Yes: my point is that successful architecture is neither left-wing nor right-wing, and that architecture which is identifiably left- or right-wing is ugly and nauseating, almost by definition.
As context, these buildings have sizeable parks in between them. They also house different gyms, saunas, swimming pools and multi-storey apartments rented from the city of Vienna. "Wohnpark Alterlaa"
Alterlaa is fantastic. Incredible resident retention as well. Lot's of multigenerational residencies as well. They lower half has huge ass balconies, large enough for trees, bushes or even a small garden. They are also desigend to support all of that.
They have tons of spaces for all sorts of clubs, gyms and they all have sizeable swimming pools on top as well. Car free all around with nicely cared for park area in between everything, a mini shopping mall as part of the complex, a subway station on its own and direct access to a major cycling/walking trail ...
I was surprised to find the new trainstation in a Finnish town has benches that prevent lying down on them. Apparently someone's been taking notes here 😕
It's also not left wing architecture. It's the cross roads of a left wing housing initiative, and a right wing refusal to spend money on the public good. What you get is something akin to unsecured prison architecture.
This architectural style is called, no kidding, Soviet Brutalism, and was the primary architectural style featured in the Soviet Union from the 1950s to the 1980s.
It’s a divergence from Western brutalism, focusing more on utopian and futuristic themes.
So, no, it’s not anything political. It’s a cultural thing.
Boston City Hall, for example:
The campus of the Rochester Institute of Technology, a.k.a. “Brick City”:
You should check the link I posted. Honolulu has a crapton of brutalism, so I wouldn't associate it necessarily with any political movement.
I think where brutalism exists now is more a function of when an area was being developed, and it just happens that those areas underwent substantial development while brutalism was en vogue (late 50's - late 1970s).
So, no, it’s not anything political. It’s a cultural thing.
Soviet housing either followed or was contemporary with Le Corbusier's ideas of affordable ‘habitation units’, the now-famous cookie-cutter blocks with minimal decoration. The OOP is quite correct in calling it leftist, since the purpose was to have lots of cheap housing: the USSR had huge expansion of it during the fifties-seventies, with massive migration from rural areas to cities (following the less-neat redistribution of housing, wooden barracks, and communal living in the thirties).
Can't say I like the outcome too much, because arguably same population density can be achieved with lower-rising houses, since they don't require huge areas between them to have any sunlight. Khrushchev-era districts can be much cozier than later ones, since five-storey buildings are placed closer and have trees right outside the windows.
It's also not left wing architecture. It's the cross roads of a left wing housing initiative, and a right wing refusal to spend money on the public good. What you get is something akin to unsecured prison architecture.
So, again, no. This isn’t an example of left-wing architecture. This makes it an example of bad politics.
Soviet right wing refused to spend money on the public good when building millions of buildings across the country? What in the hell are you talking about?
I already gave a lesson in architectural styles. I don’t feel particularly obligated to educate you in Soviet history, nor to engage in a debate on the subject.
It's called city planning. I don't know where this is but the commie blocks where I was born were within walking distance of shops, cafes, schools, had cheap central heating, all had children's parks and green areas between buildings, and public transport to the city center.
All at dirt cheap prices since they were not built for profit, and could only be owned by people living in them or rented from the state.
People in the west never hear anything positive about communism, so...
Everyone knows what their news talk about. A few people read books, but not many.
I would not want to live under communism, but it certainly is portrayed as more crazy than it actually is.
There are zero tv shows about communist people doing normal things in life. Its pretty much a banned topic that people go out and party, watch movies, eat pizza... Same as in the west. We are not very different.
And if you travel, you see this. Its just people. But yes, the leaders are insane. In every major nation.
True, but I can't hate old NYC architecture. That stuff was cool. In fact it's no coincidence either that last good-looking Soviet housing was during Stalin's era, as he liked New York's art-deco architecture and demanded it be used in the USSR (with Moscow State University's Ramenki campus being the most famous example).
If you look at the 🌳 , the don't have leaves, indicating that the picture was taken on a cloudy autumn day. Everything looks depressing on a cloudy autumn day.
Not the best example: Eastern-European countries tend to overcompensate and overdo the painting, making the result too noisy. Nordic cities look much better, precisely because they choose muted and coordinated colors, and usually paint the whole house instead of making patchy blobs. It so happens that khrushchyovkas are again better at it too, because they were built smaller and painted in one color, often muted orange or brown.
The bottom image is heavily tuned to have more vibrant colors. No place in real life has such strong hues. I'd suspect that place in real life looks very much like the above image
Could be, but it's still not the patchy mess that Soviet blocks tend to be colored into. New builds in Russia are often painted those very strong hues that apparently no place has. It's horrible.
Agreed, that looks pretty horrible. It's more due to the lack of any color harmony than the strong hues. There are places with strong hues that look good imo, like Burano
I did not say that I would consider those buildings in Petrzalka the height of all taste and beauty but the issue with it is not the colour of the buildings. It is the urban layout on ground level and the rundown horrendously car centric design. That is really dragging the area down. On the plus side, there is so much greenery even with all of that, that it is not looking grey there, certainly not during Spring-Autumn.
PS: Bratislava is west of Stockholm, has nothing to do with Orthodox Europe and Slovakia stopped being part of the East block almost as long ago as it was ever part of it.
It's always funny how everyone between Germany and Russia say that they're in Western Europe. Yeah keep telling that to yourself bud, Slovakia is certified Eastern Europe.
I am not Slovak, heck, I am not even with your expansive idea of "Eastern Europe" Eastern European.
I also did not say that Slovaks are Western European. Calling them "Eastern European" is as ridiculous as calling them "Western European".
Tell me, is Dresden also Eastern European and how about Vienna?
What I wrote above: "Eastern-European countries tend to overcompensate and overdo the painting, making the result too noisy". Just like in your above pic from Slovakia. But not in this one.
No need to inform me that some Western-European countries and even the US did housing of this style, as I'm perfectly aware that it was peddled by Le Corbusier at the same time as the USSR developed its approach, likely with cross-pollination at least in the west-east direction.
Also, Dresden will remain East-European in spirit until the former East Germany stop trying to recreate GDR with their conservative voting.
You misunderstand my argument. My argument was not that Western Europe also has commie block type neighbhourhoods, my argument was that you lack to point out what it is that turned a part of Europe into "Eastern Europe" that has little in common with Moscow and much more with Vienna, just because it was forced into a geopolitic block for roughly 40 years, until almost 40 years ago.
But then, you also appear to believe that Dresden is Eastern Europe, so at least you are consistent. Could it be that you are confusing "Eastern European" with "post communist". Those two things are not the same.
Indeed I am. Because what I'm saying is that folks who got their aesthetic sense botched by decades of Soviet doctrine, don't do well at dressing up the high-rises, even though buildings of a similar kind in the Nordics do splendidly.
And, as I mentioned in the thread, one can look at Stalinist housing and Khrushchevkas for examples of Soviet-type housing that didn't need gaudy paint to look decent, because they were built at smaller sizes and with the last remainder of the sense of beauty. Russians also never bastardized the old districts in Moscow and SPb, because those had established aethetics (except for new buildings inserted here and there, which predictably look shitty for the most part).
Blue tarps? But they're blue! haha, you wings are so silly with your flapping about
But seriously, have they not seen an apartment building or strip mall before? The architecture where I live is far from inspiring, it's just strip mall after strip mall for miles, then some big block office buildings. Yippee
A 300 million dollar mansion for one person.
A 1.2 billion dollar prison complex for a few hundred people .
Everyone else is homeless and lives under a bridge.
Corpo housing isn't mcmansions. They're factory built homes shipped to site and dropped on locally poured foundations, sometimes with basements.
Sure, they can be decent sized, but the mcmansion is overly large and aimed at a different crowd, a crowd that's increasingly unable to afford them.
Source; I grew up in a corpo housing development from the 60s or 70s. The houses all looked identical from the outside, but had a few different floor plans, one down the street was actually two of the wrong halves put together, which meant that one of the closets didn't have a door and could only be accessed by someone crawling in through a gap near the ceiling.
Thankfully there was no HOA, so the houses quickly picked up some individuality.
That's communist dude not left, I m sure Denmark which is a socialistic country is left for you too, anyway do some traveling and stop spreading bollocks
We never had communism in the same way we never had a person fly by flapping their arms after jumping of a roof. It's not that we did not try, it just does not end with a flying person.
To have communism, you have to concentrate all the wealth and power in some sort of government so that people don't own "the means of production". And when you concentrate all power in the government, human nature produces some sort of dictatorship.
Yes, it is handwaving, because I ain't spending time writing paragraphs of shit anyone with two brain cells to rub together can easily figure out on their own.
communism is a stateless society
Just because you string words together does not mean they mean something. If people don't own/control the means of production, someone else does. Either you have private capital or a governing body. Calling it "stateless society" means nothing. That is actual handwaving of real issues.
"Just because you string words together does not mean they mean something. If people don’t own/control the means of production, someone else does. Either you have private capital or a governing body. Calling it “stateless society” means nothing. That is actual handwaving of real issues."
communism is a stateless classless moneyless society. your semantic game doesn't change the facts
communism is a stateless classless moneyless society
So it's a fantasy where everyone magically knows what to do, how and when. Then does it with no incentive or punishment. No coordinators, police, or anything else required. Ok, clear. Now can we get back to real world ideas?
Because if there is anyone who has the ability to order people to do something and punish them for not doing it or decide distribution of incentives, that is called a government. No matter how you try to rename it or handwave it.
"Yes, it is handwaving, because I ain’t spending time writing paragraphs of shit anyone with two brain cells to rub together can easily figure out on their own."
Disagree. You and so many others throw around the word communism as if it is a specific type, rather than a general type. Not only that, communism and capitalism as not mutually exclusive. We have communism in capitalist societies and there was capitalism inside the USSR's communism.
We have fully functioning communes within the USA. Those are communists living happily inside a communist community, with communist leadership, and communist ideals, all as a sub community within normal American cities. And it is successful.
The US has communism/socialism even within its own government. We have communist firefighters. There was a time all fire brigades were private and sold memberships and private insurance. It was communism that made it a public service. Even the socialist healthcare in the military was not always that way. Up until the Civil War it was private healthcare and the medics were for the battlefield only. All after care was out of pocket. Even for a time after the Civil War large amounts were not covered by the military.
And even looking at the previous poster's comment about not seeing true communism- that is a category- are they referring to Lennonist communism? Maoist? Marxist? It's like saying all capitalist governments are the same, as if the EU and the US, and Nigeria are all the same types of government.
Leftwing architecture is mixed-use, walkable neighbourhoods and community centers built with artistry in mind. It’s beatiful decor to old buildings that feel lived in. It’s parks and bus stops and bike lanes.
Rightwing architecture is a functionally dead grass lawn and a house so perfect that it feels not only dead, but oppressive. It’s replacing a slightly ugly group of three or four stores with a chain restaurant and a parking that generates less tax revenue for the city than the “shitty” stores did. It’s the old, dilapidated neighbourhood that’s falling apart because the city is too busy spending everyone’s tax money subsidizing the rich neighbourhood, then taking photos of only it and claiming that it’s better. No sidewalks, no nature, no way to get around without a car and nothing to do once you have one except a 45min commute in traffic to get to work.
I love this kind of thread. It always attracts some guy who finds it necessary to point out that in the USSR people had to endure the absolute horrors of having roommates. I think I saw him phrase it as them having "survived" roommates once.
The blocks were built en masse with the exact purpose of escaping communal living that proliferated during rapid urbanization of the 1930s, so that connection is quite a stretch.
I mean, roommates are definitely a form of horror. For every well adjusted person out there, several exist that never learned to clean up after themselves or think of how what they do impacts another person.
Hell, there are a lot of people who actually take delight in the suffering of others. Imagine trying to convince your roommate to do the dishes more than once a month and they're laughing at you.
Its not the roommates that bothers me it is the listening devices and constantly playing propaganda that is illegal to turn off, or forced "vacations" in labor camps for disagreeing with government decisions.
When I visited Berlin, I heard a theory that these Soviet era units were why the cost of living was still accessible to creative-types so a big part of why the city is culturally thriving.
Khrushchyovkas are actually different from what is typically known as Soviet blocks, because they were built up to five stories high and thus didn't require large empty areas between them for sunlight to reach the lower floors. So the houses are placed closer together, with cozier yards and often plenty of trees right outside the windows. Living in that feels quite different from high-rises.
I don't see a problem? State funded infrastructure has a place and purpose in our society. It's built for function over form. Wonderful architecture is incredibly expensive and amounts to mostly fluff. If you would try to build civic infrastructure focusing on pomp and grandeur over functionality, you would not last long in the public sphere.
Yes, but as much as we all like the Brutalism style, would the cost difference really not be worth it for Art Deco or anything a bit more psychologically welcoming or uplifting combined with generous green spacing and walkability.
Yes it would be worth it. But is that money also available? Or do you have the breathing room to build less for the same money, or wait for that money to become available?
The structure of this roof cap is exactly like the kind of telemetry tracker that NASA uses to identify dead pulsars in deep space. Cold-riveted girders...with cores of pure selenium.
The issue with soviet blocks was not the density. The actual design was brilliant as each of these blocks had all conveniences like schools and shops within reach.
The issue as with most soviet union is corruption and management incompetence. They took one design and applied to 15% of world's land mass. So the house in deep Siberia and coast of warm Azerbaijan were the almost the same. To add society was so broken than no one actually cared for the vision these houses had. This is entirely system failure not a design one.
People live just fine in close quarters - just take a look at Japan.
Oh well. I live in one now, pretty good one, definitely better than soviet ones, but it's pretty depressing. Even more depressing that there's really no other option.
The Soviet Union had higher rates of homeless than the US both back in the 80s and today. Not to mention that commie blocks were notoriously poorly built and maintained. Soviet architecture just isn't good.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, every single ex soviet state in Europe (outside of Russia and Belarus) went on a spree to "decommunize" their architecture because it's so soulless and terrible, and they're better off for it.
It's annoying when this shitty propaganda post gets spammed on here every other day with the same misinformation and misconceptions being spread every damn time.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, every single ex soviet state in Europe (outside of Russia and Belarus) went on a spree to “decommunize” their architecture because it’s so soulless and terrible, and they’re better off for it
Their homelessness did skyrocket after the USSR dissolved though. So saying "they're better off for it" kind of depends on what you value more, pretty buildings or housing people.
The homeless were always there, the Soviet Union intentionally didn't count them. The ex Soviet states did genuine counts which revealed the actual rates
The article doesn't contradict what I said. The Soviet Union intentionally refused to count their homeless population because the state pretended that it didn't exist. The real numbers showed up only after the communist regime fell because the ex Soviet states started counting. Academic studies have shown that the Soviet Union in the 1980s not only had homelessness, but they had it at a rate that was higherthan what the US had at that time.
Yes it does, read it again. It claims homelessness, not recorded, not perceived, not logged, but real actual homelessness went up for reasons other than "when communism fell, the government was replaced by beautiful honest angels who would never tell a lie about their own performance", namely something along the lines of the housing market being privatized and folks selling homes without being able to purchase a new one.
Academic studies have shown that the Soviet Union in the 1980s not only had homelessness, but they had it at a rate that was higherthan what the US had at that time.
I'm not disputing this. I did have a similar conversation with someone about this earlier, who claimed something similar, and initially the "academic studies" they referred to were a listicle and an article written by someone from an institute whose mission statement was sth like "we're here to write propaganda against communism". I think eventually they found something that could more reasonably be called academic sources, but I'm curious what you're referring to here.
Reality is propaganda to you. Commie blocks were infamous inside the USSR and outside of it that they were poorly designed, built, and maintained. There's a reason why all the ex Soviet states ran campaigns to replace them.
"Human nature" is where material conditions intersects with cultural conditioning. "Left leaning" doesn't mean anything in America, especially when the cultural underpinning of the society is consumerism and the acquisition of wealth.
homelessness has many causes but can be survivable and relatively more enjoyable than living in a hell hole poorly designed, maintaned and serviced high density clusterfuck
yes: right-wing architecture:
The best architecture isn't politically-tainted, but designed to be beautiful first.
And your examples are actually political.
Yes: my point is that successful architecture is neither left-wing nor right-wing, and that architecture which is identifiably left- or right-wing is ugly and nauseating, almost by definition.
As context, these buildings have sizeable parks in between them. They also house different gyms, saunas, swimming pools and multi-storey apartments rented from the city of Vienna. "Wohnpark Alterlaa"
Alterlaa is fantastic. Incredible resident retention as well. Lot's of multigenerational residencies as well. They lower half has huge ass balconies, large enough for trees, bushes or even a small garden. They are also desigend to support all of that.
They have tons of spaces for all sorts of clubs, gyms and they all have sizeable swimming pools on top as well. Car free all around with nicely cared for park area in between everything, a mini shopping mall as part of the complex, a subway station on its own and direct access to a major cycling/walking trail ...
Best I can do is indsutrial brutalism
Right wing architecture
Once you notice hostile design, you see it everywhere.
My favorite is the bench with no shade. It's a giant fuck you. You could sit here however you are going to sit in the full force of the sun.
So many tiny Pharaohs!
Valley of the rat-kings.
This doesn't look slave plantation-y enough.
I also can't find the pointy white hat.
I assume they had a problem with cars parking there.
Honest question: WTF is this?
Anti homeless / hostile architecture. Prevents people sitting or sleeping there.
This blows my naive European mind. To make an area deliberately unusable for anything by anyone is wild. At least those hostile benches can be sat on.
The amount of bench/public spaces without shades or benches you cannot sleep on are legion in Europe, too.
I was surprised to find the new trainstation in a Finnish town has benches that prevent lying down on them. Apparently someone's been taking notes here 😕
You should see Madrid. Dickface, the major, has an special place in his rotten heart for hostile-to-people anything.
You can find hostile architecture in Europe as well. Especially in front of windows.
It's to ensure homeless people can't sleep somewhere.
Some insect is going to have an existential crisis finding those
Could they not have just put a lazy garden or something in instead...
That seems like a lot more work and expense
It's also not left wing architecture. It's the cross roads of a left wing housing initiative, and a right wing refusal to spend money on the public good. What you get is something akin to unsecured prison architecture.
State capitalism architecture
More right wing architecture
I bet the people in that tower complain bitterly about the 'poors' spoiling their view.
This architectural style is called, no kidding, Soviet Brutalism, and was the primary architectural style featured in the Soviet Union from the 1950s to the 1980s.
It’s a divergence from Western brutalism, focusing more on utopian and futuristic themes.
So, no, it’s not anything political. It’s a cultural thing.
Boston City Hall, for example:
The campus of the Rochester Institute of Technology, a.k.a. “Brick City”:
I would say "socialist modernism", not " soviet brutalism". Because there are a lot of examples not from ex USSR.
This is Belgrade, Serbia (ex-Yugoslavia):
Museum of Modern Arts:
Hotel "Yugoslavija":
You should check the link I posted. Honolulu has a crapton of brutalism, so I wouldn't associate it necessarily with any political movement.
I think where brutalism exists now is more a function of when an area was being developed, and it just happens that those areas underwent substantial development while brutalism was en vogue (late 50's - late 1970s).
Honolulu has a bunch of brutalism, along with a bunch of other architectural movements
https://thinktechhawaii.com/more-tropical-brutalism-humane-architecture/
I had to screen grab it, but there is actually a brutalist bhudist temple in Chinatown in Honolulu
Soviet housing either followed or was contemporary with Le Corbusier's ideas of affordable ‘habitation units’, the now-famous cookie-cutter blocks with minimal decoration. The OOP is quite correct in calling it leftist, since the purpose was to have lots of cheap housing: the USSR had huge expansion of it during the fifties-seventies, with massive migration from rural areas to cities (following the less-neat redistribution of housing, wooden barracks, and communal living in the thirties).
Can't say I like the outcome too much, because arguably same population density can be achieved with lower-rising houses, since they don't require huge areas between them to have any sunlight. Khrushchev-era districts can be much cozier than later ones, since five-storey buildings are placed closer and have trees right outside the windows.
As was aptly, stated by another commenter here:
So, again, no. This isn’t an example of left-wing architecture. This makes it an example of bad politics.
Soviet right wing refused to spend money on the public good when building millions of buildings across the country? What in the hell are you talking about?
I already gave a lesson in architectural styles. I don’t feel particularly obligated to educate you in Soviet history, nor to engage in a debate on the subject.
Indeed, it was already quite clear that you have no idea what you're speaking of.
Love me some brutalism.
It wasn't so much a "style" as what happens when you can only afford to build projects in rubles.
It actually started in France in the 1940s
It's called city planning. I don't know where this is but the commie blocks where I was born were within walking distance of shops, cafes, schools, had cheap central heating, all had children's parks and green areas between buildings, and public transport to the city center. All at dirt cheap prices since they were not built for profit, and could only be owned by people living in them or rented from the state.
People in the west never hear anything positive about communism, so...
Everyone knows what their news talk about. A few people read books, but not many.
I would not want to live under communism, but it certainly is portrayed as more crazy than it actually is.
There are zero tv shows about communist people doing normal things in life. Its pretty much a banned topic that people go out and party, watch movies, eat pizza... Same as in the west. We are not very different.
And if you travel, you see this. Its just people. But yes, the leaders are insane. In every major nation.
Right wing architecture:
Right wing architecture
Why is the background smooth behind the swastika?
Oh, snap. Got 'em.
Right wing interior design:
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcQk3VgnCvzZWTVRK8XbRBkyguWI0H8PGU72PdeIXIT3gh2PoGyhQe-4y8A&s=10
It would help if you found something less dope-looking. This pic is like 1920s New York, but with a swastika.
Coincidence?? It's pretty easy to imagine the swastika replaced with a dollar sign
True, but I can't hate old NYC architecture. That stuff was cool. In fact it's no coincidence either that last good-looking Soviet housing was during Stalin's era, as he liked New York's art-deco architecture and demanded it be used in the USSR (with Moscow State University's Ramenki campus being the most famous example).
I can think of some things
Vehicular manufacturing utopia core
Please be AI. Im overstimulated just from the still image
It isn't.
It is real, but there were some lense and perspective tricks used to make it look worse than it actually is. Not that it looks great, but not that bad
From Google Street View:
Take any exit off of almost any motorway in America and you'll be met with this.
50% chance there's a Cracker Barrel just out of frame left.
Nope, this could be literally anywhere in the US.
Nah, this picture is old. I definitely remember seeing it in the 2010-2020 era.
Pretty sure this is Breezewood, Pennsylvania.
Quiznos :( 💔
Also, it helps not to reduce image saturation to zero and have the blocks somewhat decently maintained. A bit of paint makes also a huge difference:
https://bankfoto.info/zdjecia/petrzalka-3/ (Petrzalka, Bratislava)
here's the image for other lazy bastards who don't wanna click on a website like me:
Thank you, I never click on links anymore, not worth the occasional horror
If you look at the 🌳 , the don't have leaves, indicating that the picture was taken on a cloudy autumn day. Everything looks depressing on a cloudy autumn day.
and/or desaturated to further enforce the effect...
Not the best example: Eastern-European countries tend to overcompensate and overdo the painting, making the result too noisy. Nordic cities look much better, precisely because they choose muted and coordinated colors, and usually paint the whole house instead of making patchy blobs. It so happens that khrushchyovkas are again better at it too, because they were built smaller and painted in one color, often muted orange or brown.
The bottom image is heavily tuned to have more vibrant colors. No place in real life has such strong hues. I'd suspect that place in real life looks very much like the above image
Gamla Stan is beautiful, no the colours are not as surreal and exagerated in real life but it is a colourful place also in reality.
Could be, but it's still not the patchy mess that Soviet blocks tend to be colored into. New builds in Russia are often painted those very strong hues that apparently no place has. It's horrible.
I honestly like the first one
My condolences.
Agreed, that looks pretty horrible. It's more due to the lack of any color harmony than the strong hues. There are places with strong hues that look good imo, like Burano
I did not say that I would consider those buildings in Petrzalka the height of all taste and beauty but the issue with it is not the colour of the buildings. It is the urban layout on ground level and the rundown horrendously car centric design. That is really dragging the area down. On the plus side, there is so much greenery even with all of that, that it is not looking grey there, certainly not during Spring-Autumn.
PS: Bratislava is west of Stockholm, has nothing to do with Orthodox Europe and Slovakia stopped being part of the East block almost as long ago as it was ever part of it.
It's always funny how everyone between Germany and Russia say that they're in Western Europe. Yeah keep telling that to yourself bud, Slovakia is certified Eastern Europe.
I am not Slovak, heck, I am not even with your expansive idea of "Eastern Europe" Eastern European. I also did not say that Slovaks are Western European. Calling them "Eastern European" is as ridiculous as calling them "Western European".
Tell me, is Dresden also Eastern European and how about Vienna?
Does that look like "Eastern Europe" to you?
What I wrote above: "Eastern-European countries tend to overcompensate and overdo the painting, making the result too noisy". Just like in your above pic from Slovakia. But not in this one.
No need to inform me that some Western-European countries and even the US did housing of this style, as I'm perfectly aware that it was peddled by Le Corbusier at the same time as the USSR developed its approach, likely with cross-pollination at least in the west-east direction.
Also, Dresden will remain East-European in spirit until the former East Germany stop trying to recreate GDR with their conservative voting.
You misunderstand my argument. My argument was not that Western Europe also has commie block type neighbhourhoods, my argument was that you lack to point out what it is that turned a part of Europe into "Eastern Europe" that has little in common with Moscow and much more with Vienna, just because it was forced into a geopolitic block for roughly 40 years, until almost 40 years ago.
But then, you also appear to believe that Dresden is Eastern Europe, so at least you are consistent. Could it be that you are confusing "Eastern European" with "post communist". Those two things are not the same.
Indeed I am. Because what I'm saying is that folks who got their aesthetic sense botched by decades of Soviet doctrine, don't do well at dressing up the high-rises, even though buildings of a similar kind in the Nordics do splendidly.
And, as I mentioned in the thread, one can look at Stalinist housing and Khrushchevkas for examples of Soviet-type housing that didn't need gaudy paint to look decent, because they were built at smaller sizes and with the last remainder of the sense of beauty. Russians also never bastardized the old districts in Moscow and SPb, because those had established aethetics (except for new buildings inserted here and there, which predictably look shitty for the most part).
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What's right wing architecture?
Blue tarps? But they're blue! haha, you wings are so silly with your flapping about
But seriously, have they not seen an apartment building or strip mall before? The architecture where I live is far from inspiring, it's just strip mall after strip mall for miles, then some big block office buildings. Yippee
Prisons silly.
A 300 million dollar mansion for one person. A 1.2 billion dollar prison complex for a few hundred people . Everyone else is homeless and lives under a bridge.
McMansions and parking lot deserts?
But everything gets depressing if all looks the same.
Because they think things make them extraordinary. They can't imagine the lives in those buildings being good without extraordinary things.
Ever seen the cooperate housing developments? No individuality in mcmansions coming in a cul-de-sac to your town.
Corpo housing isn't mcmansions. They're factory built homes shipped to site and dropped on locally poured foundations, sometimes with basements.
Sure, they can be decent sized, but the mcmansion is overly large and aimed at a different crowd, a crowd that's increasingly unable to afford them.
Source; I grew up in a corpo housing development from the 60s or 70s. The houses all looked identical from the outside, but had a few different floor plans, one down the street was actually two of the wrong halves put together, which meant that one of the closets didn't have a door and could only be accessed by someone crawling in through a gap near the ceiling.
Thankfully there was no HOA, so the houses quickly picked up some individuality.
That's communist dude not left, I m sure Denmark which is a socialistic country is left for you too, anyway do some traveling and stop spreading bollocks
It's not even communist. Western Propaganda really created a false impression on this term...
I don't think we really had communism yet on the world.
We've really had communism in the world.
You just don't agree that it's communism.
Reality is real, your idealistic purity is an impossibility. Deal with how things are, not how you wish them to be
We never had communism in the same way we never had a person fly by flapping their arms after jumping of a roof. It's not that we did not try, it just does not end with a flying person.
To have communism, you have to concentrate all the wealth and power in some sort of government so that people don't own "the means of production". And when you concentrate all power in the government, human nature produces some sort of dictatorship.
human nature is not an explanation, it is hand waiving. and communism is a stateless society. no one should believe anything you've said here.
there is a cure for political illiteracy.
Yes, it is handwaving, because I ain't spending time writing paragraphs of shit anyone with two brain cells to rub together can easily figure out on their own.
Just because you string words together does not mean they mean something. If people don't own/control the means of production, someone else does. Either you have private capital or a governing body. Calling it "stateless society" means nothing. That is actual handwaving of real issues.
"Just because you string words together does not mean they mean something. If people don’t own/control the means of production, someone else does. Either you have private capital or a governing body. Calling it “stateless society” means nothing. That is actual handwaving of real issues."
communism is a stateless classless moneyless society. your semantic game doesn't change the facts
So it's a fantasy where everyone magically knows what to do, how and when. Then does it with no incentive or punishment. No coordinators, police, or anything else required. Ok, clear. Now can we get back to real world ideas?
Because if there is anyone who has the ability to order people to do something and punish them for not doing it or decide distribution of incentives, that is called a government. No matter how you try to rename it or handwave it.
this is the height of bad faith, no-true-scotsman, illiterate Reddit or engagement.
"Yes, it is handwaving, because I ain’t spending time writing paragraphs of shit anyone with two brain cells to rub together can easily figure out on their own."
this also is not evidence
Disagree. You and so many others throw around the word communism as if it is a specific type, rather than a general type. Not only that, communism and capitalism as not mutually exclusive. We have communism in capitalist societies and there was capitalism inside the USSR's communism.
We have fully functioning communes within the USA. Those are communists living happily inside a communist community, with communist leadership, and communist ideals, all as a sub community within normal American cities. And it is successful.
The US has communism/socialism even within its own government. We have communist firefighters. There was a time all fire brigades were private and sold memberships and private insurance. It was communism that made it a public service. Even the socialist healthcare in the military was not always that way. Up until the Civil War it was private healthcare and the medics were for the battlefield only. All after care was out of pocket. Even for a time after the Civil War large amounts were not covered by the military.
And even looking at the previous poster's comment about not seeing true communism- that is a category- are they referring to Lennonist communism? Maoist? Marxist? It's like saying all capitalist governments are the same, as if the EU and the US, and Nigeria are all the same types of government.
If you consider firefighters communist, you have extremely weird (broad) definition of communism.
PS: Also, in the context of
arguing about broad definition of the word when we are clearly talking about a very narrow definition just muddles and confuses the discussion.
Leftwing architecture is mixed-use, walkable neighbourhoods and community centers built with artistry in mind. It’s beatiful decor to old buildings that feel lived in. It’s parks and bus stops and bike lanes.
Rightwing architecture is a functionally dead grass lawn and a house so perfect that it feels not only dead, but oppressive. It’s replacing a slightly ugly group of three or four stores with a chain restaurant and a parking that generates less tax revenue for the city than the “shitty” stores did. It’s the old, dilapidated neighbourhood that’s falling apart because the city is too busy spending everyone’s tax money subsidizing the rich neighbourhood, then taking photos of only it and claiming that it’s better. No sidewalks, no nature, no way to get around without a car and nothing to do once you have one except a 45min commute in traffic to get to work.
Just needs a little bit of paint.
Leaded paint no doubt.
I love this kind of thread. It always attracts some guy who finds it necessary to point out that in the USSR people had to endure the absolute horrors of having roommates. I think I saw him phrase it as them having "survived" roommates once.
The blocks were built en masse with the exact purpose of escaping communal living that proliferated during rapid urbanization of the 1930s, so that connection is quite a stretch.
I mean, roommates are definitely a form of horror. For every well adjusted person out there, several exist that never learned to clean up after themselves or think of how what they do impacts another person.
Hell, there are a lot of people who actually take delight in the suffering of others. Imagine trying to convince your roommate to do the dishes more than once a month and they're laughing at you.
Its not the roommates that bothers me it is the listening devices and constantly playing propaganda that is illegal to turn off, or forced "vacations" in labor camps for disagreeing with government decisions.
Sure. But that makes it all the funnier when someone voluntarily chooses to focus on the roommates to criticize the USSR.
↖ Person unable to tell that '1984' is fiction.
Or someone who knows what happens in places like the PRK, China, US, and other surveilance intensive states.
When I visited Berlin, I heard a theory that these Soviet era units were why the cost of living was still accessible to creative-types so a big part of why the city is culturally thriving.
I upvote this every time it gets reposted.
But mom, it was supposed to be my turn to post this this week.
Khrushchyovkas are actually different from what is typically known as Soviet blocks, because they were built up to five stories high and thus didn't require large empty areas between them for sunlight to reach the lower floors. So the houses are placed closer together, with cozier yards and often plenty of trees right outside the windows. Living in that feels quite different from high-rises.
I don't see a problem? State funded infrastructure has a place and purpose in our society. It's built for function over form. Wonderful architecture is incredibly expensive and amounts to mostly fluff. If you would try to build civic infrastructure focusing on pomp and grandeur over functionality, you would not last long in the public sphere.
Yes, but as much as we all like the Brutalism style, would the cost difference really not be worth it for Art Deco or anything a bit more psychologically welcoming or uplifting combined with generous green spacing and walkability.
Yes it would be worth it. But is that money also available? Or do you have the breathing room to build less for the same money, or wait for that money to become available?
Actually, I like these building that look like they are from early 3D games
The structure of this roof cap is exactly like the kind of telemetry tracker that NASA uses to identify dead pulsars in deep space. Cold-riveted girders...with cores of pure selenium.
One of my favourite Russian youtubers on what it's like growing up in these places:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1u7XZ9c8fI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhq1fEXKyos
This MF has never seen Vienna. A concrete block that everyone loves and it builds community?
It looks awesome
Yay. More politics in my shitposts
Left wing ideals implemented by greedy self serving capitalists is more like it.
Search
public housing projects america. You'll find similar photographs.Homelessness is definitely more depressing. That's not even comparable.
But apartment blocks like that are also really, really depressing. Humans are not built for living in a crammed cage of a building.
Built? By whom?
The issue with soviet blocks was not the density. The actual design was brilliant as each of these blocks had all conveniences like schools and shops within reach.
The issue as with most soviet union is corruption and management incompetence. They took one design and applied to 15% of world's land mass. So the house in deep Siberia and coast of warm Azerbaijan were the almost the same. To add society was so broken than no one actually cared for the vision these houses had. This is entirely system failure not a design one.
People live just fine in close quarters - just take a look at Japan.
I live in one now, lightyears better one, I might add, and it's tolerable at best. It's small, stressful, and makes you feel like a chicken in a cage.
Multiple stores, metro station, park.. we even have a gym that's basically free in our complex.
Still depressing.
I'd love to live in an apartment block like that. Different strokes for different folks, you know?
Oh well. I live in one now, pretty good one, definitely better than soviet ones, but it's pretty depressing. Even more depressing that there's really no other option.
I see absolutely nothing depressing about them. I would even love to live there.
The Soviet Union had higher rates of homeless than the US both back in the 80s and today. Not to mention that commie blocks were notoriously poorly built and maintained. Soviet architecture just isn't good.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, every single ex soviet state in Europe (outside of Russia and Belarus) went on a spree to "decommunize" their architecture because it's so soulless and terrible, and they're better off for it.
It's annoying when this shitty propaganda post gets spammed on here every other day with the same misinformation and misconceptions being spread every damn time.
Their homelessness did skyrocket after the USSR dissolved though. So saying "they're better off for it" kind of depends on what you value more, pretty buildings or housing people.
The homeless were always there, the Soviet Union intentionally didn't count them. The ex Soviet states did genuine counts which revealed the actual rates
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Russia
Unless the USSR set aside some funds to have wikipedia run propaganda for them in the future, it seems that you're wrong.
The article doesn't contradict what I said. The Soviet Union intentionally refused to count their homeless population because the state pretended that it didn't exist. The real numbers showed up only after the communist regime fell because the ex Soviet states started counting. Academic studies have shown that the Soviet Union in the 1980s not only had homelessness, but they had it at a rate that was higherthan what the US had at that time.
Yes it does, read it again. It claims homelessness, not recorded, not perceived, not logged, but real actual homelessness went up for reasons other than "when communism fell, the government was replaced by beautiful honest angels who would never tell a lie about their own performance", namely something along the lines of the housing market being privatized and folks selling homes without being able to purchase a new one.
I'm not disputing this. I did have a similar conversation with someone about this earlier, who claimed something similar, and initially the "academic studies" they referred to were a listicle and an article written by someone from an institute whose mission statement was sth like "we're here to write propaganda against communism". I think eventually they found something that could more reasonably be called academic sources, but I'm curious what you're referring to here.
Soviet blocks from the fifties-eighties are standing just fine, so you should probably check your own propaganda.
Reality is propaganda to you. Commie blocks were infamous inside the USSR and outside of it that they were poorly designed, built, and maintained. There's a reason why all the ex Soviet states ran campaigns to replace them.
Left leaning people live in gated communities of urban sprawl when they get rich enough, just look at SanFrancisco.
Everyone becomes a nimby when their traffic may get worse or a shadow might block their sun, this is human nature irrespective of left/right.
"Human nature" is where material conditions intersects with cultural conditioning. "Left leaning" doesn't mean anything in America, especially when the cultural underpinning of the society is consumerism and the acquisition of wealth.
homelessness has many causes but can be survivable and relatively more enjoyable than living in a hell hole poorly designed, maintaned and serviced high density clusterfuck
commie architecture fucking suuuuucks
Tell me you've never been homeless without telling me you've never been homeless