These houses make it clear that it is Russia or some post-Soviet country on the picture…
Do they make cities ugly or beautiful, what do you think?
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This is what inspired tetris. it looks very organized.
Some of the aerial, satellite photos look like secret messages to space-aliens.
It was inspired by lack of cranes. They planned the buildings that 1 crane could service few of them. Its easy to huess where the crane was standing when wou are looking form above.
Haha Pentagon building – 4th from bottom
Some are quite beautiful and futuristic. But most of them are very overwhelming and almost scary.
The communists were lunatics. Russia has so many space und so few people. They could have basically given every citizen a large house with acres of garden, not those little cells placed in gigantic beehives. They used architecture as a means of control and re-education as they wanted to eradicate individualism. Even today, the best buildings are dating back to the Tsarist era, with beautiful ornaments and spacious units, like the flats in Pieter for example. Some stay that the Stalin era buildings are basically nice too, but to me they were built at too high cost.
I think its a matter of perspective and its relative, i find some of those plannings actually nice, iv been in some soviet era apartments and they are kinda cozy lol.
As long as you have the choice. What you don´t see on this picture is the horrid quality. The walls are usually thin so everybody hears his neighbour, ventilation is bad, the cheap concrete is starting to decompose because they didn´t even plaster the walls, the rooms are very small, the stairs are crumbling…it was just quickly and dirty built to create the cheapest living space. Now the renovation of these houses costs so much money,that in many cases it would be cheaper to tear them down and buid new houses.
I do not agree with you friend, I live in a building that was built during the socialist period 1952-1954 and this year it is after all these years of renovation and reconstruction done and just replaced the roof and the water and sewage pipes, and some small repairs such as hallways the painting and similar works. In the new capitalist era buildings from 2000 to the present situation is catastrophic as people paid for a square meter near 1500 EUR, and paint is on the walls, crumbling pipes, mold appears from moisture and flooring is falling apart and it all within 5 years of construction flats … now when you mention sound insulation, business owners and cafes in the same building are desperate! The walls are so thin that when you sneeze literally on the ground and hear the occupants of the third floor, you can not even music on the radio in the coffee shop to let go and not complain about the tenants of buildings ….. well done, but my a&s!
“..They used architecture as a means of control and re-education..”. Naahh. The idea was just utility and cost. But only that can turn out ugly and souless.
Utility and cost…to save from the people and to divert the funds into the military. That is why you can see Russian weaponry all across the planet. Usually the communists sent it for free or never got the money back. You wanted to have paint for your wall? Nope…that was a “deficit-good”. When You see for instance the Russian south and compare it with Italy or South of France or even Greece you can see the difference.
@Sochi: “…Utility and cost…to save from the people and to divert the funds into the military. …” Yes, utility and cost.
USSR is dead since 1991-2 because it couldn’t afford the expense of the Cold War, and it seems the lesson is not learned in the US (with a 20 years delay). Those deficits (financed by the Chinese) can’t last forever.
After living in Canada for 12 years I finally made it to Europe for a short vacation. Went to Germany, Italy and one day in Strasbourg. Being an architect I was overwhelmed how much these countries reminded me Russia where I was born and raised. Soviet Union did not invent this urban planning. There was overall trend in Europe to build similar simplistic and massive buildings. My personal shock was Strasbourg’s suburbs where you see EXACTLY the same style. I went further and checked Google street view in this city just to find out that many neighbours look like Siberian town Achinsk where my grandmother used to live. So, knowing the fact how many thing were kind of copied by Soviet Union, it is not s surprise to find out such a similarity. The only distinction is that Soviets took it much further, covering the entire county with the same building type. This for sure has not happen anywhere else. I personally hated this crap long before immigrating to Canada, so can tell you that people hate it, but can’t do much about it due to financial considerations. Even small apartments now cost a fortune for regular people.
Sure, that’s all the heritage of Le Corbusier, who worked in France.
Imagine the size of even a little town of less than a 100,000 people if everyone had large houses with acres of gardens?!! Just because Russia is the largest country in the world doesn’t mean that all that land area is inhabitable.
Naturally, I understand that in large cities you cannot do that, but you see these large buildings even on the countryside, where there is no scarcity of space. So you´d come across such a concrete-monster and next to it you can see the endless steppe that is not even being farmed. The idea was to save money, to herd people together for better control and to eradicate the little house owners for ideological reasons. Close to Rostov you can buy large areas of 25km² for 300,000USD, because there is so much space and no people. But in Rostov You can pay a little fortune for a run-down two-room flat. That is the result of this policy. Even just outside of Moscow you have the simliar situations.
Meh. Your opinion, not mine.
If you have 100 families that need housing, it’s better, cheaper and more convenient to build an apartment block for all of them, rather than building 100 houses for each one.
Rostov-on-Don isn’t exactly the most important city in Russia, and by no means can it compare to Moskau which (in case you didn’t know) is the capital of Russia.
And what is this about “endless steppe that is not even being farmed”? Even if you are talking about Rostov-on-Don, it is surrounded by farms, especially to the immediate north and around neighboring Batayisk.
PS- I haven’t exactly been to every town in Russia, but I think you’d find my hometown to be a good example of what you’re saying should be the model for every Russian city. Look up Borisoglebsk in the Voronezh area.
You can build appartments, but if you do it, do it properly. This isn´t proper. This is just hideous and extremely low quality living space. And it isn´t cheap either. The cost of heating is high as is the cost of maintenance and renovation. In the long run this costs much more than any more “expensive” solution. If You travel to Sienna in Italy, you will see the old city plastered with houses which are several hundreds of years old and still in good shape. Similar is the situation with the old pre-revolutionary buildings in Pieter or Moscow, just that they have been massively neglected and need attention now. But these concrete piles will be vanish before they see their 70th birthday.
You confuse me. You hit upon the real problem here, “they have been massively neglected” and yet you start of with not being built properly. Back when they were built, they were good, atleast by the standards back then, its when no funds were available for maintenance that the problems started.
The Russian population is squeezed into a handful of cities. How do you expect people to commute from their ‘large house with acres of garden’ without cars?
That is a shame about the Soviet Union, how planning was all done by one little group, so you didn’t have villages or towns that organically grew up and became major cities, all over the nation. That’s what America gets right, the big cities are spread out, or you can find a little town or no town.
I don’t mean to make this USSR vs US, I just agree it’s a shame that Russia has so much space, but only really has a few big cities.
What does USSR vs US mean? USSR lost this competition badly, period. So that is the reason it does not exist any more. Now Russia has to correct the disastrous effects of 70 years of Soviet rule. Looking back, there was not much good it has brought. Russia would have been an advanced country with a high living standard. Now they can be glad that they still have oil and gas. If they don´t get it right this time…
They are doing it right. Russia has steady growth, with huge cash reserves. I mean, without depending on China’s Government lendings.
Germany is an industrialized country with one of the most competitive economies, at least west-Germany (forget the east). So you go to Stuttgart for example, where Mercedes, Porsche and Bosch, just to name the prominent names, are headquartered. You do actually find some social housing projects there too, but this is no comparison to what you see in Russia. These are much fewer and they are smaller, better built and more spacious. They have done a better urban planning and most of the workers commute 20-30km with their cars as they usually have their own houses in the little towns and villages around the city.
Thank God we have you now! Your super brain power will save us all! Amen.
The Pentagon is a Neo-totalitarian structure.
Soviet urban planning = hell on Earth.
…hell yeah
American suburbs = drug fuelled nightmare
I’ll take my chances in the ‘burbs over one of these cheap, poorly constructed, and terribly insulated and crumbling slum towers any day.
Then why don’t USA give houses for free as the Soviet Union did??
I would love to see America making good big quality free homes for people!
Also, why in soviet Russia there was no homeless people and why it’s a fenomenom only seen in modern capitalism?
Why are homes in america so bad quality that when you punch the walls with your fist you can break a wall, what’s that material made off?? it’s like compressed wood or something??? why you don’t build your homes out of concrete?? is that TOO EXPENSIVE???….I’ve been in New York and all homes are made of that crap!
“… it’s like compressed wood or something??? why you don’t build your homes out of concrete??…”
They are made with hardened carton, wood and a lot of self esteem. So they can’t take Tornadoes, and every year they have to rebuild disasters with the same crappy materials. Why? It’s a mistery to me.
These circular buildings look spectacular from above but I guess those who live on first floors of the inner side won’t share such admiration… Especially if their flats face north.
By the way, you can make a racing ring on top of these “donuts”!
Such city planning was inspired from 80′s video-games like Pacman and Super Mario or from organic chemistry?
beautiful.
I know this structures from Warsaw and they are not really nice:( Make City looks grey and said!
In Warsaw most of them are much smaller and surrounded by a lot of greenery. Moreover, some of them were planned in a better way than new housing estates in Warsaw which are not often supplied with kindergardens, schools, parks and other local amenities.
The Germans had leveled it. They had to build a fast and cost effective housing. The same style of concrete building can be found in many Western cities effected by ww2.
Yes the biggest reason for this style housing was the destruction caused by the war. It was cheap and could be erected extremely quickly. It was also accessible to mass transit systems. Every city in the Soviet Union that had more than 1 million people would get an underground metro system.
Its the boobs of steel girl.
boobs of steel was here
Nope that was a blondie
AMERICA And the back streets of Chicago are so pretty or south central la.
At least they have parking. Good luck finding any of that in a Soviet planned urban community of cheap, poorly constructed, and now crumbling housing.
That parking you mention includes broken car windows and a stolen car stereo system.
Some of the apartment blocks look like they could have been turned into easily defended forts. Anyone know anything about WHY they planned their cities this way?
After Stalin died and Kruschev came to office after the War, a lot of building was done, and they went for maximum utilitarian, simple design. And…. that doesn’t really answer your question, does it? I would guess the buildings themselves were so simple, they wanted to give maximum use of the negative space, where you’re not staring directly into another person’s window, but the building still fits into the parcel of land they wanted to use. The GGG buildings are odd, though. Almost like they’re signaling aliens!
Beehive for worker bees in the soviet system. unhuman.
The Eastern Bloc couldn’t producer a decent dishwasher or car, but they sure knew how to work concrete. The buildings look like the most depressing hamster tube cities ever.
I think it is some sort of “urban kolhoz”. Here in Romania we have the same communist architecture but the apartment buildings are even tightly packed together. They were built by demolishing old individual houses but keeping the same street network. Had we had Soviet-planned cities, we would considered ourselves lucky…
at least they didn’t cut down the trees. and Zoidberg’s right. now we know where boobs of steel was filmed.
What is the average price for one of these old 2-3 room apartment in Moscow? Does anybody know? Im only interest,because I heard, that in Moscow is everythnig expensive. I can’t believe that, how can than russian people afford it?
We have to count money on 2-3 rooms flat for like 5-10 years. Its more easy for young couples,when parents from both sides give money to yours. But if you’re single,you have to be rich to buy thats crap.
Some of these could also be British housing estates
Indeed. One could watch “A Clockwork Orange” to see those buildings. “Trainspotting” also has a shot in front of a council estate.
Euclidean geometry in a non-euclidean universe; we are trapped in a small piece of spacetime. (just as we are stuck into sequential thought)
love reading your comments
Russia does have areas of houses,but not all houses look good.I have been in a 3 bedroom home with a banya in the back yard in Yekaterinburg.It is not all apartments!
Ugly…Ugly…Ugly
Soviet urban planning at it’s worst. Impractical and ugly.
Some of them are interesting I think (like those buildings in a perfect circle), but generally I find Soviet constructivism very ugly style because its buildings are build only for low quality housing purposes – bad quality with no aesthetics at all, and after they start to deteriorate they look even uglier! I know there are whole city blocks consisting of the same Soviet 50 year old buildings that now offer both terrible look from the outside and bad quality of living in the inside. Ok i know they had to house so much people after the revolution, but don’t tell me they couldn’t build buildings worthy of living in. They had money for the arms race, but not for civilized housing. I just hope that modern Russia won’t continue this practice because i find it terribly ugly!
LOOKS LIKE A LIVING HADES NIGHTMARE WAKING UP IN EX-SOVIET BLOC COUNTRY OR RUSSIA…
Try Afganistan.
Finland too has some buildings like these, but not so big and sprawling. Finland didn’t live under USSR, although was a Grand Duchy of Russia until 1917. (You can see Helsinki masquerading as Leningrad or Moscow in various Hollywood movies from the 1980s.) But there’s also the Scandinavian-style buildings, like the red, wooden homes you see on travel programs, as well as regular houses and small apartment buildings. And none of the cities reach St. Petersburg or Moscow size; biggest city of Helsinki only has about 600 000 people.
so much land but why they built this kind of pigeon houses…ugly indeed..
Why is the pentagon with those pics?Sometimes Russia and the United States gets mixed in with each other!
Almost all of the suburbs of Stockholm look like this, especially in Täby there is an area of apartment buildings that can easily rival those shown in the pictures.
F**k individualism,i like this.
Greedy vain materialistic people thinking they will take their houses,cars,shoes,cellphones,watches to the afterlife
oh and btw they are so christians deep down
inside
Depressive…
is GGG famous? i saw him on some movie websites? The buildings form his name?
i really love them
)
fortunately we have lot of that kind of housing estonia too
Depressing architecture; possibly the reason why those weirdos start walking on the rooves.
This kind of housing only works when full of white people. Beware of roaches (brown people) you let one in and they multiply like… well roaches. Then you get crime and push whites out.
Pretty, why if americans are so much better don’t give housing for free to people as soviets did??…… LOL, they don’t know that in Soviet Russia there was no people living in the streets??? that’s something brought by American Capitalism!…..AMERICA, why don’t you make your government to give houses for free to people, instead of critizicing the attempt of Soviets to provide free housing??
Because they are fond to pay with mortgages.
What they tried to do is to save their financial system and leave the consumer homeless when there’s a problem, like too much greed. It worked…
There’s something called “public housing” in America.