13 ms·

Prague's Brutalist Buildings

149 points by samizdis 5y ago

leto_ii 5y ago
Between this post and the one about the Yugoslav art movement, calvertjournal is really getting the HN hug of death right now.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
I visited Czechoslovakia and East a few times when the Wall was still up. The biggest impression was how gray and drab everything was in the cities. It seemed everything was gray and covered with a thin layer of dirt. Very depressing. The countrysides were just neglected and decrepit. Also depressing in a different way.
- newby 5y ago
  I grew up in Czechoslovakia and I remember vividly how we visited Austria shortly after the fall of iron curtain. Everything seemed so clean and colorful and well maintained - it was shocking. I saw billboards for the first time in my life and they seemed incredibly beautiful to me. Until that visit I never realized how gray and falling apart was my normal environment (I was 13 at the time) - it seemed normal and I assumed it was like that everywhere.
  - m4rtink 5y ago
    Yeah, flaking of facades not repaired in decades used to be the norm, with some of them even still having shot holes from the last days of WWII! And all that covered by soot from all the many houses burning poor quality coal. It took many years after The Fall to put things in order and now such a facade is the exception, not the norm. Still, there is that one house with nicely painted iron fence clearly showing WWII bullet holes, from a long forgotten firefight.
busyant 5y ago
It just hit me that I associate brutalist architecture with Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, in particular the marina scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtRGeyznv7k&t=27s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtRGeyznv7k&t=27s). I'm not even sure if that's brutalist architecture in the background, but brutalist architecture has a dystopian vibe that goes hand in hand with the film.
- m4rtink 5y ago
  That was filmed in Thamesmead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thamesmead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thamesmead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov2btkixcAc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov2btkixcAc The architecture there should be apparently Cubist/Brutalist/Modernist.
zedr 5y ago
Archive.org copy: http://web.archive.org/web/20211021141127/https://www.calvertjournal.com/features/show/13210/best-brutalist-buildings-in-prague-czech-republic-socialist-modernist-architecture 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_City_Gate
- paganel 5y ago
  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.
  - rapsey 5y ago
    Belgrade was not a part of the Soviet Union
    - jhgb 5y ago
      Uh...that's what he said? Had it been a part of USSR, it wouldn't have been outside of it.
    - paganel 5y ago
      That's why I've said "outside of the former Soviet Union", inside the former Soviet Union there are cities which can compete with Belgrade on the brutalist front, from what I was able to see from IG Sankt Petersburg and Kyiv are quite interesting on that front. To say nothing of the brutalist Soviet bus stations which deserve an architectural category/style all for themselves [1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/sep/02/futuristic-soviet-bus-stops-in-pictures https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/sep/02...
  - nzp 5y ago
    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/ https://belgradesocialmodernism.com/
noduerme 5y ago
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 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.
- kvgr 5y ago
  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.
  - FatalLogic 5y ago
    If people were spitting on the wall, the stain would be wider at the bottom, not at the top, because more people would pass the lower floors
    - noduerme 5y ago
      It was blood. The sheer volume of it, the color, not to mention the distribution pattern, left pretty much no room for doubt. Also, one floor above where it started there was no stain at all - but nothing appeared to be repainted.
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  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 the city in the middle of nowhere, dooming themselves to another 30+ years of daily miserable commutes by car. These days, even this is unattainable for most due to price boom. Its a strange place, folks are smart, work is often good but I wouldn't want to live there or raise kids no matter what.
inglor_cz 5y ago
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.
- wodenokoto 5y ago
  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.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    They are stunning photos, yes. So I guess this should be a discussion about how we can romanticize and contextualize anything with art.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    The thing is, quite a lot of those things look better when photoed from a distance and much less so when you actually need to walk around them in your daily life. I used to live next to two rather famous Brutalist buildings. One of them was actually kept in good order and the original architect seemed not to be outright enemy of mankind. It still had a score of problems, but well. The other one was beyond ugly; it was actively evil. I wasn't surprised when I later learnt that the Communist secret police (StB) had extensive wiretapping and surveillance facilities there, among others. It was just a perfect fit.
    - noduerme 5y ago
      >> seemed not to be outright enemy of mankind Isn't it incredible that people who had so much hate of their fellow man were allowed to design entire environments for people to spend their lives in? And that we were actually taught about this as a "movement" in school, as if it were just a natural extension of modernism?
greyman 5y ago
I'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).
- newby 5y ago
  Well... I am glad that nowadays they often paint "paneláky" with some vivid colors. When I think about cold and gray winter days surrounded by huge blocks of cold and gray concrete - it is like personification of depression for me. And now there is usually lawn and some trees but I remember when we moved into one of then new communist housing projects (how would you translate "sídliště"?) when I was a kid - there was nothing nice to look at, just mud and concrete.
  - kvgr 5y ago
    I would be happy if they painted them in less vivid colors. Say you have 4 big panel buildings. Each has its owners association. Each one sets different color from different color pallet. You end up with heaven 1 blue, 1 army green/shitbrown, 1 bright green/yellow and 1 red buildings next to each other. The structure is massive and if you put different colors that dont match it is horrible pain for brain.
Deep6 5y ago
I'm presently looking into building my residence using precast concrete. I love the raw concrete aesthetic,all the benefits from an insurance and maintenance perspective. You folks here are making me doubt the resale value...
- ericmay 5y ago
  I mean yea most people don’t want to live in a bunker. Ask yourself why everyone talks about and photographs places like Nyhaven in Copenhagen and not Boston City Hall. With enough money and smart uses of glass you can make a house that is made of concrete but getting it right is going to be a big challenge. A good rule of thumb is to use building materials that would be local to the area and climate and then go from there.
- zdragnar 5y ago
  You might be in the minority enjoying precast concrete. In good news, you can easily wrap it in a variety of exterior materials when you want to sell. Everything from thin cut stone (imitating brick or mortared rock foundation) to half-log siding to plain vinyl siding would be am option, though the half or quarter-log siding might be tricky wrt moisture retention up against the concrete- not sure if that would affect the expected lifetime of the wood.
- newby 5y ago
  I think it depends... I really dislike brutalist architecture but I have seen same concrete buildings that I really liked. I remember university library where I used to spend a lot of time reading - it was made from raw concrete but in more modern style: huge windows (basically all glass wall), the concrete was contrasted with wood and some bright colors (orange carpets if I remember correctly) - it was really pleasant to be there, it felt sunny and somehow "natural".
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  I think it’s alright. This architecture mostly gets depressing if it gets dominant. One concrete house in an otherwise normal neighborhood may actually look quite interesting.
Oddskar 5y ago
I fail to see the appeal. Much like most modern architecture this style will be applauded by architects, meanwhile they all choose to live in much older style architecture because it's more homely and non-oppressive. I guess architects are a bit like hedge-fund managers in that regard; they all keep their investments in index funds and not hedge funds. Complete hypocrisy imho.
- soneca 5y ago
  Not that I like hedge-fund managers, but isn’t the norm for them to keep a very large portion of their wealth in their own hedge funds? As for the rest of it, it only makes sense to keep it in index funds if not diversify in other types of investments that are not hedge funds?
flohofwoe 5y ago
The photos in the article look very similar to the Czech embassy in Berlin, definitely one of the more interesting buildings in Berlin, especially compared to the more modern, and more bland buildings which are being built today: https://goo.gl/maps/uYXymgc9bfbZ9Pu69 https://goo.gl/maps/uYXymgc9bfbZ9Pu69
eltados 5y ago
https://archive.md/MpQWy https://archive.md/MpQWy
ax0l0tl 5y ago
Here is a better view of the National theatre https://www.google.com/maps/@50.0813684,14.4138734,3a,75y,134.26h,106.84t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1scHnOzqcsifiiRxoKcQNzlw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@50.0813684,14.4138734,3a,75y,13...
meepmorp 5y ago
My "favorite" brutalist building in the CR is the department store on old town square in Olomouc. It's so wildly and incredibly out of character with everything else around, it's like a space ship landed across from the orloj and somehow nobody noticed.
- inb4_cancelled 5y ago
  Btw they did the same thing in Jihlava.
ThinkBeat 5y ago
I like a lot of brutalist buildings. If I could, I would build a brutalist building for my home. I have my truly amateur drawings ready. Given that I have 0 education as an architect or civil engineer it would probably collapse before it was ever finished. I am only aware of one brutalist private dwelling in Oslo, there might be more. Another was planned but that is a long story, and it was not approved in the end. Most brutalist buildings have some character and they cannot be ignored I fully understand that the brutalist esthetics is lost for most people. According to Wikipedia we are now in the postmodern phase of architecture. The example buildings form makes me think that a lot of the world has not made it that far yet. Buildings being erected over the past 20 years all seem to be rectangular boxes. If they want to be fancy its glass and steel. Extremely generic. Some try to make up for it by having a lobby with a ridiculously high ceiling. The open space is not used for anything creative or anything at all really. The huge empty space speaks for itself. I highly prefer the brutalist era. If nothing else, it is less boring.
nzp 5y ago
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/ https://www.greyscape.com/architects/rozzol-melara-trieste/ [2]: http://architectuul.com/architecture/rozzol-melara-complex http://architectuul.com/architecture/rozzol-melara-complex
A_non_e-moose 5y ago
> 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-the-intercontinental-are-concerned-about-the-depletion-of-35-tons-of-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-regulations/a-complete-guide-to-the-history-of-asbestos-law-and-regulations/ 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.
axegon_ 5y ago
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.
aclimatt 5y ago
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 buildings from Prague to Prizren and they are categorically awful, as most others agree. Concrete doesn't aesthetically age well. Preserve one or two for historical importance and raze the rest. It's fair to open dialogue about the importance of preserving historical buildings even if most people think they're ugly. After all, we've committed countless "mistakes" in the past when taste has changed (Penn Station anyone?). But the least we can do is start with some honest photography.
- jdavis703 5y ago
  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.
  - sokols 5y ago
    You can be sure for Prizren yes, although there are far less brutalist buildings there :).
- ocschwar 5y ago
  I love how the most beautiful old quarters in the Baltic states are there because the Soviet Union "punished" those cities and didn't get Kruschyovas built there.
- Radiant 5y ago
  I'd agree with you if you were talking about generic "commieblock" buildings, but the ones presented in this article are pretty original and have a monumental feel to them. Pretty sad to see your sentiment upvoted this high on HN.
- 5y ago
jl6 5y ago
Fun fact: Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger was named after the brutalist architect Ernő Goldfinger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernő_Goldfinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernő_Goldfinger Goldfinger was known as a humourless man given to notorious rages. He sometimes fired his assistants if they were inappropriately jocular, and once forcibly ejected two prospective clients for imposing restrictions on his design.
Dumblydorr 5y ago
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.
mitchbob 5y ago
Looks like this page is getting the HN hug of death. Archived version: https://archive.ph/MpQWy https://archive.ph/MpQWy
jollybean 5y ago
Those are all over E. Europe and they are a stark, daily, reminder, like a 'trigger', of the brutal totalitarianism of the past. It contrasts with everything else so much. As a Westerner, when you visit, it makes you feel like there was a giant foot on the neck of all of the people for generations. Or like there was a 'Concrete Ice Age' over everything. We reiterate the stories about the Nazis quite a lot, because 'we fought them', but we don't do a good enough job in entertainment of providing a visceral exposure to that era, and what it meant for so many. To add salt to the wounds and make an even more complicated argument, so many of the most talented people have left these countries for W. Europe, thanks to the EU. This actually might be net-net beneficial in the economic short run (i.e. market clearing for labour), but in the long run it also means a hollowing out of the most precious resource of these places, and leaving them to be the West Virginia's of the EU. Not quite, but almost.
- jollybean 5y ago
  Here [1] you see direct evidence of this in the Danish context, but it's the same everywhere. The population of E. Europe is literally in decline [2] It's not birth rate [3] (it's note hugely different in Europe, but errs higher in the East). The people leaving E. Europe are 'able bodied workers' and 'the educated' and 'students leaving to get education and jobs in the West' - i.e. E. Europe's absolutely most valuable 'assets'. E. Europe is clearly being hollowed out in a very material way. The 'freedom of movement' foundation of the EU is not really a humanitarian issue, though it's usually framed popularly as such, it's fundamentally a neoliberal policy, i.e. 'worker mobility' as European leaders believe this is a fundamental advantage of the US. [1] https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20210616152303195 https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=202106161... [2] https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/eastern-europe-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/eastern-europ... [3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/612074/fertility-rates-in-european-countries/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/612074/fertility-rates-i...
stemlord 5y ago
Hey I recognize that metro station https://www.discogs.com/master/6164-Convextion-Convextion https://www.discogs.com/master/6164-Convextion-Convextion :D
khendron 5y ago
In my experience, brutalist buildings are interesting to look at from the outside, but not so great from the inside. Once you've gone inside, you might as well be underground.
mastax 5y ago
This article has an interesting discussion of the gulf in opinion between Architects and society at large: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/whither-tartaria https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/whither-tartaria Probably overstates the case a little, but interesting nonetheless.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
timka 5y ago
I'd call this Soviet constructivism.

149 points by samizdis 5y ago

Between this post and the one about the Yugoslav art movement, calvertjournal is really getting the HN hug of death right now.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

I visited Czechoslovakia and East a few times when the Wall was still up. The biggest impression was how gray and drab everything was in the cities. It seemed everything was gray and covered with a thin layer of dirt. Very depressing. The countrysides were just neglected and decrepit. Also depressing in a different way.

newby 5y ago
I grew up in Czechoslovakia and I remember vividly how we visited Austria shortly after the fall of iron curtain. Everything seemed so clean and colorful and well maintained - it was shocking. I saw billboards for the first time in my life and they seemed incredibly beautiful to me. Until that visit I never realized how gray and falling apart was my normal environment (I was 13 at the time) - it seemed normal and I assumed it was like that everywhere.
- m4rtink 5y ago
  Yeah, flaking of facades not repaired in decades used to be the norm, with some of them even still having shot holes from the last days of WWII! And all that covered by soot from all the many houses burning poor quality coal. It took many years after The Fall to put things in order and now such a facade is the exception, not the norm. Still, there is that one house with nicely painted iron fence clearly showing WWII bullet holes, from a long forgotten firefight.

busyant 5y ago

It just hit me that I associate brutalist architecture with Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, in particular the marina scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtRGeyznv7k&t=27s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtRGeyznv7k&t=27s). I'm not even sure if that's brutalist architecture in the background, but brutalist architecture has a dystopian vibe that goes hand in hand with the film.

m4rtink 5y ago
That was filmed in Thamesmead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thamesmead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thamesmead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov2btkixcAc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov2btkixcAc The architecture there should be apparently Cubist/Brutalist/Modernist.

zedr 5y ago

Archive.org copy: http://web.archive.org/web/20211021141127/https://www.calvertjournal.com/features/show/13210/best-brutalist-buildings-in-prague-czech-republic-socialist-modernist-architecture 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_City_Gate

paganel 5y ago
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.
- rapsey 5y ago
  Belgrade was not a part of the Soviet Union
  - jhgb 5y ago
    Uh...that's what he said? Had it been a part of USSR, it wouldn't have been outside of it.
  - paganel 5y ago
    That's why I've said "outside of the former Soviet Union", inside the former Soviet Union there are cities which can compete with Belgrade on the brutalist front, from what I was able to see from IG Sankt Petersburg and Kyiv are quite interesting on that front. To say nothing of the brutalist Soviet bus stations which deserve an architectural category/style all for themselves [1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/sep/02/futuristic-soviet-bus-stops-in-pictures https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/sep/02...
- nzp 5y ago
  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/ https://belgradesocialmodernism.com/

noduerme 5y ago

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 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.

kvgr 5y ago
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.
- FatalLogic 5y ago
  If people were spitting on the wall, the stain would be wider at the bottom, not at the top, because more people would pass the lower floors
  - noduerme 5y ago
    It was blood. The sheer volume of it, the color, not to mention the distribution pattern, left pretty much no room for doubt. Also, one floor above where it started there was no stain at all - but nothing appeared to be repainted.
saiya-jin 5y ago
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 the city in the middle of nowhere, dooming themselves to another 30+ years of daily miserable commutes by car. These days, even this is unattainable for most due to price boom. Its a strange place, folks are smart, work is often good but I wouldn't want to live there or raise kids no matter what.

inglor_cz 5y ago

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.

wodenokoto 5y ago
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.
- jollybean 5y ago
  They are stunning photos, yes. So I guess this should be a discussion about how we can romanticize and contextualize anything with art.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  The thing is, quite a lot of those things look better when photoed from a distance and much less so when you actually need to walk around them in your daily life. I used to live next to two rather famous Brutalist buildings. One of them was actually kept in good order and the original architect seemed not to be outright enemy of mankind. It still had a score of problems, but well. The other one was beyond ugly; it was actively evil. I wasn't surprised when I later learnt that the Communist secret police (StB) had extensive wiretapping and surveillance facilities there, among others. It was just a perfect fit.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    >> seemed not to be outright enemy of mankind Isn't it incredible that people who had so much hate of their fellow man were allowed to design entire environments for people to spend their lives in? And that we were actually taught about this as a "movement" in school, as if it were just a natural extension of modernism?

greyman 5y ago

I'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).

newby 5y ago
Well... I am glad that nowadays they often paint "paneláky" with some vivid colors. When I think about cold and gray winter days surrounded by huge blocks of cold and gray concrete - it is like personification of depression for me. And now there is usually lawn and some trees but I remember when we moved into one of then new communist housing projects (how would you translate "sídliště"?) when I was a kid - there was nothing nice to look at, just mud and concrete.
- kvgr 5y ago
  I would be happy if they painted them in less vivid colors. Say you have 4 big panel buildings. Each has its owners association. Each one sets different color from different color pallet. You end up with heaven 1 blue, 1 army green/shitbrown, 1 bright green/yellow and 1 red buildings next to each other. The structure is massive and if you put different colors that dont match it is horrible pain for brain.

Deep6 5y ago

I'm presently looking into building my residence using precast concrete. I love the raw concrete aesthetic,all the benefits from an insurance and maintenance perspective. You folks here are making me doubt the resale value...

ericmay 5y ago
I mean yea most people don’t want to live in a bunker. Ask yourself why everyone talks about and photographs places like Nyhaven in Copenhagen and not Boston City Hall. With enough money and smart uses of glass you can make a house that is made of concrete but getting it right is going to be a big challenge. A good rule of thumb is to use building materials that would be local to the area and climate and then go from there.
zdragnar 5y ago
You might be in the minority enjoying precast concrete. In good news, you can easily wrap it in a variety of exterior materials when you want to sell. Everything from thin cut stone (imitating brick or mortared rock foundation) to half-log siding to plain vinyl siding would be am option, though the half or quarter-log siding might be tricky wrt moisture retention up against the concrete- not sure if that would affect the expected lifetime of the wood.
newby 5y ago
I think it depends... I really dislike brutalist architecture but I have seen same concrete buildings that I really liked. I remember university library where I used to spend a lot of time reading - it was made from raw concrete but in more modern style: huge windows (basically all glass wall), the concrete was contrasted with wood and some bright colors (orange carpets if I remember correctly) - it was really pleasant to be there, it felt sunny and somehow "natural".
spaetzleesser 5y ago
I think it’s alright. This architecture mostly gets depressing if it gets dominant. One concrete house in an otherwise normal neighborhood may actually look quite interesting.

Oddskar 5y ago

I fail to see the appeal. Much like most modern architecture this style will be applauded by architects, meanwhile they all choose to live in much older style architecture because it's more homely and non-oppressive. I guess architects are a bit like hedge-fund managers in that regard; they all keep their investments in index funds and not hedge funds. Complete hypocrisy imho.

soneca 5y ago
Not that I like hedge-fund managers, but isn’t the norm for them to keep a very large portion of their wealth in their own hedge funds? As for the rest of it, it only makes sense to keep it in index funds if not diversify in other types of investments that are not hedge funds?

flohofwoe 5y ago

The photos in the article look very similar to the Czech embassy in Berlin, definitely one of the more interesting buildings in Berlin, especially compared to the more modern, and more bland buildings which are being built today: https://goo.gl/maps/uYXymgc9bfbZ9Pu69 https://goo.gl/maps/uYXymgc9bfbZ9Pu69

eltados 5y ago

https://archive.md/MpQWy https://archive.md/MpQWy

ax0l0tl 5y ago

Here is a better view of the National theatre https://www.google.com/maps/@50.0813684,14.4138734,3a,75y,134.26h,106.84t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1scHnOzqcsifiiRxoKcQNzlw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@50.0813684,14.4138734,3a,75y,13...

meepmorp 5y ago

My "favorite" brutalist building in the CR is the department store on old town square in Olomouc. It's so wildly and incredibly out of character with everything else around, it's like a space ship landed across from the orloj and somehow nobody noticed.

inb4_cancelled 5y ago
Btw they did the same thing in Jihlava.

ThinkBeat 5y ago

I like a lot of brutalist buildings. If I could, I would build a brutalist building for my home. I have my truly amateur drawings ready. Given that I have 0 education as an architect or civil engineer it would probably collapse before it was ever finished. I am only aware of one brutalist private dwelling in Oslo, there might be more. Another was planned but that is a long story, and it was not approved in the end. Most brutalist buildings have some character and they cannot be ignored I fully understand that the brutalist esthetics is lost for most people. According to Wikipedia we are now in the postmodern phase of architecture. The example buildings form makes me think that a lot of the world has not made it that far yet. Buildings being erected over the past 20 years all seem to be rectangular boxes. If they want to be fancy its glass and steel. Extremely generic. Some try to make up for it by having a lobby with a ridiculously high ceiling. The open space is not used for anything creative or anything at all really. The huge empty space speaks for itself. I highly prefer the brutalist era. If nothing else, it is less boring.

nzp 5y ago

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

A_non_e-moose 5y ago

> 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-the-intercontinental-are-concerned-about-the-depletion-of-35-tons-of-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-regulations/a-complete-guide-to-the-history-of-asbestos-law-and-regulations/ 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.

axegon_ 5y ago

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.

aclimatt 5y ago

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 buildings from Prague to Prizren and they are categorically awful, as most others agree. Concrete doesn't aesthetically age well. Preserve one or two for historical importance and raze the rest. It's fair to open dialogue about the importance of preserving historical buildings even if most people think they're ugly. After all, we've committed countless "mistakes" in the past when taste has changed (Penn Station anyone?). But the least we can do is start with some honest photography.

jdavis703 5y ago
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.
- sokols 5y ago
  You can be sure for Prizren yes, although there are far less brutalist buildings there :).
ocschwar 5y ago
I love how the most beautiful old quarters in the Baltic states are there because the Soviet Union "punished" those cities and didn't get Kruschyovas built there.
Radiant 5y ago
I'd agree with you if you were talking about generic "commieblock" buildings, but the ones presented in this article are pretty original and have a monumental feel to them. Pretty sad to see your sentiment upvoted this high on HN.
5y ago

jl6 5y ago

Fun fact: Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger was named after the brutalist architect Ernő Goldfinger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernő_Goldfinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernő_Goldfinger Goldfinger was known as a humourless man given to notorious rages. He sometimes fired his assistants if they were inappropriately jocular, and once forcibly ejected two prospective clients for imposing restrictions on his design.

Dumblydorr 5y ago

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.

mitchbob 5y ago

Looks like this page is getting the HN hug of death. Archived version: https://archive.ph/MpQWy https://archive.ph/MpQWy

jollybean 5y ago

Those are all over E. Europe and they are a stark, daily, reminder, like a 'trigger', of the brutal totalitarianism of the past. It contrasts with everything else so much. As a Westerner, when you visit, it makes you feel like there was a giant foot on the neck of all of the people for generations. Or like there was a 'Concrete Ice Age' over everything. We reiterate the stories about the Nazis quite a lot, because 'we fought them', but we don't do a good enough job in entertainment of providing a visceral exposure to that era, and what it meant for so many. To add salt to the wounds and make an even more complicated argument, so many of the most talented people have left these countries for W. Europe, thanks to the EU. This actually might be net-net beneficial in the economic short run (i.e. market clearing for labour), but in the long run it also means a hollowing out of the most precious resource of these places, and leaving them to be the West Virginia's of the EU. Not quite, but almost.

jollybean 5y ago
Here [1] you see direct evidence of this in the Danish context, but it's the same everywhere. The population of E. Europe is literally in decline [2] It's not birth rate [3] (it's note hugely different in Europe, but errs higher in the East). The people leaving E. Europe are 'able bodied workers' and 'the educated' and 'students leaving to get education and jobs in the West' - i.e. E. Europe's absolutely most valuable 'assets'. E. Europe is clearly being hollowed out in a very material way. The 'freedom of movement' foundation of the EU is not really a humanitarian issue, though it's usually framed popularly as such, it's fundamentally a neoliberal policy, i.e. 'worker mobility' as European leaders believe this is a fundamental advantage of the US. [1] https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20210616152303195 https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=202106161... [2] https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/eastern-europe-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/eastern-europ... [3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/612074/fertility-rates-in-european-countries/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/612074/fertility-rates-i...

stemlord 5y ago

Hey I recognize that metro station https://www.discogs.com/master/6164-Convextion-Convextion https://www.discogs.com/master/6164-Convextion-Convextion :D

khendron 5y ago

In my experience, brutalist buildings are interesting to look at from the outside, but not so great from the inside. Once you've gone inside, you might as well be underground.

mastax 5y ago

This article has an interesting discussion of the gulf in opinion between Architects and society at large: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/whither-tartaria https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/whither-tartaria Probably overstates the case a little, but interesting nonetheless.

deleted 5y ago

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timka 5y ago

I'd call this Soviet constructivism.