Rubanenko, Boris Rafailovich

Born Aug. 16 (29), 1910, in Samara (present-day Kuibyshev). Soviet architect. Honored Architect of the RSFSR (1969) and Kazakh SSR (1970); doctor of architecture (1967). Became a member of the CPSU in 1939.

From 1927 to 1931, Rubanenko studied in Leningrad with A. S. Nikol’skii and A. A. Ol’ at the Institute of Civil Engineering. From 1932 to 1934 he attended the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture of the All-Russian Academy of Arts, where his teachers included V. G. Gel’freikh, V. A. Shchuko, and S. S. Serafimov. In 1954, Rubanenko joined the faculty of the Moscow Architectural Institute, receiving a professorship there in 1970. He has been director of the Central Research Institute for the Experimental Planning of Housing since 1963.

Rubanenko has greatly contributed to the theoretical and practical development of mass housing construction in the USSR. His principal works (with collaborators) include a residential district on Malaia Okhta (1936–41) and a school on Nevsky Prospect (1939) in Leningrad, the planning and construction of Privakzal’naia Square in Minsk (1947 plan), the Troparevo residential district in Moscow (planned from 1961 to 1964), the new section of the city of Tol’iatti (1967–72; State Prize of the USSR, 1973), and the construction (begun in 1969) and general plan (approved in 1973) of the city of Naberezhnye Chelny.

Rubanenko has been awarded the Order of the October Revolution, two other orders, and various medals.