Tsentrosoyuz Building in Spring Twilight – Angle view from Sakharova Avenue

Angle view from Academician Sakharov Avenue on the huge building of Tsentrosoyuz (the Central Union of Consumer Cooperatives) in an early spring evening before getting dark. The complex of several seven-story administrative buildings covered with dark pink tuff was built in modern Constructivist (avant-garde) style in 1930-1936 by the project of the outstanding Swiss-French architect and innovator Le Corbusier, with the participation of Russian modernist Nikolai Kolli. It became the biggest in Europe office center at the time.

Built on Le Corbusier's favored piloti – reinforced concrete pillar – the building facade is a dramatic, smooth, glazed curtain wall, framed at the top and bottom by strips of red volcanic stone blocks from the Caucasus, and at the sides by projecting volumes clad in the same red stone.

The building includes office space for 3,500 people, a restaurant, lecture halls, and a theater. It now houses the Russian Federal Service for State Statistics (Rosstat).

Photo #073 taken on March 28, 2020