The furniture house project by architect Natalya Chmutina was conceived as multifunctional: the building was planned to be used both as a shopping center and as an exhibition pavilion. In addition to the sales floors, it was planned to imitate the interiors of real apartments with examples of furniture compositions. The spatial solution of the furniture house was the result of experimental searches by engineers from the KievZNDIEP Institute, who in the 1970s developed a catalog of effective design solutions for supermarkets, indoor markets and sports facilities.
Thanks to the invention of Yuri Rebrov, in collaboration with Leonid Dmitriev and Vadim Gordeev, an unusual design of a furniture house appeared – we are talking about a “hanging covering of buildings and structures”, the author’s certificate for which is still kept in the personal archive of the inventor. The essence of the invention is as follows: traditionally, roof coverings are supported by beams or columns, and the larger the covered space, the more beams and columns are needed. Rebrov proposed stretching heavy-duty cables that would sag freely, and then covering them with a metal membrane. The coating was assembled from individual panels 4 millimeters thick, which were welded during installation. Insulating and insulating boards and galvanized sheets were laid on the membrane.
Thanks to the new technology, the huge space of the store, whose total area is as much as 20,000 square meters, was able to be covered as a single volume. At the same time, the loads on the roof are distributed ideally – there are no places with critical stresses. When the roof was being designed, a dispute arose between the architects and the designers. The shape seemed somewhat unnatural to the architects, so the designers had to use a rope that sagged in this way for the demonstration, his son recalls the stories of Yuri Rebrov.
The technology turned out to be not only innovative and beautiful, but also reliable: in 2014, reconstruction of the façade of the furniture house, but not the roof, was discussed. It has been protecting the building for many years and is still in excellent condition. After its construction in 1984, the furniture house still occupies a leading position among suppliers and retailers of furniture in Ukraine.
Where is the furniture house?
Boulevard of Friendship of Peoples, 23