Y'all be making fun of this, not realizing that you don't hear about a housing crisis in Eastern Europe
Lucky you if you haven't heard of it.
It's over here in North America too. Houses are unaffordable almost everywhere you go.
Woo the capitalistic hellscape we always wanted
Am eastern european. There is a housing crisis.
The crisis is having to live in these rabbit hutches for humans.
Factory farming human misery and suffering is what these are.
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.
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.
It's like they were build for the benefit of the people.
They're livable, but can also be really bad depending on the maintenance of the building and the previous tenants. The problem is the terrible design of some panelák style dorms- see Strahov, which is a dystopia for many reasons.
The one time copypasting a bunch of buildings was actually a good idea
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.)
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.
Isn't that China? (/j)
Edit: I've looked up the picture and confirmed these buildings are some of the empty city that China has constructed. I'm not sure what all the downvotes are for...
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....
Edit to add that I'd genuinely like to know where you saw them and inquire if you know any background on them. I'm very interested in the origins of these projects. I feel like I'm in one of the best places to learn from people with first-hand knowledge.
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....
