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A city within a city in Kyiv, whose design was inspired by Legos
- fnord123 5y agoMore photos and renders here: https://www.archilovers.com/projects/239203/comfort-town.html https://www.archilovers.com/projects/239203/comfort-town.htm... https://archimatika.com/en/projects/comfort-town https://archimatika.com/en/projects/comfort-town https://comforttown.com.ua/ https://comforttown.com.ua/
- tpmx 5y agoWow. To be honest, my first thought is: (over)compensating for many decades of Soviet-style greyness?
- scyzoryk_xyz 5y agoExactly - and painting is a fairly cheap way to make the buildings more “cheerful”. Quite common in the late 90’s and 00’s
- Grakel 5y agoYeah, it's gaudy. If you want cheery that everyone agrees on except architects and city planners, you go with detailed neoclassical-ish brick buildings. Beautiful, homey, charming, relaxing. Natural materials and colors with time tested shapes. There's not a person in the world who sees a picture of Edinburgh and doesn't say aww. But it's expensive, so screw it!
- peytoncasper 5y agoWhile unconventional, once you read that it was a converted industrial block I think it adds a certain level of quaintness to it. It'll be interesting to see what this town looks like in 20 years as residents have a chance to add their unique style and the strong colors fade a bit.
- tpmx 5y agoModern paints don't really fade that much though. They get dirty, but that's it.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoReds will always fade.
- butz 5y agoLooks more like Monopoly houses, than "Legos".
- timeon 5y agoWhat is wrong with balconies?
- tpmx 5y agoThey mess up the clean look in the renders.
- omnicognate 5y agoAnd in real life. Having a bit of outdoor space is a huge quality of life improvement, hence their ubiquity in modern residential blocks (and I certainly don't begrudge them), but they ruin the look of a tower. Watching a nearby business district becoming increasingly residential over recent years has been like seeing it catch some sort of fungal infection as balconies sprout everywhere.
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- catlikesshrimp 5y agoShould the residents be concerned with how the building looks from afar? As you said, it is quality of life for them.
- omnicognate 5y agoThat's entirely up to them. I didn't say, or mean to imply, that my aesthetic experience of their building should matter to its residents at all. I think it should matter to its architects and to city planners, but I don't think that implies such things shouldn't be built. It's a trade-off, and as I said I don't begrudge anybody their outside space.
- cookieswumchorr 5y agoit depends on the climate. In Russia, for example, balconies in old panel buildings are either used for storage, or converted to an unheated exra room, with wood and glass railings, which are different for every apartment. This makes the house look like a vertical favela.
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- trhway 5y agoIt is built on the site of former USSR rubber factory. If you ever been to a USSR rubber factory ... The project started in 2009, so i'd be wondering how well the developer cleaned up the site in Ukraine in the years of crisis. Not surprisingly the son of the Kyiv mayor at the time is the major stakeholder in the project. The reviews frequently mention very thin, not sound-proof walls as well as a railway very close-by with no promised noise-protection wall. As it is customary there is no garages, no covered parking. Only street parking. There is no typical setback (the absence of the setback saves land and provides for that Lego European look), so street parking facing windows on the lower floors can't be really open because of smell/fumes (add not all the cars in Ukraine are fuel injected nor have catalytic converters) and opening windows on say a hot day/night is pretty customary, and as you can see from the photographs most don't have AC.
- sokoloff 5y agoAre there new cars being sold in Ukraine without catalytic converters/FI? Or just some old cars that lack those? We have pre-1975 cars in the US without converters (and somewhat newer carbureted cars), but by normal turnover and retirement of cars, they’re pretty uncommon and extremely rare as daily drivers.
- trhway 5y agoAs far as i see the cut-off was something like 2003, and the law is really not that enforced, and most of the cars are used European with many having their converter removed for scrap, either by thieves or by the owner.
- dkdk8283 5y agoI lived in Kyiv and can assure you most people detest the USSR except for the older generations. There is a strong desire to separate its image from its past.
- kome 5y agoThis is also changing tho, especially for younger intellectuals. Crisis after crisis people look at the CCCP experience with different eyes, and I am not just talking about babushkas.
- WalterBright 5y agoBack in the 90s, an American socialist tried to tell me that the Berlin Wall was constructed to keep the westerners out. I told him is BS wouldn't work on me because I've seen the Wall myself in 1969, went through it, and toured East Berlin. It's a shame the Berliners tore down the Wall so fast, though I totally understand why. I would have kept the section on Bernauerstrasse as a reminder for the revisionists. Setting all bloviation aside, you can judge a country simply by does it have walls to keep people in, or walls to keep people out.
- ecocentrik 5y agoIt's easier to condition a population to abuse if they're isolated from the rest of civil society. This is just as true of abusive interpersonal relationships. Keeping outsiders out is just as important to authoritarian states as keeping people in because outsiders make it difficult to control the narrative.
- WalterBright 5y agoI've seen the Wall in its heyday. The defenses all pointed to the East, not the West. It's unmistakable. BTW, not a single person was shot trying to "escape" to the East. At least, I've never heard of one. AFAIK, nobody even tried.
- jdub 5y ago"Lego" or "Lego blocks", never "Legos" (the title of the article gets it right)
- ktyckgcvk 5y agoAbsolutely correct. But trying to enforce this is a kind of persecution of people who grew up saying "Legos" because they didn't know any better. You are completely right, and I can't stand "Legos", but there's nothing we can do about it.
- Grakel 5y ago"Help, help, I'm being oppressed!"
- suprfsat 5y agoYou sound like the people who insist it's Kyiv not Kiev
- EB-Barrington 5y agoNo insistence, just mentioning that the only official (and therefore correct) transliteration from Ukrainian to English is "Kyiv".
- throwaway210222 5y agoNonsense, there is no legitimate way another language can tell English (or another language FWIW) what its name for a place must be. Examples: Deutchland - Germany, Allemagne, Doitsu Nederland - Niederland, Pays-Bas, Netherlands Zhōngguó - China, Nippon - Japan, Iapana Munchen - Munich, Monaco I can go on, but this phenomenon of prescribing the English word for a proper noun is very recent, and disrespectful of the long, native English (and very much world-wide) culture. English is not common property any more than Persian is. So, no: its Kiev [ and Ayers Rock :) ] when speaking English- that's if other people's cultures matter.
- WalterBright 5y ago> completely flat exteriors. Having a bit of an overhang or shade over the windows lets the sunlight in in the winter and shades the window in the summer. Overhangs also keep the water off the window frames, meaning they'll last a lot longer.
- Thorrez 5y ago>Having a bit of an overhang or shade over the windows lets the sunlight in in the winter Wouldn't more sunlight get in without the overhang? Or are you saying the negative effect is small?
- WalterBright 5y agoThe sun is lower in the sky in the winter, bypassing the overhang, when more heat is welcome.
- notatoad 5y agoin the winter, the sun is lower in the sky for most of the day, so the overhangs have much less effect than they do in the summer. but no, of course they don't let in more light than a window without an overhang.
- lom 5y agoHave we always wasted so much space for parking? I get that they serve an entire block, but they’re just cars - doing nothing 23h of the day. Not to mention that the parking looks horribly designed. How will you get to your car, if it’s parked in the middle of the road in the middle of the block? You’ll first have to pass on the other side without cars paying much attention to you, and then also drive on the street, with the view being potentially blocked by a larger car (for you and the drivers on the street)
- deepsun 5y agoWell, parking in Kyiv is absolutely horrendous. I've talked with developers who plan new houses in Kyiv, and they just don't plan for parking space, because it's not worth it. More profitable to build extra living space. People really do park in 3 levels there, and put their phone number at the windshield. Granted, those who parked last, try to leave early, to unblock others. I hope that problem will lead to development of new transportation systems. Like personal metro, or self-driving parking cars.
- k_ 5y agoI agree about the waste of space and the seemingly bad design, but there's one thing I like about this: drivers have to use the crosswalk to get to their car, on (I suppose) busy streets. That's something far too uncommon (at least here in France) because car owners are always put first, and could raise much needed awareness. I want drivers to feel the insecurity surrounding cars so they might have a more responsible driving.
- ivxvm 5y agoPainting multistore appartment blocks in bright colors doesn't make them less disgusting to live in.
- egorfine 5y agoOh, I have done a flyover recently. It really looks that stunning from the skies: https://www.instagram.com/p/CT1bG2uNdm_/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CT1bG2uNdm_/ The district however is not that good. See, there is no parking space at all in Comfort Town and people have to leave their cars on every empty piece of the road inside. In winter time this prevents snow from being removed hence reducing available street space even more. People park in two, three and even four rows, leaving phone numbers under the windshield. The reason why there is no parking space? Nobody is paying for parking. There is no economic reason for developers to build one. People are comfortable saving considerable amount of money on the estate while committing to an eternal PITA with their cars.