It kinda looks like MCI in Kansas City taken to the extreme.
A Soviet-era airport, once the height of luxury, faces demolition in Armenia
21–30 of 66 posts
Re: A Soviet-era airport, once the height of luxury, faces demolition in Armenia
#22I was always surprised how little people care in Armenia about the old airport. Imagine you land in an airport that is nothing like all the other "conventional" airports with high ceilings and huge open areas. Wouldn't you want to just fly to Armenia if your experience starts in a museum like airport? Probably Armenians would not care too much to frequent in the old terminal, but it could be a nice turist attraction,…
The people would agree with you, local business owners would agree with you, but the leaders are basically organized crime types, corruption is rampant, most money dedicated to this project would be stolen and end up in London and Toronto real estate. They also suffer from the influence of Russia, i.e. destabilize as many former soviet countries as possible in order to benefit from the chaos. That part of the world is in for a lot of trouble over the next 50 years.
Re: A Soviet-era airport, once the height of luxury, faces demolition in Armenia
#23It looks really nice, but this picture is revealing: https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1/2018/09/19/16/4396738-6185497-im... The bit on the left, I assume, is the modern terminal. Notice the scale. The old building is small, for modern use. If it gets preserved, they must find a way to generate some additional income, because it's probably too obsolete to do that as an actual airport.
The old building is likely small, not adapted to modern security, equipments, facilities and will cost much more in refurbishment and use. It also probably was not that well built and/or degraded for years. Just replace it, new will be better in this case.
Re: A Soviet-era airport, once the height of luxury, faces demolition in Armenia
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well while it was not annexed by the USSR like Armenia it was behind the Iron Curtain.
The Warsaw Pact was an alliance of nominally-independent states. They all relied on the USSR in one way or another, but they had their internal dynamics and cultural differences. Their architectural efforts were often manneristic towards Soviet styles, rather than original.
I think USSR relied on many of them actually. Eastern Germany and Czechoslovakia provided best tech and foreign currency source, and the whole area between Germany and USSR was planned to get nuked in case of an all-out war between NATO and USSR, in order to protect USSR's mainland. Fun times for Central European countries I guess, getting shafted from both sides continuously for centuries.
Re: A Soviet-era airport, once the height of luxury, faces demolition in Armenia
#25Off-topic, on a reasonably fast connection on a machine with Intel i7 and 16 GB of RAM, this page loads slowly and scrolling is painfully slow and not smooth. No ad blocker because this is a new machine and new setup. Of course, I will add an ad blocker extension.
Frankly I'm struggling with the fact that there are links to that fascist shitrag on the front page of HN. I should have looked more carefully.
For anyone else interested in the subject but not wanting to give the DM traffic, the discussion here is around the proposed demolition of the Old Terminal at Zvartnots Airport.
Re: A Soviet-era airport, once the height of luxury, faces demolition in Armenia
#26If foreigners want to pay to fix it up and maintain, great; otherwise Armenia should destroy it and move on.
Re: A Soviet-era airport, once the height of luxury, faces demolition in Armenia
#27That is a hideously ugly building.
It doesn't say "city of the future" to me, as the author seems to suggest, but city of the past. And not the glorious past or the beautiful past, but a period of architecture dominated by harsh lines, masses of exposed concrete, and the idea of architecture expressing domination over the land and over the people who used it.
Brutalism, here in the UK, is largely seen as an ugly mistake. I would categorise this with it.
Re: A Soviet-era airport, once the height of luxury, faces demolition in Armenia
#28If foreigners want to pay to fix it up and maintain, great; otherwise Armenia should destroy it and move on.
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Re: A Soviet-era airport, once the height of luxury, faces demolition in Armenia
#29If you can't readily tell at a glance whether a building was designed as a minimum security jail, you can't expect the people around it to want to preserve it.
Re: A Soviet-era airport, once the height of luxury, faces demolition in Armenia
#30Off-topic, on a reasonably fast connection on a machine with Intel i7 and 16 GB of RAM, this page loads slowly and scrolling is painfully slow and not smooth. No ad blocker because this is a new machine and new setup. Of course, I will add an ad blocker extension.
Frankly I'm struggling with the fact that there are links to that fascist shitrag on the front page of HN. I should have looked more carefully. For anyone else interested in the subject but not wanting to give the DM traffic, the discussion here is around the proposed demolition of the Old Terminal at Zvartnots Airport.
>Frankly I'm struggling with the fact that there are links to that fascist shitrag
Maybe we should gather and burn its print copies /s
It's an article. Enjoy it or not on its own merits.