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That postcard with an aerial shot of housing blocks in Novi Beograd must represent a regional trend. In Romania after the turn of the millennium, I found some o
by Mediterraneo10 8y ago
That postcard with an aerial shot of housing blocks in Novi Beograd must represent a regional trend. In Romania after the turn of the millennium, I found some old postcards from the 1980s in a bookshop that were still, though covered in dust, for sale. Several of them were the same: aerial shots of new residential neighbourhoods with buildings of not particularly impressive architecture. I don’t know if Communist officials actually thought that Western tourists would be interested in these kind of shots, or if postcards were just exploited as one more disingenuous propaganda medium for boasting about development statistics. Probably a mix of both.
- Symbiote 8y agoWould there have been sufficient Western tourists for that to be a market? I think it's more likely they were produced for the residents of those places, to send to friends and relatives. "Look how nice our new home is!" — and it was nice, in 1980, compared to what it replaced.
- simias 8y agoEven in non-communist France these horrible concrete boxes were once hailed as the future of housing. When they were first built they had all the comfort the middle class yearned for at the time. The problem is that they degraded very fast and soon became synonymous with "poor people houses". Here's a postcard from the 60's for instance: https://i.redd.it/3ofea4jd6k2z.jpg https://i.redd.it/3ofea4jd6k2z.jpg
- V-2 8y agoFrance wasn't communist, but it was heavily influenced by communist ideas. I believe it had the second largest communist party in the West (after Italy), and Le Corbusier was highly revered in the USSR.
- rfinney 8y agoSame in the U.S.: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cabrini+green+projects&t=ffsb&ia=images&iax=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cabrini+green+projects&t=ffsb&ia=i... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=robert+taylor+homes&t=ffsb&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=robert+taylor+homes&t=ffsb&iar=ima...
- baybal2 8y ago>horrible concrete boxes The cubic shape has the best utilisation of materials per unit of usable space. Houses must be cubical.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Jedd 8y ago> > horrible concrete boxes > The cubic shape has the best utilisation of materials per unit of usable space. Houses must be cubical. I think parent was describing combination of box-like aesthetics with the unpleasantness that is concrete. I think you may be mistaken - domes are perhaps a better utilisation per unit of usable space. Also, it's definitely not the case that houses must be cubical, for any reason(s), let alone just to attempt to maximise the ratio of materials per unit of area / volume.
- fourthark 8y agoHumans need natural light. Big cubes have a low proportion of rooms with natural light.
- rocky1138 8y agoHey! I live in one of those types of places. If they are kept up with the times and maintained properly they are a nice place to live http://www.rentcompass.com/Rentals/Guelph/1407/2-Quebec-Street/L20489 http://www.rentcompass.com/Rentals/Guelph/1407/2-Quebec-Stre...
- reaperducer 8y agoThat postcard with an aerial shot of housing blocks in Novi Beograd must represent a regional trend. Reminds me very much of what I saw in Brno, in what is now the Czech Republic. Also, modern-day Seoul, and many other large Asian cities. I think it's just a different mindset. Where the West puts a high value on uniqueness, conformity is prized in other cultures. See also: Vancouver's skyscrapers, and suburban tract housing, both of which are ridiculed for their sameness.
- icebraining 8y agoAnd yet, pre-soviet Russian architecture doesn't seem to share that trait.
- ak217 8y agoPre-Soviet Russian architecture served tens of thousands of highly privileged people in metro areas and estates. Meanwhile everyone else lived in izbas with no electricity, running water or sanitation, or worse. The khruschyovkas and neobrutalist apartment blocks, for all their faults, lifted tens of millions of people out of medieval living conditions. They made extensive use of mass production and prefab.
- gandhium 8y agoWell, khruschyovkas and neobrutalist apartment blocks were started some 40 years _after_ Soviet rule was established. So their primary target before that was not to take millions out of mediocre living conditions, but world revolutions and such.
- ak217 8y agoThat it was. I am under no illusion about the communists.
- HarryHirsch 8y agoBefore they had khrushchyovkas they had komunalkas. Most everyone is familiar with Doctor Zhivago, aren't they?
- DenisM 8y agoI can assure that people who lived in the wooden shacks found this picture amazing. An obvious demonstration that the country is moving into the future at neck-breaking speed. Most propaganda I believe is targeted to their own population.
- ptero 8y agoI suspect mostly second. For example, in Soviet Union housing was a huge pain point. Young (and not so young) residents who did not live with their parents lived in dorms for years (sometimes 10+ years) while the queue for their own apartment slowly moved on. Those postcards may be showing something to look up to only several short years away. I think.
- ummonk 8y agoWell, seeing the sorry state of housing development in the Bay Area, that does seem rather impressive to me...
- frandroid 8y agozzzzzing!!