11–20 of 159 posts
"They suggested some kind of pattern. Their peculiar ugliness consisted in the very fact that they kept on suggesting it and then frustrating the expectation thus aroused."
I think it looks really nice but alluded to in the article is the spectre of people who thought they were doing something equally innovative in the 1950s and we now have large brutalist city centres that are much lamented. There are plenty of buildings that look amazing when they are first built (or even worse when they are simply drawn) but give it 5 years, some water staining, a few unruly residents etc.... I don't…
I think it looks really nice but alluded to in the article is the spectre of people who thought they were doing something equally innovative in the 1950s and we now have large brutalist city centres that are much lamented. There are plenty of buildings that look amazing when they are first built (or even worse when they are simply drawn) but give it 5 years, some water staining, a few unruly residents etc.... I don't…
What are some examples of these regretted 1950s brutalist city centers?
https://archive.curbed.com/2019/6/7/18657121/brasilia-brazil...
It's not something worth to visit. It's still too sterile. Nobody visits Almere for the city.
Ugh, those red buildings. There are wonderfully colored houses/buildings in many of the picturesque neighborhoods you see in certain towns. It seems like they tried to do the same with those. In my opinion, it doesn't work. There's no color variation, no trim/contrast to make the colors pop and look good. It just looks like an ugly red building that would hurt my eyes to see that much red every day (imagine being in…
If it makes you feel better: the colors in that image are oversaturated.
To give a Dutch perspective: Lots of Dutch people would not be found dead in Almere (founded in '76), for a long time it was basically a satellite city of Amsterdam where people went to sleep. Then in the mid 90's it started to change: companies realized that the daily traffic jam to Amsterdam in the morning and to Almere in the evening was a major obstacle, so why not relocate the company to Almere? And this caused…
From that to a few hundred thousand inhabitants is quite unusual here.
I think it looks really nice but alluded to in the article is the spectre of people who thought they were doing something equally innovative in the 1950s and we now have large brutalist city centres that are much lamented. There are plenty of buildings that look amazing when they are first built (or even worse when they are simply drawn) but give it 5 years, some water staining, a few unruly residents etc.... I don't…
What are some examples of these regretted 1950s brutalist city centers?
It's unfortunate because there's still a few historic buildings from before that era suggesting what might have been.
Unfortunately it is now uncertain whether any of this matters 100 years from now. It is expected that sea levels will rise by more than 2 meters, and that dykes will no longer work beyond an extra 2 meter extension, not because they can't be extended but because Dutch soil is too soft and seawater will just go under the dyke. Almere will probably be amongst the first to go. It seems nobody has proposed a solution, bu…
There have recently been plans to raise prices but since Florida is such an important state to Federal elections there's a massive political hurdle
Unfortunately it is now uncertain whether any of this matters 100 years from now. It is expected that sea levels will rise by more than 2 meters, and that dykes will no longer work beyond an extra 2 meter extension, not because they can't be extended but because Dutch soil is too soft and seawater will just go under the dyke. Almere will probably be amongst the first to go. It seems nobody has proposed a solution, bu…
There are some voices that NL will have to abandon terrain, I think we'll see the exact opposite: more terrain will be created with the express goal of being used as basins for increased control over water. The important bit when you construct dikes is the delta between the water table on one side of the dike and on the other and we already have areas where there are three such dikes in a row to be able to deal with fairly extreme differences in water levels.
If you drive or cycle in the North of the country every now and then you'll find yourself crossing through a dike with a concrete lintel built into the dike body, this is where in the case of high water the dike can very rapidly be closed again and turned into a functioning part of the water defenses.
Those dikes are called 'sleeping' dikes they are still there and ready to be activated but normally they are transparent to traffic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeper_dike
https://www.climatechangepost.com/netherlands/coastal-floods...
Other evidence that this can be done is that there are some massive artificial lakes constructed all over the world with dams that have a 'head' that is much higher than anything that NL will ever have to deal with.
A bigger problem than keeping the sea out will be to deal with the rain water coming into the Netherlands by way of the very large rivers. These carry massive flow (from a total area much, much larger than that of the country itself) during some times of the year and to accommodate that flow and ensure that the land behind the river dikes doesn't flood is - in my opinion - a much bigger problem when the sea level rises. During some storms you see a reversal in the flow of the rivers in the delta. Several interesting constructs are located near Rotterdam and Zeeland, transparent to shipping but it can be closed quickly if such reverse flow threatens the land:
https://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/water/waterbeheer/bescherming...
(Dutch)
Those 'pie slices' are as large as the Eiffel tower but mobile, and are some of the most impressive engineering works that I've seen in my life.