project, we also wanted to explore how a single top-down design was copy-pasted in several contexts, required local adaptations, and was eventually actively and passively shaped by its dwellers, the surrounding climate, as well as political and financial decisions.
KOOZ What is the power of engaging the individual within this project?
EL | BH In the West, residents are often dismissed in mass housing retrofit projects, because integrating their feedback represents additional complications for already-complex projects. However, given that most residents own their apartment in Soviet mass housing, there is simply no way around engaging with individuals. A few building demolitions in Moscow have bypassed that step and led to non-democratic replacements. But we are convinced that everywhere else, the energy required to fix the existing housing stock can only come from residents’ associations.
KOOZ How do you envision the proposal developing over time and as a network between cities?
EL | BH We are currently broadcasting our solution through our network in the New East in order to make as many actors as possible aware of the latent potential of decaying Soviet mass housing. In the next few years, we will both work on other bottom-up projects with the mission to empower actors traditionally ignored in design processes, such as residents and construction workers. With that additional experience, we hope to return to the post-Soviet and help a community leverage its building on a pilot project.
KOOZ What is for you the power of the architectural imagination?
EL | BH Our foreignness to the Soviet context created limitations to our understanding of all parameters we were working with in this project. For instance, we do not speak Russian and relied on friends to provide translations whenever we could not understand archival materials. But we also view this foreignness as a generative approach when it comes to envisioning architectural solutions. Had we known from the beginning that the Russian building code does not allow for mass timber above a certain height, we would have probably not explored the potential of this material as a replacement for concrete panels.
Bio
Eytan Levi is interested in updating existing strutures through tactical real estate development. He currently works on the mitigation of urban heat islands and the creation of new outdoor spaces through Roofscapes, a green roof startup launched at MIT and based in Paris. Eytan received his Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland and holds a Master of Architecture and a Master of Science in Real Estate Development from MIT.
Ben Hoyle is currently based in Nairobi, Kenya, where he works on connecting workers in the informal manufacturing sector to the local construction industry. Ben holds a Master of Architecture from MIT and a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics from Williams College.
