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I recently moved to a German city that, whenever I mention it, is described as “ooh it’s such a beautiful city!” because it wasn’t bombed to shreds in the war and a lot of buildings are from 1900ish and older.
Honestly I would rather prefer to live in a building like the post. The apartments often are cut more efficiently and fit better for a family. Yeah, the outside isn’t as appealing as around here but I don’t live on the outside of my house, I live inside of it, so I barely care about its outsides. The other side effect of eastern blocks is that the density per square km is amazingly high. This also leads to supermarkets etc being everywhere. (I am, of course, making generalizations here.)
Of course I need to say that the energy efficiency in old eastern block houses is also awful.
But I don’t want to bash the 1900s houses too much. At least they have 4-5 levels. That’s still better than single family homes in the middle of a city (talking about you, pipe smoking guy in the middle of Sendling).
Of course I need to say that the energy efficiency in old eastern block houses is also awful.
It usually can be improved with additional insulation.
We live in a house from 1900 and thanks to a lot of work our apartment has the energy efficiency grade A to B. We will also get a heat pump in the next few years. We have PV on the roof (I’m not sure what for right now), our windows are triple glassed and we have two heat exchangers thingy that sucks air from the outside and pushes inside air out. A couple of months ago they also insulated the roof of the basement better.
We are very lucky that the owner is behind all these works. Most aren’t, but it is to show that you’re absolutely right and how much can be done and improved. (However, I still don’t like the cut of the apartment or not having an elevator/barrier free access to the basement. And the bugs.)
Painting the outside different colors would help the appeal of the buildings, at the cost of whatever thermal efficiency the color white provides
It calls for murals!
And mosaics
Fuck yeah!
If you think about it - such a big building is a great gigantic canvas. Like yeah, all these buildings in my city look nice from rather close with some details, but come on - a mosaic like that just rocks.
I’d stay in a kruschevski tbh but I’m also weird and find them fascinating
They are a great affordable housing and the blocks are designed for people to have everything close buy. Beats American style suburb 8/10 times IMHO
They are actually based on some Danish designs adapted to USSRs standards.
It’s like they were build for the benefit of the people.
Beats American style suburb 8/10 times IMHO
Only if you’re lucky enough to live in one of the few well-maintained ones. At least in Russia, many are falling apart with loose handrails, water damage, sketchy elevators and mold.
That’s a problem with any building though.
Any building that isn’t maintained you mean.
Not only in Russia. Lived in one. Cockroach problem was constant. But overall, if you modernize them, they are great.
Good ideas marred by a flawed execution.
That’s because Russian regime is even more retarded then what we got in the US…
Although looking at Florida condos… Maybe not lol
Snark a side… the issue is maintenance not the design
the issue is maintenance not the design
Oh yeah absolutely, not denying that.
There was an architect, Le Corbusier. He was a socialist, so his projects of future cities involved a lot of public spaces where people spend their free and working time, while a person’s home was just a small area for sleeping and eating breakfast. The Soviets took the idea of small personal homes, and dropped the “nice public areas” part.
- It’s cold in the winter because the walls are quite thin
- You can hear your neighbours loudly speaking
- I was lucky to have a normal-sized room in a later “Brezhnevka” house, but many of my classmates had rooms (if they had a separate room at all) where you had a bed, a cupboard+desk combo, and a chair in the middle, that you have to remove to get to the window. Japan-sized stuff.
Speaking of Le Corbusier, as his main (I know, that’s subjective) achievement was a technical approach to ergonomics - all sizes in his projects were based on human sizes and proportions. Meaning that a height of a ceiling is a height of an average adult man raising his hands, + some space. It worked, and it’s cost-effective, but you really like some extra space, and have more than 3 sq.m. toilet.
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Oh god I already feel claustrophobic knowing everything in that tiny space would be made for people half a foot shorter than me, it’d be living in that fucking RV all over again
If you’re tall, then yes, it won’t be pleasurable as well. Especially sad because houses of earlier Stalin period were awesome. It doesn’t make Stalin any better, and he wasn’t solving the problem of overpopulation by building houses (sad joke), but the houses from tgat period are well built, have high ceilings, thick walls, sometimes nice things like second entrances and garbage chutes, etc. This was connected with the industrial and economical boom after the war (so, generally the same stuff that happened in the us, only in the us people got a bigger piece of pie).
I converted the heights for you:- Khruschevka ceiling: 2,5m, 8,2ft
- Stalinka ceilings - 3-4m, 9,8-13.1ft
Especially sad because houses of earlier Stalin period were awesome
There is nothing to be sad because houses of earlier Stalin period were not for people, but for nomenclature.
There’s a shitton of nice buildings, I’m not telling about Moscow towers only
Each city had them but as guy above said, they were for the party members and you had to be decently well ranked to get a stalin style apartment. they were deff luxury.
All fair criticism and that’s why I prefer to have 600k visiable homeless in the US with likely another 1 million living in their cars.
SInce you knew all of this would also know All of this is fixable with modern technique and extra investment.
You would also know that north American style construction with shiti wood frame for both houses and apts are a lot worse for noise . Furthermore they only gotten properly insulated for in the 1990s so all the stock prior to that is beyond inefficient.
Literally boomer 2mmilion mcmension and you still hear guy walking upstairs…
Like wtf y’all paying for
Oh yes, I’ve heard of (but haven’t experienced myself) a low quality of a “standard” us house, but personally I really value the amount of space over many things. When the covid started, we rented a shitty thin-walled summerhouse to get out of the 5M city and keep some freedom of movement. And it was so awesome I didn’t care how much firewood we burned, or how I could hear the kids through 2 walls. Because I could step out of the door and still stay within “my territory”, my place. And in most of small apartments, not just the soviet ones, you feel trapped in those 2 or 3 concrete boxes you call home.
And if you build a house for yourself, you have a chance to make use of all the modern technologies, and some things are not that much more expensive - I know because I did plan to do it, and I even have a giant excel file with calculations and choices made. Never happened because we moved to another country.There is value in space and you get means it, any no thing.
We sure as fuck don’t have a shortage of luxury inventory lol
But sound proofing us style construction is nearly impossible is my understanding due to structural studs running across floors and passing sound and concrete structures are not economical. Not sure how true this is though.
Isn’t that China? (/j)
I’ve seen buildings in Iceland that look like this.
These buildings have appeared in countless different places. I guess no one’s seeing any humor in it…
These buildings have appeared in countless different places. I guess no one’s seeing any humor in it…
So generic, I’m pretty sure reverse image search is bringing up buildings from Asia, Europe, South America…
I’m sure you’re right. Apparently no one else saw the humor in it…
The one time copypasting a bunch of building was actually a good idea
Y’all be making fun of this, not realizing that you don’t hear about a housing crisis in Eastern Europe
The crisis is having to live in these rabbit hutches for humans.
Factory farming human misery and suffering is what these are.
And how exactly is that different than one of the same 5 apartment buildings that are being built in every single city in the US?
They’re both shit mate.
Eh, they’re okay
Much better than being on the street and you’re kinda exaggerating how shitty they are.
I lived in one long enough.
You’re underestimating how shitty living in one of those feels.
The bush in the local park was right there brother
Full of used needles and dog shit. Feel free to touch it.
But I thought it was better than a block
There’s a reason anyone with a little bit of wealth on their hands get the fuck out of these asap. Nobody lives in these on their own will.
That’s a pretty bad argument if you’re making a case for these buildings. “It’s better than the streets”. What’s next? “Water and bread are better than being hungry”? I think we should cross a line somewhere.
Of course living in the streets is worse than any house, but it should never be the baseline. I’m not making a case against those buildings, just your arguments is shit.
And yet there definitely is one. These are still capitalist economies after all.
Maybe once they run out of apartment buildings, but that’s not gonna happen any time soon.
They already have. Here in poland the commie-block apartments are bought and sold on the free market and a lot of them are kept empty as an investment while people have nowhere to live.
These problems exist everywhere where there is capitalism, no matter what infrastructure was already built there before.
I don’t know the details of the situation in Poland, but Poland does have an 87% home ownership rate.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_ownership_rate
It’s over here in North America too. Houses are unaffordable almost everywhere you go.
Woo the capitalistic hellscape we always wanted
Lucky you if you haven’t heard of it.
Same development firm got the contract?
Rather there was just one development firm, run by the state, mass producing the walls for these buildings to be assembled on site
It’s like they were built fast, cheaply and durable.
Pretty much that happened.
The best fucking joke is that those buildings and neighborhoods despite being absolute piss poor quality are waaay nicer, roomier and greener than what capitalist development corpos build these days. So yeah, free market for the win i guess.
No they’re not lol
At least where I live new developments are crammed so you can see directly into the windows of your neighbors, there are fences between every fucking building and the only outside there is, is a parking lot.
You have to walk through concrete plazas 15 minutes to get to a convenience store because its impossible for you to take a shortcut through another buildings parking lot, no, no. You sit in your own fucking designated area.
Meanwhile commieblocks are spaced apart with trees between them, there is no fence in sight and catch this: they made openings in the longest buildings so you can walk a shorter route wherever you’re going.
Meanwhile commieblocks are spaced apart with trees between them, there is no fence in sight
Man, I really hate current infencetation.
Meanwhile soviet city building book:
- Trees
- More trees
- See 2
- Each district has everything
- Each microdistrict has at least something like school, polyclinic or kindergarden
- There are no bad houses
and catch this: they made openings in the longest buildings so you can walk a shorter route wherever you’re going.
True. I couldn’t find photos of them on the internets, so if you want, I can walk tomorrow and take some photos. Or you somehow find them and post for lemmy to see.
Many also have quite a lot of social areas, shopping places and good public transportation. If they are well maintained, they are far superior to the space wasting, infraatructure hungry, climate destroying sprawling suburbs of several western countries.
Seconded. When walking around my 60s neighbourhood in Poland I can clearly see that someone sat down and planned how the neighbourhood is going to look, i.e. where there will be a store, where a kindergarten and where a school. Not to mention a huge swath of lawn with playgrounds in the middle of the buildings for the ultimate flex.
Opposite of “ok we’ll sell the land and the free market will figure it out”.
Quality is actually not bad. Like yea, they usually don’t have modern wiring but since the construction materials used are insanely durable and thick renovating those buildings with new windows, heating, pipes and wires gets you like the best possible apartment. You will never hear your neighbours, winters are warm with minimal heating and that building will last for like centuries with minimal maintenance.
Source: Lived in one and renovated it too.
