A Home Addition Offers A Sunlit Ode To Suprematism

If Kazimir Malevich—the early 20th–century founder of suprematism—had been asked to create one of James Turrell’s signature Skyspaces, the result might easily have been the Yellow Pavilion. In fact, architect Maxim Kashin did have the Russian avant-garde artist in mind when conceptualizing this 980-square-foot addition to a Moscow house he originally designed in 2015. The client had asked for a recreational space in which to relax, escape daily routine, and contemplate the sky—a kind of private suburban observatory. The wedge-shaped structure, made entirely of metal, comprises a welded-steel frame sheathed, roofed, and furnished with metric rolled sheeting.

Smooth, curved walls define the fluid interior zones, which include a seating area with a serpentine built-in desk and a cylindrical alcove for lounging beneath an oculus providing an uninterrupted view of the heavens. There is also a bathroom equipped with a shower and stacked laundry appliances, the latter customized with a black-and-white geometric pattern—one of several homages Kashin pays to Malevich. Another, even more striking, is the application of the namesake yellow paint to walls, ceiling, concrete floor, and furniture, a unifying gesture that completes the symbiosis of function, shape, pattern, and color, realizing Kashin’s vision of a personal “model of the cosmos,” a central theme of suprematism.