Prague's Brutalist Buildings • Hacker News Board

Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings

#51

Post by cousin_it » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 1:44 PM UTC

eternalban wrote: post #45

ur-whale wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brutalist architecture is often beautiful, but it certainly wasn't designed for people, but rather as a monuments to the ego of the architect. I visited one of Le Corbusier's "creations" once (this one: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cit%C3%A9_radieuse_de_Marseill... ) Soul-crushing is indeed the only thing I could think of while there. [EDIT]: Here's a good article on function vs form: https://www.currentaffairs.org/…

Good grief, that first CA article reads like a reactionary "good old genteel days" with a central villain Eisenman. Modern architecture is a response to scaling demands of modern life. The CA article is analog of a geek blog lamenting good old genteel days of "Majestic monolithic Simple Client Server structures and interfaces harmoniously coexisting with bandwidth limited sys admins when developers happily were ignor…

I think the problem you're describing, how to build big and still have it look as nice as baroque / gothic / art nouveau, was basically solved by things like art deco skyscrapers in the US and the seven sisters in Moscow. And for most housing it's not a big problem anyway, because five stories high gives you plenty of density, and that's doable in "pretty" styles as many European cities show.

Your mention of economic constraints also sounds a bit strange to me, because there has been a lot of economic growth in the past couple centuries. The stuff that was possible to build then should still be possible now and much cheaper in labor per capita. If you look up how much it cost to build some iconic past structures in today's dollars, it's stunningly cheap and fast.

> Would a modern LEGO approach to creating nuovo "classical" old towns with standard parts somehow magically remove the inherent difficulties of modern life

This kind of faux-classical stuff is glaringly bad to my eyes too. But the reason is simply that we don't have a living school dedicated to making it good. Having such a school is possible; having it serve the poor would be possible, too. I wish it happened.

Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings

#52

Post by Noos » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 1:48 PM UTC

eternalban wrote: post #45

ur-whale wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brutalist architecture is often beautiful, but it certainly wasn't designed for people, but rather as a monuments to the ego of the architect. I visited one of Le Corbusier's "creations" once (this one: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cit%C3%A9_radieuse_de_Marseill... ) Soul-crushing is indeed the only thing I could think of while there. [EDIT]: Here's a good article on function vs form: https://www.currentaffairs.org/…

Good grief, that first CA article reads like a reactionary "good old genteel days" with a central villain Eisenman. Modern architecture is a response to scaling demands of modern life. The CA article is analog of a geek blog lamenting good old genteel days of "Majestic monolithic Simple Client Server structures and interfaces harmoniously coexisting with bandwidth limited sys admins when developers happily were ignor…

The metaphysical BS is the problem, architects treat buildings like sculptures, novels, and stories; as vehicles to say something as much or more than livable places. I don't know why we have the idea that structures need to be an artistic representation of ideals like sculpture when they are designed to be used primarily by people to live in and customize as they see fit.

It would be like designing hammers that are commentary on the homelessness problem in the world today but are strikingly ineffective to actually hammer nails; its fine if the only result is to be part of a museum exhibit but the architects force us to use the hammers.

The eisenmann snippet of the second page has him try to defend his work because it is supposed to say something, a commentary on modern dislocation. But that's a message designed for people to not escape, and most arcihtecture in that sense is the tyranny of the artist or government trying to immortalize feelings in books which you can only close the cover of by moving away.

Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings

#53

Post by nzp » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 1:49 PM UTC

A common theme with residential (other types don't have these problems, like museums, public office spaces, hospitals, etc.) brutalist buildings is that they were built as low-cost social housing, and the problems are not with the exterior but with the interior, and I think not inherent to this type of architecture. Shoddy workmanship, cheapest materials, etc. The contrast between how stunning it looks (a matter of taste, granted) from the outside and how it's inside is stark — avantgarde, modern, and bespoke, combined with boring, gloomy and depressive apartment interiors.

A lot of commenters have mentioned New Belgrade municipality of Belgrade, and it is a great example of this. The exterior is very often quite well though out — lots of space, lots of trees and parks, playgrounds (looked at from the ground there's hardly any of the oppressive concrete feeling often associated with brutalism), general living affordances like schools, public services integrated into complexes... But on the inside, even ignoring long term issues of maintenance stemming from broader social issues, things are dysfunctional, ugly and generally of poor quality. It's a byproduct of cost cutting commonly associated with these types of projects. But just like with apartments in Soviet Brezhnevkas and even some Khrushchyovkas, when renovated with care and attention the apartments are just fine for what they are.

And it's not just a feature of Cold War socialist brutalism. In Trieste for example there is a somewhat (in)famous Rozzol Melara building[1][2]. As an idea it's great, the complex has everything for day to day living, a post office, a supermarket, an elementary school, a kindergarden, even a small medical facility, all connected with tunnel bridges or roofed passageways (except the small chapel) so you're never exposed to the elements when going somewhere inside the complex. But it seems as though the architects thought about how can we make this cheap but practical and then got the practical part completely wrong. For example, the passageways and tunnel floors are completely covered with anti-slip rubber matting, but the problem is these passageways are almost too practical and inviting so people end up using them to take their dogs out for walking, and so the result is rubber covered with sticky, dried dog piss (sometimes even poop) every 5 to 10 meters in all directions. You can imagine how this smells, encased in concrete and glass during the summer in a moist coastal city. The terrace views from higher apartments on the side overlooking the city and the sea are beautiful though, so you get some satisfaction if you live in one of those.

[1]: https://www.greyscape.com/architects/rozzol-melara-trieste/ [2]: http://architectuul.com/architecture/rozzol-melara-complex

Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings

#54

Post by m4rtink » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 1:53 PM UTC

saiya-jin wrote: post #19

noduerme wrote: post #3

I 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…

Sounds like central Prague. Its a strange place (lived there 5 years, moved to better places), what tourists see / are lured at is big pretty medieval centre with rich history. Almost nobody actually lives there, too expensive and impractical. The rest of the city is properly fugly and depressing, communism made its mark that won't go away for next few centuries. Most colleagues bought rather houses quite far from th…

Brno > Prague IMHO, as Brno actually has a city center where people live & which is rather nice. :)

Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings

#55

Post by dkdbejwi383 » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 1:58 PM UTC

saiya-jin wrote: post #19

noduerme wrote: post #3

I 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…

Sounds like central Prague. Its a strange place (lived there 5 years, moved to better places), what tourists see / are lured at is big pretty medieval centre with rich history. Almost nobody actually lives there, too expensive and impractical. The rest of the city is properly fugly and depressing, communism made its mark that won't go away for next few centuries. Most colleagues bought rather houses quite far from th…

I got Disneyland vibes from central Prague, probably for that reason that nobody really lives there. A lot of people say it’s their favourite place in Central Europe, but the short visit I had to the central areas just didn’t click for me. I’d be interested in seeing more of the normal areas where people actually live

Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings

#56

Post by m4rtink » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 2:06 PM UTC

ur-whale wrote: post #14

inglor_cz wrote: post #7

A 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.

Brutalist architecture is often beautiful, but it certainly wasn't designed for people, but rather as a monuments to the ego of the architect. I visited one of Le Corbusier's "creations" once (this one: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cit%C3%A9_radieuse_de_Marseill... ) Soul-crushing is indeed the only thing I could think of while there. [EDIT]: Here's a good article on function vs form: https://www.currentaffairs.org/…

One issue with many Czech brutalist buildings is that they are brutally impractical - no heat isolation, mold problems, clogged toilets, not enough natural light, not accessible for the disabled, hard to repurchase, slowly falling apart yet using many custom parts that are no longer available & and the buildings are like 50% made of asbestos by weight.

They might look impressive from sufficient distance, but often not very useful.

Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings

#57

Post by A_non_e-moose » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 2:09 PM UTC

> the Barrandov Bridge is one of the most crucial arteries. Designed by Karel Filsak, author of the similarly impressive Hotel Intercontinental on Pařížská Street

That hotel was also impressively filled with asbestos:

https://newsbeezer.com/czechrepubliceng/the-people-around-th...

Asbestos has been known to be a big health hazard since 1900s and has been heavily regulated since:

https://www.oracleasbestos.com/what-is-asbestos/asbestos-reg...

I personally can't appreciate or commend a building that was knowingly made with such a hazardous material.

Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings

#58

Post by dmitrij » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

noduerme wrote: post #3

I 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…

This is the start of a horror novel.

Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings

#59

Post by mgkimsal » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 2:22 PM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #46

namdnay wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The architects themselves had no true intention of making "art" - they were embodying evil, actually broadcasting and embedding evil into everyday life, for no reason other than pure hatred of the basic human needs in everyday life. They hated their own kind. ??? Of course not. They probably thought they were building happy communities under the glorious sun of communism. Unfortunately they were tragically wrong (o…

Interestingly, the short-lived "sorela" style (SOcialistic REALism) was much less brutal and more esthetically pleasing https://www.google.com/search?q=sorela One of the main drivers of later Soviet Bloc architecture was relentless uniformization and centralization of industry. By far the fastest way to churn out apartments was to standardize a few typical panels, produce them en masse and cover the entire country in…

https://www.google.com/search?q=sorela+architecture

will net you something more useful for this discussion..

https://www.google.com/search?q=sorela is a music group.

Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings

#60

Post by axegon_ » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 2:27 PM UTC

I've never been to Prague or Czechia for that matter, though that's been on my list for many years now. Every time I start planning a trip, something happens and I have to cancel it. So my current thoughts are based on what I've seen in videos and photos, while my experience with the brutalism comes from the country where I've spent most of my life - Bulgaria. For a million and one reasons, I find brutalism absolutely repugnant. Each time I see a brutalist building(even in a picture) I can feel the smell of moist plywood and depressing stained brown carpets glued to the concrete underneath - I just can't help it. However I find a lot of charm in the buildings from the article, while I can't find any in those I've seen all my life on daily basis. I really can't say why though.