The article explores the connection between the principles shaping the architecture of contemporary Russian residential complexes and Soviet commune houses of the 1920s and 1930s. Today, the social picture has changed, society lives under the conditions of “new normality”. As a result of social upheaval, people develop new ideas about the world and their way of life is transformed. Modern residential complexes begin to be formed according to the principle of ‘self-sufficiency’, as a network of interconnected spaces which ensure the satisfaction of all the needs of the residents within the space of the residential complex. Soviet commune houses were formed on a similar principle, providing for the satisfaction of domestic needs within a residential unit. Considering the modern period and the period of Soviet history in the 1920s and 1930s, the author relates the ongoing global changes. Two factors, social and epidemiological, which had the strongest influence on the development of housing typologies of the two periods, are analyzed. By comparing the contents of the two typologies of housing in the considered periods, a direct analogy of functional spaces can be traced. The patterns which were laid down in the planning of residential space in commune houses are updated under the conditions of modernity and repeated in the solutions of new residential complexes. Modern architecture is revealed by the authors through a reinterpretation of the experience of past generations.