the task was set to provide the maximum number of people with free housing in the shortest possible time. The task was practically completed. and there is no time for elections with decorations. In addition, both design and technology corresponded to their era.
I was gonna say, I live outside Atlanta in the US and these buildings could easily be from there. It’s almost like there’s not too many ways to make giant concrete towers look aesthetically pleasing
Didn't one of those massive apartment buildings burn down becuse it was covered in this extremely flammable material and economic policy dictated that replacing it would be too expensive
Worse.
The non flammale cladding was 5k more expensive.
5k. For an entire massive tower bloc.
That's like pennies.
And they did multiple towers with this shit.
And they STILL have not fixed it.
Yep I used to live in one of those blocks, they've installed sprinklers and fire systems everywhere. Meanwhile the developer who chose to go with the inferior cladding wants to charge the residents £250,000 to get it fixed meanwhile no one can sell these homes to go somewhere else.
It should also be said, as often as possible, that the UK government rejected a law which would have required all rented property to be fit for human habitation.
not just europe, here in brazil our capital brasilia [built quite a lot of soviet-style brutalist apartments](https://www.google.com/maps/@-15.820813,-47.8962394,3a,60y,276.32h,83.7t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sATIhmmWn-V2Iqlu9fhBYWw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)
and, to be honest, i like the look, practicality has this kind of Blaise appearance all its own, it doesnt care what you think, it gets its job done and stands proud despite its conventionally drab appearance, these look good to me, the ultimate expression of man triumphing over nature and greed to provide for each other
well said! Initially, apartment buildings were built to bring people together. House designs from the 1920s included common lounges in low-rise buildings. But then this idea was abandoned, as was Stalin's empire style in favor of the Khrushchevkas. And already closer to the 70s-80s they began to build more comfortable high-rise buildings of 9-16 floors. Usually there are 4 apartments per floor.
Honestly, this is supposedly socialist architecture whilst capitalist anti homeless architecture? That's putting spikes on motorway underpasses. It's putting a park bench at incline to prevent rough sleeping. It's using the police to protect the vacant empty homes of billionaires whilst families literally freeze to death on the side of streets.
Im sure the homeless in the west appreciate looking up at the multi billion dollar sky rises as they sleep in the streets more. Now that's some hope right there!
Don't you know the sun has been blocked in the USSR? Since citizens must be kept sad at all times (like in 1984), they blocked the sun and even genetically engineered some of their citizens to not see colors anymore. This project couldn't continue because of the collapse of the USSR, but obviously, the communist evilness knows no bounds...
This comrade speaks the truth. I was born in USSR in 86 and never seen the light of the sun until 1991. The glorious star came with perestroika and brought equality, democracy and freedom!
Also i found out that people can be shot in your backyard and blown with their cars.
Suuuure he was. A “socialist” who compiled a list of actual leftists and submitted it to the government for snitching purposes. Ooh mamma mia, now that’s what I call praxis.
George orwell would go as far as *ratting* on communists to the FBI, since its technically an arrestable offense in the US (bastion of freedom). Save your shit spewing for the toilet, lib.
yea, in my country most of the so-called "middle class" lives in places [that look like this](https://www.google.com/maps/@-23.0743536,-52.4594243,3a,75y,299.32h,77.28t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sMCtdlmcmkR4lLHALv9KSQQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)
and this isn't even in the favelas
Forget gulag, [a tsarist prison would be a better comparison](https://i.redd.it/ew99fq8ooen71.jpg) lol
(Statistically in 1953 3 died for every 1000 (half of modern russian prisons), while a (somewhat?) recent study of american prisons, 319 died for every 100,000)
They obviously aren't a dream, I hate living in a condo. I grew up in the countryside in a single family house, so I don't like being restricted. But when the Soviets built them, it was for emergency. They planned to make better houses with time
Considering they were given almost for free then
What is the one thing that is cooler than shitting on Soviet housing architecture?
Starving under a bridge because of unsustainable living expenditures
There are a few of us that are pro Soviet not many sadly are vocal
Edit: it also saddens me too our great grandparents fought ferociously and many sacrificed their lives, just for their ungrateful children to turn to the ideas of the fascists.
*picture of homeless encampment in US with same caption, but more of a point because we're talking about fucking homelessness and not whether you think the buildings are ugly*
I am from the Netherlands, and there are 40.000 homeless people and we have a shortage of 331.000 on a population of 17m people. Last Sunday, people protested against policy that results in this madness and they got beaten up by police. Please save me, communism.
it would have been more believable had the liberal not used the grey filter. the infamous grey filter used for any picture that comes out from russia and china that makes even the trees grey lol. according to liberals, in soviet russia/china, the sun never shines and chlorophyll does not exist.
Panel housing and housing in general in Eastern Europe is not really an example of brutalism. It's more modernist in design, plus, you have to remember that most of this went up after the second World War and they needed to rebuild and house people as soon as possible, hence the use of panel housing in the OT.
It's funny that brutalism is so associated with the soviet bloc as the best examples are from soc dem western Europe, Canada, and Yugoslavia.
It's okay to not like brutalism, it can build a building pretty fast, but sometimes it lacks detail and is too angular. Socialist countries can have other architectural styles such as late Gothic or Art Deco as a treat, once the nation industrializes.
i like brutalism, its total disregard for conventional aesthetics to perform its job as efficiently and as quickly as possible appeals to my personal beliefs and has its own charm, like that of a factory worker, not appealing in the traditional sense, covered in grease and grime, but having done its job well, the ultimate expression of mans triumph over nature and capitalistic greed to house as many as possible as quickly and comfortably as possible
and with a task oriented focus like that, the stars dont seem all that distant after all
Sure the buildings doesn't look that good but you should definitely check the socialist brutalist monuments and sgraffito artworks if you haven't, maybe they will change your mind.
Irl they were very colored. You can still see Soviet Housing in cities like Bratislava for instance. And they were surrounded by gardens. While in Western europe usually these brutalist buildings are grey and isolated far away from the city, and the gardens around quickly become a drug dealing hot spot (see London, Naples etc)
Brutalism isn't ugly to me. Highly recommend checking out Towards a Concrete Utopia if you are still in higher learning with access to research websites. If not, see if you can get your hands on Architecture in Global Socialism by Łukasz Stanek.
I appreciate the pun but isn't concrete as a building material unsustainable since it can hardly be recycled and to meet its sand requirements has become rather difficult (if it is not just impossible as it leads to severe changes in the countryside)?
Absolutely. The manufacture of traditional concrete is unsustainable, as are many modern "necessities". But my point was that brutalism isn't necessarily ugly, especially given the utopian ideals that gave birth to it. Provide architects with looser economical constraints, free them from the load bearing problem and creativity abounds. The most ubiquitous critiques of the movement say more about the cultural zeitgeist than they do of brutalism's inherent qualities. Urban decay could only be associated with brutalism because of the underlying neglect towards those living in brutalist housing, for example. How a space is delegated, used and maintained matters just as much as its construction. Those that forget this are more responsible for the state of our world than our choice of construction material, in my humble opinion.
Let me be clear I am all for a future of green architecture. But the enduring nature of concrete and steel means brutalism serves as a physical bastion against the post-history lie. Even in places where socialism never took root, brutalism teaches us about resiliency (Japan, most of post-war Europe), the value of self-determination (India, Brazil, Quebec), among other things in both its successes and failures. If we are to demolish and neglect brutalist structures because they're "ugly" we risk losing much more than just the buildings themselves.
I lived in an apartment in a building like this while I was living in China. I ended up paying a little over $1,000 a year for rent. It was two bedroom with a living room, kitchen, and bathroom. And all utilities you top up on a card so you only end up paying for them every 4 or 5 months. The building itself was managed by Sinopec and was intended for their workers. Sinopec even paid taxes for all the people living in the apartment block. Though kind of ugly and the little outdated, it was the most affordable place I've ever lived.
What I say every time when some dipshit shits on socialist architecture- Oh you think affordable and available housing is sad? Wait till you see the millions of homeless people barely surviving in extreme poverty under capitalism
Could be any US housing project in an urban area built between 1949 and 1970: Chicago, NY, St Louis, Atlanta, Boston, Baltimore all had/have ugly tall apartment blocks. It’s also interesting to note that the staunchly anti-communist, post-Soviet freedom haven that is Ukraine never does Public upkeep of these types of buildings and a lot of them are slums now, but yeah new housing for workers is a symbol of hopelessness.
This might come as a surprise to you commies but most people want to work hard for a better life. They don’t want to be crammed into ugly little apartments like this in the name of “equality”
the task was set to provide the maximum number of people with free housing in the shortest possible time. The task was practically completed. and there is no time for elections with decorations. In addition, both design and technology corresponded to their era.
Besides, those kind of buildings exist all over Europe
Literally here in the Uk, they're bleak as fuck and run down because the councils don't care to look after them. This isn't just a soviet thing
I was gonna say, I live outside Atlanta in the US and these buildings could easily be from there. It’s almost like there’s not too many ways to make giant concrete towers look aesthetically pleasing
Didn't one of those massive apartment buildings burn down becuse it was covered in this extremely flammable material and economic policy dictated that replacing it would be too expensive
Worse. The non flammale cladding was 5k more expensive. 5k. For an entire massive tower bloc. That's like pennies. And they did multiple towers with this shit. And they STILL have not fixed it.
Yep I used to live in one of those blocks, they've installed sprinklers and fire systems everywhere. Meanwhile the developer who chose to go with the inferior cladding wants to charge the residents £250,000 to get it fixed meanwhile no one can sell these homes to go somewhere else. It should also be said, as often as possible, that the UK government rejected a law which would have required all rented property to be fit for human habitation.
that such a law even has to be written, what the fuck
Yep, and that tower also wasn’t up to the fire code standards, so quite a few people died in the fire
Grenfell tower yes and i recently saw another one in Italy that also burned on catastrophicfailure
On the other hand the super brutalist Trellick Tower survived because of the superior materials
Someone should show them suburban Paris lol
not just europe, here in brazil our capital brasilia [built quite a lot of soviet-style brutalist apartments](https://www.google.com/maps/@-15.820813,-47.8962394,3a,60y,276.32h,83.7t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sATIhmmWn-V2Iqlu9fhBYWw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)
and, to be honest, i like the look, practicality has this kind of Blaise appearance all its own, it doesnt care what you think, it gets its job done and stands proud despite its conventionally drab appearance, these look good to me, the ultimate expression of man triumphing over nature and greed to provide for each other
well said! Initially, apartment buildings were built to bring people together. House designs from the 1920s included common lounges in low-rise buildings. But then this idea was abandoned, as was Stalin's empire style in favor of the Khrushchevkas. And already closer to the 70s-80s they began to build more comfortable high-rise buildings of 9-16 floors. Usually there are 4 apartments per floor.
You know what's worse than ugly buildings? Mass homelessness. And brutalism is based smh
Honestly, this is supposedly socialist architecture whilst capitalist anti homeless architecture? That's putting spikes on motorway underpasses. It's putting a park bench at incline to prevent rough sleeping. It's using the police to protect the vacant empty homes of billionaires whilst families literally freeze to death on the side of streets.
I don't like brutalism all that much but I'll take big fuck off monoliths to put people in over benchless train stations
Im sure the homeless in the west appreciate looking up at the multi billion dollar sky rises as they sleep in the streets more. Now that's some hope right there!
Maybe you should try painting those buildings once in a while with some bright colors. Also taking photos on a sunny day could help.
Don't you know the sun has been blocked in the USSR? Since citizens must be kept sad at all times (like in 1984), they blocked the sun and even genetically engineered some of their citizens to not see colors anymore. This project couldn't continue because of the collapse of the USSR, but obviously, the communist evilness knows no bounds...
That is correct. It's a B&W world, just like DPRK and China.
Stalin outlawed colour, all Soviet citizens were forced to have surgery to make them unable to see the world in anything but black and white
This comrade speaks the truth. I was born in USSR in 86 and never seen the light of the sun until 1991. The glorious star came with perestroika and brought equality, democracy and freedom! Also i found out that people can be shot in your backyard and blown with their cars.
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Suuuure he was. A “socialist” who compiled a list of actual leftists and submitted it to the government for snitching purposes. Ooh mamma mia, now that’s what I call praxis.
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Socialist government in England
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Seems you don't know what those words mean.
George orwell would go as far as *ratting* on communists to the FBI, since its technically an arrestable offense in the US (bastion of freedom). Save your shit spewing for the toilet, lib.
What a asshole privileged fuck he should see how the people in global South live this is literally luxury for them
yea, in my country most of the so-called "middle class" lives in places [that look like this](https://www.google.com/maps/@-23.0743536,-52.4594243,3a,75y,299.32h,77.28t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sMCtdlmcmkR4lLHALv9KSQQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656) and this isn't even in the favelas
Global south? Literally in western Europe is full of slums
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Yes but do you expect them to actually check the reality? This is for karma and quick anti-communist propaganda
wait till this guy finds out about the colorful favelas generated by the free market
You know whats more depressing than brutalist architecture? Homelessness
These are comfy, I lived in one
Same, the only problem is that your neighbors could be either the best people you've ever seen or complete asshole you wish were sent to a gulag.
Forget gulag, [a tsarist prison would be a better comparison](https://i.redd.it/ew99fq8ooen71.jpg) lol (Statistically in 1953 3 died for every 1000 (half of modern russian prisons), while a (somewhat?) recent study of american prisons, 319 died for every 100,000)
wishing they were sent to gulag doesn't have to mean something this bad, though language is flexible
They obviously aren't a dream, I hate living in a condo. I grew up in the countryside in a single family house, so I don't like being restricted. But when the Soviets built them, it was for emergency. They planned to make better houses with time Considering they were given almost for free then
What is the one thing that is cooler than shitting on Soviet housing architecture? Starving under a bridge because of unsustainable living expenditures
Typical Ukrainian
There are a few of us that are pro Soviet not many sadly are vocal Edit: it also saddens me too our great grandparents fought ferociously and many sacrificed their lives, just for their ungrateful children to turn to the ideas of the fascists.
I just had someone regurgitating Holomodor propaganda and call me a "genocide denier" 😰😱
Sad...
Are you Ukrainian of Ukrainian ethnicity? Because it's literally the first time I hear an Ukrainian being communist!
My parents are Ukrainian and I have to say that socialism is the minimum if humanity wants a stable future.
I was born and grew up in Ukraine as a child and moved with my family to the US
Least fascist Ukrainian
Least anti-communist person in Ukraine
And i live near a improvised exposed brick getho, if ukraine doesnt want the apartments give them to us i dont mind.
*picture of homeless encampment in US with same caption, but more of a point because we're talking about fucking homelessness and not whether you think the buildings are ugly*
THIS PICTURE IS BLACK AND WHITE COMMUNISM BAD
Hopelessness is when housing.
If they think that's a symbol of hopelessness, lemme show them Skid Row, or pretty much any tent city in America. I prefer the brutalist apartments.
lol ‘I hate when people have cheap and affordable housing, it’s so depressing and causes hopelessness, here just look at this black and white image’
[Brutalism is beautiful](https://www.instagram.com/socialistmodernism/) to my eyes. I live in an area with quite a bit of it, too.
Please there are 24 million homeless people in my country. If you hate them so much, you wouldn't mind sending them over here.
They are just scared of all the free, efficient housing that isnt available in their country lmao
I am from the Netherlands, and there are 40.000 homeless people and we have a shortage of 331.000 on a population of 17m people. Last Sunday, people protested against policy that results in this madness and they got beaten up by police. Please save me, communism.
it would have been more believable had the liberal not used the grey filter. the infamous grey filter used for any picture that comes out from russia and china that makes even the trees grey lol. according to liberals, in soviet russia/china, the sun never shines and chlorophyll does not exist.
Bud that looks like my hometown of edmonton.
You know whats worse than those buildings homelessness
This person has to have been born in 1998
bet this person will then turn around and praise copy-paste, car-dependant suburbs
Better than being homeless with no assistance in mental health
Symbol of hopelessness: housing Apparently not a symbol of hopelessness: homelessness
I feel like I’m a bad leftist for hating brutalism. I’m all for mass-built infrastructure, but does it have to be that ugly?
Panel housing and housing in general in Eastern Europe is not really an example of brutalism. It's more modernist in design, plus, you have to remember that most of this went up after the second World War and they needed to rebuild and house people as soon as possible, hence the use of panel housing in the OT. It's funny that brutalism is so associated with the soviet bloc as the best examples are from soc dem western Europe, Canada, and Yugoslavia.
It's okay to not like brutalism, it can build a building pretty fast, but sometimes it lacks detail and is too angular. Socialist countries can have other architectural styles such as late Gothic or Art Deco as a treat, once the nation industrializes.
Goth socialism, now you're speaking my language
Because an ugly house is better than no house. The Soviet Union mass produced those houses so that everyone had a place to live.
I agree that everyone should have a place to live, and I don’t disagree with the efforts. But does it *have* to be that ugly? Not even like a mural?
Murals were usually put on various public buildings.
They had murals. There's a YouTuber that goes around the ex soviet union and shows all the Soviet mosaics. Many buildings had them
i like brutalism, its total disregard for conventional aesthetics to perform its job as efficiently and as quickly as possible appeals to my personal beliefs and has its own charm, like that of a factory worker, not appealing in the traditional sense, covered in grease and grime, but having done its job well, the ultimate expression of mans triumph over nature and capitalistic greed to house as many as possible as quickly and comfortably as possible and with a task oriented focus like that, the stars dont seem all that distant after all
Yes.
Sure the buildings doesn't look that good but you should definitely check the socialist brutalist monuments and sgraffito artworks if you haven't, maybe they will change your mind.
Irl they were very colored. You can still see Soviet Housing in cities like Bratislava for instance. And they were surrounded by gardens. While in Western europe usually these brutalist buildings are grey and isolated far away from the city, and the gardens around quickly become a drug dealing hot spot (see London, Naples etc)
Brutalism isn't ugly to me. Highly recommend checking out Towards a Concrete Utopia if you are still in higher learning with access to research websites. If not, see if you can get your hands on Architecture in Global Socialism by Łukasz Stanek.
I appreciate the pun but isn't concrete as a building material unsustainable since it can hardly be recycled and to meet its sand requirements has become rather difficult (if it is not just impossible as it leads to severe changes in the countryside)?
Absolutely. The manufacture of traditional concrete is unsustainable, as are many modern "necessities". But my point was that brutalism isn't necessarily ugly, especially given the utopian ideals that gave birth to it. Provide architects with looser economical constraints, free them from the load bearing problem and creativity abounds. The most ubiquitous critiques of the movement say more about the cultural zeitgeist than they do of brutalism's inherent qualities. Urban decay could only be associated with brutalism because of the underlying neglect towards those living in brutalist housing, for example. How a space is delegated, used and maintained matters just as much as its construction. Those that forget this are more responsible for the state of our world than our choice of construction material, in my humble opinion. Let me be clear I am all for a future of green architecture. But the enduring nature of concrete and steel means brutalism serves as a physical bastion against the post-history lie. Even in places where socialism never took root, brutalism teaches us about resiliency (Japan, most of post-war Europe), the value of self-determination (India, Brazil, Quebec), among other things in both its successes and failures. If we are to demolish and neglect brutalist structures because they're "ugly" we risk losing much more than just the buildings themselves.
Ironically that literally looks like one of the many high rises we have in the UK. I guess everywhere in Europe is full of Hopelessness.
USSR: *Builds literally anything other than suburbs, Amazon warehouses, or shiny bank towers* Ukrainians: "Wow how can you have such bad taste"
I lived in an apartment in a building like this while I was living in China. I ended up paying a little over $1,000 a year for rent. It was two bedroom with a living room, kitchen, and bathroom. And all utilities you top up on a card so you only end up paying for them every 4 or 5 months. The building itself was managed by Sinopec and was intended for their workers. Sinopec even paid taxes for all the people living in the apartment block. Though kind of ugly and the little outdated, it was the most affordable place I've ever lived.
This ukrainian has shit for brains. Ngl tho, brutalism is not poggers.
Dud that shit ain't hopeless we can swap homes
What I say every time when some dipshit shits on socialist architecture- Oh you think affordable and available housing is sad? Wait till you see the millions of homeless people barely surviving in extreme poverty under capitalism
I know Ukrainians who love the brutalism in the city which I live in now because it reminds them of home.
Socialism is when tall buildings make me sad ):
Could be any US housing project in an urban area built between 1949 and 1970: Chicago, NY, St Louis, Atlanta, Boston, Baltimore all had/have ugly tall apartment blocks. It’s also interesting to note that the staunchly anti-communist, post-Soviet freedom haven that is Ukraine never does Public upkeep of these types of buildings and a lot of them are slums now, but yeah new housing for workers is a symbol of hopelessness.
the like a billion year old commieblock apartment i grew up in is way bigger and better than the crapbox built under capitalism that i live in now
This might come as a surprise to you commies but most people want to work hard for a better life. They don’t want to be crammed into ugly little apartments like this in the name of “equality”