Prague's Brutalist Buildings
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Prague's Brutalist Buildings
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Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings
#2Archive.org copy: http://web.archive.org/web/20211021141127/https://www.calver...
My favourite brutalist building is in Belgrade: the Western City Gate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_City_Gate
Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings
#3I spent almost a year living in a brutalist building in Prague. It was a concrete slab with an huge central courtyard, like a prison yard. You could not access the courtyard, it was dark and dingy. But it was completely full of pigeons. Maybe a thousand pigeons lived there. The inner balcony at the back of the apartment was caked with about 3" of pigeon shit. One day I woke up and found they were power washing the entire inside of the building. This caused the volatilization of several metric tons of pigeon shit into large white clouds over several days.
The building had one other interesting feature, which was an old style sliding-cage elevator, just big enough for two people. The inner gate of the cage was missing, so there was nothing between you and the massive concrete floors sliding past as you crossed each level. From the 5th level down to the 2nd, each white-painted floor featured a giant dark blood stain, in the same general area. This started very wide and got thinner at each floor, so it was obvious someone had lost a leg or an arm, or maybe a head.
Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings
#4I spent almost a year living in a brutalist building in Prague. It was a concrete slab with an huge central courtyard, like a prison yard. You could not access the courtyard, it was dark and dingy. But it was completely full of pigeons. Maybe a thousand pigeons lived there. The inner balcony at the back of the apartment was caked with about 3" of pigeon shit. One day I woke up and found they were power washing the en…
The stain was probably from spit and dirt. I lived in an apartment with a similar elevator. Nothing happened in 30 years that I know of. Just the dirt was never removed.
Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings
#5Between this post and the one about the Yugoslav art movement, calvertjournal is really getting the HN hug of death right now.
Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings
#6Archive.org copy: http://web.archive.org/web/20211021141127/https://www.calver... My favourite brutalist building is in Belgrade: the Western City Gate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_City_Gate
I was just about to mention Belgrade, imo it has the best brutalist buildings outside of the former Soviet Union countries, that's (also) why it is on my to-visit-soon list.
Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings
#7A long time resident of Prague.
I hate this shit. All of it. If there ever was an architecture designed to squeeze the soul out of you, spit on it, curb-stomp it AND, to add insult to injury, age like milk in absence of proper maintenance, this is it.
The modern glass-and-steel architecture is "only" soulless in comparison.
Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings
#8Archive.org copy: http://web.archive.org/web/20211021141127/https://www.calver... My favourite brutalist building is in Belgrade: the Western City Gate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_City_Gate
I was just about to mention Belgrade, imo it has the best brutalist buildings outside of the former Soviet Union countries, that's (also) why it is on my to-visit-soon list.
Belgrade was not a part of the Soviet Union
Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings
#9I'd like to remark that the black&white photography somehow accentuate this "brutalist" feeling. It doesn't look as bad in reality. (I am also from Czechoslovakia).
Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings
#10A long time resident of Prague. I hate this shit. All of it. If there ever was an architecture designed to squeeze the soul out of you, spit on it, curb-stomp it AND, to add insult to injury, age like milk in absence of proper maintenance, this is it. The modern glass-and-steel architecture is "only" soulless in comparison.
While I tend to agree that brutalist is sometimes an excuse for ugly, even you gotta admit that most of the pictures in the article are quite stunning.