nvited by the Malyarstroi (Painting-Construction) Trust, Hinnerk Scheper arrived in the USSR. His two best-known works from his time in Moscow are the color scheme for the Finance Ministry residential building and the commune-type residential buildings along Khavsky Lane.
75
77
Portrait of Hinnerk Scheper, 1927
Photo by Lucia Moholy © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Portrait of Georgy Krutikov, 1920s
Melnikov House
Photo by Igor Palmin
o commemorate the school’s 10th anniversary a major Bauhaus exhibition was staged in Zurich. The design projects included furnishings for an average apartment and furniture for defined groups of consumers. The designers, aiming to lower costs, avoided unnecessary details. The designs included folding tables and chairs, as well as a cupboard for a bachelor apartment.
79
Josef Pohl, Bachelor's wardrobe
Meyer organized studio production of standardized products designed to be affordable by all segments of the population. The school’s greatest commercial success is a line of wall-coverings produced in the mural-painting studio. Instead of little flowers the wall-coverings use geometric ornaments suggestive of the structure of cloth. The advantage of the wall-coverings is that the images are small and irregular, making it easy to apply the strips to the wall. Another plus is that small rooms are made to seem larger.
ne of the best known of Vkhutemas’ teacher-architects, Konstantin Melnikov, designed and built his own home and studio on a lot in central Moscow. Its two intersecting cylinders sum up Melnikov’s utopian vision of communal housing and his personal ideal of the home as castle. The structure is also a fantastic testament to efficiency and economy in use of materials in the impoverished conditions of the late 1920s.