• Aljernon@lemmy.today
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    59 minutes ago

    I’ve seen this posted before. Important points to consider: Imperial Russia had a housing shortage in the cities due to industrialization occurring and the existing housing was often of poor quality. According to one source: “In major cities, a significant portion of housing consisted of barracks, basements, semi-basements, dormitory-style rooms, dugouts, and semi-dugouts.”

    Then WW1 hit followed by the civil war and housing construction essentially stopped with some housing destroyed in the war. Then in the interwar period, priority was given to industrial construction in the USSR, resulting in low housing construction volumes, with a significant share consisting of temporary housing. Rapid industrialization and increasing population shifts to cities increasing demand. Then WW2 hit and huge amounts of existing housing were destroyed in the fighting.

    So the USSR was in tight spot and did the best they could with limited time and resources which for most Russians ended up being a huge improvement.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    16 hours ago

    I don’t see this as left or right wing

    This is architecture that could be done better.

    Yes, we need to stop homelessness, but you also want to avoid creating spaces where nobody wants to live because it’s ugly and depressing and guaranteed, the poor end up having to live there, and with that comes crime and what not and you end up with ghetto style areas where even police is uneasy

    Take a little bit more space, put a little bit more thought into the designs, add spaces for children to play, add parks, make it look nice. Wr don’t need luxury villas either, but there has to be something better than this

    • no banana@piefed.worldOP
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      15 hours ago

      In my country this type of building came about in a society where many still lived in wood sheds without electricity or running water. Where people shared outhouses with their neighbors in the yard of actual residential buildings. Where every residence on average was overpopulated.

      The architecture of the time homed huge amounts of people with running water, indoor toilets and electricity. Indoor heat without needing a fire.

      The areas where they were erected weren’t much to look at before. The buildings today may be unappreciated but I find them lovely in a way. They’re a shadow of a society that cared for it’s citizens.

    • AlexLost@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      It was built cheap and efficiently, not to please the eye. It could certainly be better, and we know that our environ plays a bigger role in our outlooks than we did before. If they built it today, it would have a few more trees and green spaces but would maintain it’s very essence, which is a large domicile to house people for cheap.

      • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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        13 hours ago

        Also correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t a lot of these have murals and shit painted on them back in the day. Could’ve sworn I’ve heard about these building having their outer paint stripped only to reveal a mural or mosaic.

  • JackBinimbul@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    16 hours ago

    How the hell is this “left wing architecture”?? Apartment buildings have looked like this all around the world for at least 50 years.

    • FishFace@piefed.social
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      12 hours ago

      It’s “left wing” because the buildings are identical, because they were built through central planning.

    • PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de
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      16 hours ago

      It’s left-wing in that it provides cheap housing for many. It also looks very brutalist and is reminiscent of USSR housing blocks.

    • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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      14 hours ago

      Hey if you need a lot of housing real quick utilitarian designs like this tend to come about, doesn’t really matter who is doing it. Hell the Romans had some prefab designs that had a passing resemblance to this.

        • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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          4 hours ago

          High-rises? No. Multi story buildings some going up to six or seven floors? Yes. Plenty of them survived up until around the high medieval period but we’re starting to come down by the Renaissance, though there are some examples in Revenna Italy. It’s been about 1500 years since the fall of the Western Roman Empire and about 500 years since the Eastern Roman Empire, regardless of how well built that’s a long time for any tall structures, a good example is the Lighthouse of Alexandria which while a bit older was rendered ruined around the same period and subsequently scavenged from to construct something newer, much like it’s Roman counterparts.

  • MasterNerd@lemmy.zip
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    15 hours ago

    One interesting thing I’m noting is that picture appears to have been taken on a rather dreary winter day. I can see a lot of trees between the buildings, and I’d be interested in seeing what this place looks like in other seasons and better weather

      • SigmarStern@discuss.tchncs.de
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        19 hours ago

        Stayed in an probably illegal Airbnb in a Samsung apartment in Jeju 10 years ago. It was nice. Apartment complexes are not bad. We have to them in beautiful Switzerland too. If the building is well maintained and the surrounding is full of greenery, and local shops, and entertainment, then they are a valid option and I’d prefer them over sprawl and cul-de-sacs.

        • no banana@piefed.worldOP
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          17 hours ago

          Sure, in the end a building like this is going to be what it is. I personally live on the inside of my apartment, so that’s what I care most about. If I owned a house and spent a bunch of time looking at it from the garden, I would care more.

          edit spelling

  • Droggelbecher@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    Semi relatedly, there’s some new blocks in my city that are both ugly and expensive to live in. It’s this soulless, almost corporate feeling type of architecture. Doesn’t fit into how the city looks at all. They had the opportunity to decide whether to build affordable housing or something pretty that aesthetically fits into the city and picked neither. No doubt the shareholders shed a tear of joy.

  • irelephant [he/him]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    21 hours ago

    Copying and pasting an old comment i made:

    Honestly, commieblocks arent that bad. Most of the pictures of them are cherry picked to be the unmaintained, dirty ones, and are exclusively taken in gloomy weather. The houses on the inside are usually good quality as well (though likely not well maintained anymore).

    Hell, if you just painted them colourfully, they’d look nice.

    • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      And that is just the façade, some places renew the façade every few decades to keep the place fresh and desirable.

      the benefits of high density urban design are also amazing and I assume I do not need to list them here. this is lemmy and I just need to wait for the appropriate autist to list them all.

      And how is it controversial to build housing for everyone, instead of some pretty houses for those who can afford it.

    • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      20 hours ago

      Toss some rooftop park/garden/green spaces up there as well and they’d be pretty damn great, as far as skyscrapers go.

      • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        Dumb question, I know some places where they build quick and ugly and a few decades later they just remodelled the façade to make it pretty an modern. but those are small residential buildings in places where I lived. do you know of places where that happened in large projects like the picture?

        • dejpivo@lemmings.world
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          16 hours ago

          Our commie blocks in East Europe tend to get colorful when their owners (either the city or the dwelers) decide to insulate the facade, which often happens across a whole district in a short time. Random image to ilustrate.

      • asret@lemmy.zip
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        18 hours ago

        Looks like the ones in the picture are already surrounded by green spaces - they’re probably already pretty great as far as skyscrapers go.

    • Taldan@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      These blocks look very different as a person on the street. They mostly only look bad from above where you can see all of them together

      We have some burtalist apartment buildings in Minneapolis. They’re generally desirable apartments

    • SealofLove@leminal.space
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      17 hours ago

      Nah man. I lived in Russia most of my life and commie blocks are as depressing as they look on those pictures. You have a point that some are poorly maintained, but that’s not some, that’s most of the country. Just a mass of featureless grey blocks. Dirty, ugly and inescapable. About them being good quality on the inside is debatable. The flats are small and I could hear my neighbors all the time. Some of them used to be painted, but the paint is peeling off, only hylighting the ugliness. There’s very little upside to them in the modern world.

  • Armand1@lemmy.world
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    24 hours ago

    Social housing typically doesn’t look as good as high-end apartments, but it doesn’t have to look terrible. Here’s some pretty neat looking social housing in south Paris.

    It’s kind of the China Town of Paris.

    It’s right next to an accessible tram station, has green spaces and social areas spread around, a couple of malls with great independent restaurants right next door. There are cycle lanes all around the place.

    If you’re curious, here it is on Google Maps

    I’d live here. I only wish there were more neighbourhoods like this.