silently club-like. People of the Union of Architects (whose developing that is) carry on to appear here - at the very least once per month, if they come to cover their account fees. The restaurant of the Home of Architects in Granatny pereulok has from Soviet situations been noted for its mixture of exclusiveness and democratic tolerance - like all eateries in innovative unions, incidentally.

When your decision was taken fully to refurbish it the manufacturers were confronted with two problems. The very first was the force of tradition, which prompted visitors to regard that as a kind of personal membership primarily for architects and their friends. The 2nd was the space's unambiguous and firm structure. The custom must be maintained in some way; the structure, to be left intact. From the start, it was decided that the big

"main" space, the effective pseudo-antique tips separating the latter from the small "side-chapels", and the tiny restaurant ' in the "vestibule" will be preserved. But it's difficult to believe an inside constructed in the 1970s in a style reminiscent more of the Soviet Baltic states than of Moscow - more of Jurmala than Palanga, - a masculine, normally extreme inside, could be so transformed. And changed, Home decorators more over, without the treatment of an expert architect. Making the structure untouched, interior-decorator Albina Nazimova has built the restaurant more "feminine", smoother, and - more complex.

A touch of withering, a few drops of bourgeoiserie, a light nostalgia for the vanished Good Empire. The present claret was diluted with gray; the ultramarine was diluted with dull, and the green, also diluted with grey. The effect is a stylish pallor, as though every thing were protected with a level of museum dust - that non-specialists are not encourage to touch.

Albina Nazimova claims she needed "the main palette and mental shade to get from what Ilya Piganov was doing" ;.The cafe has ten sections by this well-known Moscow artist. Each one is photo-collages realized through complicated strategy that Piganov created himself. These works fit beautifully to the hard space. Piganov's items are, on usually the one hand, complex and painstakingly made.