🏛 Iofan's buildings on Shcherbakovskaya

Щербаковская ул., 5, 7, 9, 11

Four 16-story buildings of 1962–1975 — a late work of Boris Iofan, architect of the House on the Embankment.

To Iofan's design, four 16-story single-section towers were built here — buildings No. 5, 7, 9 and 11.
Three towers are joined by a two-story podium more than 100 m long with shops, and beneath it, below the sidewalk, runs a through road for trucks.
The towers stand 47 m apart — this violated sunlight norms, and the distance was tested on a model under an "artificial sun".
The kitchens here are big for the 1960s — up to 14.1 m²: the authors conceived them as kitchen-dining rooms, so that bedrooms would be only for sleeping.
Construction dragged on for 13 years and finished in 1975 — a year before Iofan's death.
Iofan had promoted freestanding single-section buildings since the start of the panel-building era; at first the idea was not supported.