Constructivist destruction

The battle for preservation in Russia:

"It would never have occurred to a Western architect from the rational school to design a building in the shape of a hammer and sickle, and to give such a utilitarian function to such a strange form,” he says. “But in our mentality, a task was set, and the implementation of that strange task was done using professional methods and professional quality." [...]

Stadnikov notes that it was also one of the few Soviet buildings to be designed by a female architect, Yekaterina Maksimova.

"For that time -- and in fact, for our time -- it is a huge rarity to have a working woman architect. There are no women you can think of who practiced architecture in the avant-garde epoch," he says.