Konstantin Melnikov (1890-1974) is unquestionably one of the outstanding architects of the 20th century - in spite of the fact that he fell silent early, leaving behind only limited work that was insufficiently publicised, and restricted almost exclusively to Moscow, the city of his birth in which he spent nearly his entire life.

In the late 1920s, at the peak of his career, he had the opportunity to build a house for himself and his family in Moscow, in which he was then able to live until the end of his life. This house, a memorable symbiosis of almost peasantlike simplicity and extreme radicalness, is one of the most impressive, surprising and probably most enigmatic works produced by 20th-century architecture.