#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. Kim was born near Vladivostok, studied at the Leningrad Polytechnic University as a hydraulic engineer. He worked as a designer at Nizhne-Volgoproekt, then at the hydraulic engineering laboratory of the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Hydraulic Engineering.
In 1936, Mikhail Kima was convicted under a political article for four years and on July 30 arrived in Norillag. Under an amnesty in 1939, Kim’s conviction was removed, and in 1956 he was rehabilitated.
He began work on his main brainchild – construction in permafrost conditions – in 1936. In 1941 he became the Norilsk permafrost station head, in the 1950s he worked in the combine’s design office.
Kim was the first engineer to realize that building on permafrost can’t be based on traditional methods. It was necessary to look for an alternative solution.
From a report by Mikhail Kim in 1956:
“…We offer making foundation for civil buildings. Instead of a pit, the dimensions of which are always much larger than that of the foundation, a cylindrical well is drilled, and a reinforced concrete pile of a slightly smaller diameter is lowered into it. Back in 1946, the Norilsk Party and Technical Conference of Builders approved the use of reinforced concrete pile foundations in construction on permafrost soils. It is urgent to organize work on the development of this new, fast and economical method of footing”.
Mikhail Kim is the author of a unique pile foundation method by drilling. This method made it possible to reduce the labor intensity of building foundations by ten times, their cost – by half, and the zero construction cycle was built six times faster.
For this discovery Kim and ten other Norilsk citizens received the Lenin prize in 1966.
In Norilsk, at house No. 19 on Leninsky prospect, one of the first buildings built using the pile foundation method, there is a memorial plaque to Mikhail Kim.
In the last issue of the History Spot photo project, we told about the fact that the airport in Alykel was initially taken into operation as a temporary one.
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Text: Svetlana Samohina, Photo: Nornickel Polar Division archive
