Vitaly Lagutenko

Vitaly Pavlovich Lagutenko was a Soviet architect and engineer. His studies of low-cost prefabricated concrete construction, supported by Nikita Khrushchev, led to a complete switch of Soviet building practice from masonry to prefab concrete. Lagutenko designed the standardized 5-story apartment houses, known as khrushchevka, and associated technologies of fast, mass-scale construction. These low-cost blocks, built by millions of units, helped relieve post-war housing shortage.