In 1925 Melnikov designed and built the Soviet pavilion at the Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes. The wooden pavilion, employing a combination of single-sloped roofs of different sizes, was regarded as being one of the most progressive buildings at the fair. Unlike other Paris pavilions, it was completed in less than a month, employing not more than 10 workers.[10]
Still in Paris, Melnikov designed two privately commissioned versions of a ramped garage that never got past the conceptual drawing stage. In the second version of this project, Melnikov found a useful pattern of placing cars in a garage (again, a sawtooth pattern) where cars could park and leave without using reverse gear. The second In Moscow, Melnikov saw a new fleet of Leyland buses hoarded in a yard in Zamoskvorechye, and immediately proposed his concept to the city. The result, Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage, housed 104 buses on 8500 square meters of an unconventional, parallelogram-shaped floorplan with Vladimir Shukhov's roof system.[11]
Intourist Garage, the only facade remaining to date
Melnikov later called this project "the start of my Golden Season".[12] Bakhmetevsky Garage, sometimes incorrectly called a constructivist landmark, was very modestly styled in an indefinite "industrial" red brick. Melnikov's later garage buildings, on the contrary, possessed a clear avant-garde external styling (which has become badly damaged over time):