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Many of the brutalist buildings, perhaps not those in the USSR, are designed with humans very much in mind. Many of the issues that have been with life in bruta

Many of the brutalist buildings, perhaps not those in the USSR, are designed with humans very much in mind. Many of the issues that have been with life in brutalist builds are down to them being frequently used for social housing. Placing a large number of relative poor people, drug users, people with mental health problem and a myriad of other issues in the same place will cause trouble regardless of the building type. That’s not to say that all brutalist builds are great, far from it, but they are blamed for a number of problems cause by the types of people they’re frequently used to house, not the buildings.

inglor_cz 5y ago
Well, what is the causality there? Communist countries were not as socially stratified as the West is now. In a Czechoslovak "panelák" (block of flats), doctors, professors, waiters and diggers lived side by side. But the extreme growth of vandalism and alienation in this type of living was readily apparent by the 1980s. Lifts reeked of urine, graffiti was on every wall, glass panes were broken and trash receptacles kicked flat. This wasn't a Communist-only thing either. Try finding an English translation of the heroin story "We Children from Station ZOO", written by a West Berlin junkie Christiane F. She devotes extensive passages at the beginning of the book to the soul crushing Gropiusstadt, which seemed almost constructed to make childhood more complicated and less joyful. A hypothesis like "very bad architecture can damage humans psychologically" should not be dismissed out of hand, at least not without good evidence.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  > A hypothesis like "very bad architecture can damage humans psychologically" should not be dismissed out of hand That wasn’t really my point either. We need to sort out which builds are damaging to human mental well being and which havevtrouble humans living in them. My point was just that we can’t just dismis a build style, because some of the builds happened to be filled with trouble people. Some would still have had issues if we had put the in luxery appartments.
- def_true_false 5y ago
  There is a much simpler explanation: People who can will eventually move into new (or renovated) construction, because of substantial improvements in quality of life. People who can't are left with the older buildings. The urban planning and architecture was often pretty good -- kindergartens, schools, shops and entertainment all nearby. In some respects, much better availability of services than some contemporary housing projects.

inglor_cz 5y ago

Well, what is the causality there? Communist countries were not as socially stratified as the West is now. In a Czechoslovak "panelák" (block of flats), doctors, professors, waiters and diggers lived side by side. But the extreme growth of vandalism and alienation in this type of living was readily apparent by the 1980s. Lifts reeked of urine, graffiti was on every wall, glass panes were broken and trash receptacles kicked flat. This wasn't a Communist-only thing either. Try finding an English translation of the heroin story "We Children from Station ZOO", written by a West Berlin junkie Christiane F. She devotes extensive passages at the beginning of the book to the soul crushing Gropiusstadt, which seemed almost constructed to make childhood more complicated and less joyful. A hypothesis like "very bad architecture can damage humans psychologically" should not be dismissed out of hand, at least not without good evidence.

mrweasel 5y ago
> A hypothesis like "very bad architecture can damage humans psychologically" should not be dismissed out of hand That wasn’t really my point either. We need to sort out which builds are damaging to human mental well being and which havevtrouble humans living in them. My point was just that we can’t just dismis a build style, because some of the builds happened to be filled with trouble people. Some would still have had issues if we had put the in luxery appartments.
def_true_false 5y ago
There is a much simpler explanation: People who can will eventually move into new (or renovated) construction, because of substantial improvements in quality of life. People who can't are left with the older buildings. The urban planning and architecture was often pretty good -- kindergartens, schools, shops and entertainment all nearby. In some respects, much better availability of services than some contemporary housing projects.