Our office is located on Gorbunova Street in Moscow. Sergei Petrovich Gorbunov (1902–1933) headed the country's first aircraft factory and served as Minister of Aviation Industry of the USSR. Under his leadership, the Soviet Union began mass-producing all-metal ANT aircraft. The street was named after him in 1933, the year of his death.

On September 5, 1933, leading aircraft designers, engineers, and industry executives flew to Sevastopol to take over a newly built plant.

The ANT-7 aircraft existed in only one copy. It had been converted from a reconnaissance plane—the armaments were removed and passenger seats installed. The aircraft completed several test flights over the factory airfield. Then came an order: prepare for the flight to Crimea and install additional fuel tanks.

What was missing: instruments for night flying and poor-visibility operations. Twenty minutes after takeoff, near Podolsk, the aircraft was flying low. The landing gear caught a wire from an amateur radio antenna on a mast.

What changed afterward. Air transportation in the USSR was completely reorganized. Group flights carrying Party leadership, industry executives, and scientists were banned.
This tragic event ultimately led to a complete restructuring of civil aviation in the Soviet Union.

We were landscaping the territory near our office on Gorbunova Street when we discovered something a meter below the surface. It was a hatch. It looked very old, but the markings were still legible.

This hatch has been here since 1929, left over from the construction of the Kolchugaluminum Plant. By order of the USSR's Supreme Council of the National Economy, it was assigned the name "Plant No. 45."

Everything around it changed:

• 1961: the plant became VILS, the All-Russian Institute of Light Alloys;
• early 1980s: an exhibition complex was built for the institute;
• today: the Grand Setun Plaza business center rose on the site.

And all this time, the hatch remained in place.
We know how to restore it. But we don't know how to show it to you. Under glass, like a window into the past? As an art object at the entrance to our territory? Or do you have a better idea?

What would you do with a 97-year-old hatch? If you have ideas, we'd be delighted to hear them!

In Moscow, poplars typically live 60–80 years. Ours is around 170 years old.

In nature, silver poplars live 300–400 years. In the city, everything is different: exhaust fumes, asphalt, construction. Very few reach 100 years here.

There are only three poplars like ours in all of Moscow within the Moscow Ring Road (MKAD).

It appeared roughly when serfdom was abolished in Russia, and it stands to this day.

1972, an international exhibition at Sokolniki. In the center of the hall, a sculpture rotates: birds intertwined into one whole, as if in flight.

Its creator is Ernst Neizvestny, an outstanding Soviet sculptor, graphic artist, and painter whose work is deeply imbued with philosophical reflections on humanity, the Great Patriotic War, freedom, and the meaning of existence.

For the exhibition, strategic materials were used: aluminum alloys and stainless steel. The main secret: the metals were joined without welding and without rivets. No one else had such a method. "Flight" demonstrated to the world what Soviet technology was capable of. The exhibition closed. The sculpture was disassembled and, by order from above, sent to storage.

The birds returned to their pedestal only after the Soviet Union collapsed.

Later, E. Neizvestny created works known throughout the world: "Tree of Life" — he worked on it for over 40 years; "Orpheus" — a copy of it is awarded as the TEFI Prize; "Renaissance" — at its center, the Archangel Michael, struggling against evil.

And "Flight" stands beside us, where you can see it in person.

Come visit us. We would be delighted to show our guests this sculpture from world heritage.