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Prague's Brutalist Buildings

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Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings

#71

Post by Dumblydorr »

I had the misfortune of being forced into the only good high school option in my city, a brutalist structure made in the 60s.

It was so ugly. Every time it rained, the concrete became streaked with sludge and gross lines. The few windows weren't glass, they were semi opaque plastic to save money. They put in extra small windows so they could fit in window AC units, but ran out of money, so there was neither AC nor large windows nor even screens. The stairwells all had these "artistic" gaps on the sides, 4 inches of nothing, so many kids threw shit down those and there was no reason for them, they limited the useful width of the stairs.

To top it all off, there was asbestos and lead paint everywhere, we knew we were exposed to toxins but they had no budget to repair it. They actually cut music completely for half of my years because it's less important than the other subjects, I suppose? Inner city public schools in the USA, very budget limited.

Brutalism was, in my aesthetic opinion, one of the downright ugliest movements in art history.

Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings

#72

Post by dralley »

m4rtink wrote: post #54
saiya-jin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. :)

Brno was a really nice place to visit, as an uncultured American :)

It was the first city I've been to that felt truly oriented around walking and public transportation instead of being swarmed by cars. And I really enjoyed the overall aesthetic of the city.

Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings

#73

Post by scyzoryk_xyz »

vvm wrote: post #28
saiya-jin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 am a little surprised by what you say. I've been living in Prague for 9 years (moved here, not Czech) and 8 of them I lived in Prague 5 bordering the Old Town, in 2 buildings build in Art Nouveau style, from around 1900. They were renovated, with modern elevators and looked pretty good both inside and outside.The area was very beautiful. Now I live in a communist tower block in Prague 4 and to be honest it's really…

That’s because it was socialist modernism - a utopian vision that drove support. A sort of more sustainable socialist version of the American dream. I live in such a neighborhood myself - it’s not very glamorous but it’s what living should be like in the age of environmental collapse.

Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings

#74

Post by def_true_false »

cousin_it wrote: post #51
eternalban wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> because five stories high gives you plenty of density, and that's doable in "pretty" styles as many European cities show.

Lol. Plenty of density is relative. It does give you more than the average density of a West coast city, which is enough to get upvotes here, though, so there is that.

> 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.

There is an order of magnitude more regulation. Or maybe an order of magnitude more paperwork?

Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings

#76

Post by sonofhans »

wodenokoto wrote: post #10
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.

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.

This is a stunning photograph, too. I'm glad I don't live there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_vulture_and_the_little_gir...

Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings

#77

Post by jdavis703 »

aclimatt wrote: post #64

Every time a holier-than-thou architectural magazine waxes poetic about the beauty of "poor forgotten brutalism", they make their point by showing extremely well-cropped, always black and white, high contrast images to make the shadows pop. And then say wow isn't it a shame we're tearing these down? It's because that's not what crumbling Soviet-era buildings look like. Sure they're fun to photograph. I've seen these…

Concrete requires protection against water intrusion. Unfortunately everyone from Prizren to Surfside doesn’t want to pay.

That doesn’t mean it can’t look nice. The DC subway is brutalist, and very well might be the most beautiful subway system in the US.

Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings

#78

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings

#79

Post by uwagar »

nzp wrote: post #29
paganel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Might be helpful for people interested in this, an acquaintance of mine recently started working on a project for an online archive of socialist modernist concrete-based (so not only brutalism in strict sense) architecture (contains photos, info, publications, art projects inspired by the subject, etc.): https://belgradesocialmodernism.com/

very cool!

Re: Prague's Brutalist Buildings

#80

Post by inglor_cz »

mgkimsal wrote: post #59
inglor_cz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thank you.

My Google search results were probably skewed towards architecture by the facts that I am a native of the city where "sorela architecture" is found, that I was actually very recently there for a visit and that I searched for several architectonic terms right before engaging in this discussion.

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