Currently, the building is the headquarters of the Federal State Statistics Office of Russia. The studies began in 1928 and were to find an immediate realisation.
In 1929, the complete set of construction plans was sent to Moscow and work was started. However certain delays were encountered due to the shortage of materials caused by the realization of the First Five-Year Plan.
The program called for the provision of modern offices for 3500 employees. In addition, there are communal facilities such as a restaurant, lecture halls, theater, club, physical culture, etc. The building is a unity comprising both work and recreation.
The construction is of reinforced concrete, with in-filling walls of red tuff stone from the Caucasus. These solid blocks of sawn tuff have a thickness of 16 in. which was sufficient for them to serve also as the only thermal insulation between an outside temperature of -40° F. and an interior at 66° F.
Unfortunately, the Russian authorities did not accept the principle of “respiration exacte” (air-conditioning) which had been devised especially for this building. The solution could have been much franker and clearer; the glazing of the façades purer. Not until the construction of the Salvation Army Refuge in Paris was one able to apply, for the first time, the “respiration exacte” system in a hermetically sealed building.
