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In pre-WWII Berlin, the shape of your roof was a political decision
- tylerrobinson 2y agoI was surprised to see 0 results for “leak” on this article. Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses were famous for having flat roofs and leaking. Anyone know whether these flat roofs suffered the same fate?
- bedobi 2y agoknowing nothing about construction, architecture or engineering, i've still heard enough anecdotes of that + common sense would seem to dictate that if your roof isn't sloping (even a little bit) you're gonna have more problems with rain (which can freeze and open cracks), let alone snow (which can be deceivingly heavy even in small amounts) or even other precipitate like dust, sand, leaves, what have you i would be perfectly fine with regulators enforcing sloping roofs by default and only allowing flat ones if you explicitly and deliberately apply for an exception it would save lots of unknowing homeowners easily preventable problems stemming from flat-roof McArchitect homes that look modern but aren't practical, and allow the ardent individual flat-roofers (lol) to get what they want if they absolutely must
- petsfed 2y agoI mean, most commercial and industrial buildings are approximately flat on top. There's some pitch, but its pretty minor. Its basically a solved problem, and a qualified building inspector would know how to inspect for the requirements of that particular roof style. Its unambiguously a higher-maintenance style, but it's no worse than having wood siding in terms of annual maintenance labor. Just that the consequences of failing to keep up with the labor is a lot worse. That said, when people start throwing gardens onto their roofs, or otherwise doing things that the roof was not originally designed for, things get iffy.
- FuriouslyAdrift 2y agoOur 800k sq ft factory has a "flat" roof. It has drains all over it that feed straight down into the building and below the concrete to a massive storm water drain.
- IncreasePosts 2y ago"flat" roofs also slope, but the slope is measured more in fractions of inch per foot instead of inches per inch.
- bedobi 2y agoyeah, so not enough to get rid of snow, ice and other precipitate, or even water if there's even a small obstacle of some kind at best it gets rid of running water under perfect conditions
- AlbertCory 2y agoI've actually been in the Johnson Wax FLW building in Racine. They are still using it, but I believe it had problems to overcome, like most FLW buildings. I don't remember if it had a flat roof, but probably most office buildings did.
- n3roaster 2y agoI live a couple blocks away from there. The roofs are flat in that whole complex aside from the Golden Rondelle Theater. I don't know if they've since fixed it since I see they've done some redecorating on the upper floors in recent years and I haven't thought to ask anybody who works there, but for a long time they couldn't have people working in a large portion of the central tower due to inadequate fire exits.
- AlbertCory 2y ago> some redecorating on the upper floors are we talking about the same building? The one I'm talking about was a high-ceilinged single room: https://www.dezeen.com/2017/06/14/frank-lloyd-wright-johnson-wax-administration-building-headquarters-racine-wisconsin-open-plan-office/ https://www.dezeen.com/2017/06/14/frank-lloyd-wright-johnson...
- simfoo 2y agoIt still is in most parts of the country: the type of roof and even the type and color of the tiles are mandated in most areas (through the infamous Bebauungsplan)
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- duxup 2y agoVery interesting, but it seems like a symbolic debate among folks who were somehow involved in deciding the shape of a roof or who were already invested in a larger social debate. Random every day person, were they aware of this debate, and did they actually shop for housing based on roof shape?
- petsfed 2y agoI think you should understand this in the light of e.g. freedom fries and Trump's executive order re: "beautiful" public buildings. That is, once you're in a culture war, the dumbest things become battlegrounds. Its also important to understand that the buildings in question were meant specifically as worker housing, so it was a collective project funded by workers' unions, each with particular ideologies. If you were part of the liberal housing co-op that advocated for flat roofs, you were gonna live in the flat-roof buildings. That is to say, you didn't express your politics by choosing your roof, rather, you chose your politics, and your available roof shapes were informed by that choice.
- kikokikokiko 2y agoOf course not. It's Atlas Obscura, everything in there must be taken with a whole bag of salt.
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- Cupertino95014 2y ago> the architect Walter Gropius, a well-known flat roofer and ostensibly Tessenow’s opposition, insisted “the question of whether a roof is flat or pitched is to be answered solely on the basis of practicality, technology, and efficiency. hey Walter: have you heard of snow? It's known to fall in Berlin. Not so much in Jerusalem.
- octopoc 2y agoPracticality aside, another major controversial opinion of the Nazis was that buildings should be beautiful. There's a lot of ugly communist architecture in Europe that shows which side won the war.
- WalterBright 2y agoThey call it "Brutalism" for a reason. Soviet buildings often look like flak towers.
- Michelangelo11 2y agoYes, but that is not the reason: > Brutalism is an architectural style of the 20th century that mainly uses concrete as a building material. The term "brutalism" comes from the French expression "béton brut", which means "raw concrete". https://industrialkonzept.com/blogs/magazine/beton-brut-berlin-brutalism?srsltid=AfmBOopJwiSTmarit86rRU3Bcm0ZaLMN6x5zMgPZuC8sb0WChQim2Gij https://industrialkonzept.com/blogs/magazine/beton-brut-berl...
- WalterBright 2y agoLooking like a prison, flak tower, or bomb shelter is certainly brutal!
- Michelangelo11 2y agoYes, but I mean the reason it's called "brutalism" isn't because the buildings look "brutal".
- WalterBright 2y agoIn Seattle (Rain City) it's becoming more fashionable to have flat roofs. It may be because of height restrictions - people build up as high as they can to get the view. Flat roofs always leak. My roof has a 45 degree pitch, as I hate leaks. I also replaced the asphalt shingles with metal, because metal is lighter (less earthquake damage), doesn't burn, and will last the rest of my life. Another oddity around here is vanishing eaves. My house has 2 foot eaves. This keeps the exterior walls dry, and they last a lot longer. Keeps the windows from rotting, too. And the house shaded in the summer. New houses are lucky to have a 1 inch eave. I don't get it. Eaves are one of the cheapest ways to reduce maintenance costs.
- bobthepanda 2y agoyou can sell the flat roof as an amenity for more usable square footage.
- WalterBright 2y agoThat's right. See my comment on height restrictions :-)
- bobthepanda 2y agoI think even if people did not have height restrictions they would still be plenty attractive. It's why balconies are also everywhere; people like outdoor space, and if you don't have much of a backyard to speak of your options are sideways or out. most of the new Seattle flat roofs are townhomes with no backyard to speak of, because there are townhomes where that would be.
- WalterBright 2y agoIn my neighborhood of single family homes, the new ones are all flat roofers with little or no eaves.
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- roschdal 2y agoGerman roofs are more beautiful.
- trhway 2y agoThe Europe is full of centuries-old buildings with pitched roofs which routinely survive naturally happening periods of light/neglected maintenance. Whereis any flat-top building will most probably fail without regular roof maintenance.
- technofiend 2y agoMany of them also have slate roofs. Slate's not going to suddenly start leaking unless it's cracked. Contrast that with roofs in the US that use asphalt that needs replacement every couple of decades.
- trhway 2y agoIn a childhood i spent some time on an old German farm with a main house and a barn. I crawled and climbed everywhere in the both buildings. Both buildings are of the same high quality of build - brick and stone walls, pitched red ceramic slate roofs, large wooden beams - that is tested by and evolved over long time. The only noticeable difference between those 2 buildings was that the barn had less windows, and the first meter of its wall height was made out of the larger stones fit tightly to each other whereis main house wall were fully brick and such stones were making only the foundation - thus the barn walls were about 2 times thicker at that lower height part. I didn't see any metal in the construction - in the attic the wooden beams were dovetailed in the joins and the joins were pierced by large thick "nails" made of hardwood. Smaller members were tightly dovetailed to or sat in the grooves of the larger members - all the way down to the planks which formed the sides and the floor of the attics (and the second layer of planks about 4 inch below the attic floor planks was the ceiling of the first floor - again sat tightly into the grooves of the large beams).
- from-nibly 2y ago> immediately recognizable as the child of other skies and other blood. Lol this is the frog on a lillypad of nationalism/tribalism. There is only 1 sky. You might as well say other moons. "The fact that you behave different shows me that you are different and are therefore wrong" Glad to know people's nationalism/tribalism was just as dumb then as it is now.
- kmeisthax 2y ago"In Pre-WWIII America, the Gender of Video Game Protagonists Was a Highly Political Decision"
- clausecker 2y agoI lived in this borrough for most of my childhood. Never knew about this dispute though. The Onkel Tom settlement is really beautiful. It comes with an underground station with an integrated shopping mall -- a novel concept back then.
- blindseeker 2y agoSo I live in one of the mentioned flat roofed houses. We restored it to its original appearance, but with very modern internals (proper insulation, heatpump, wall and ceiling heating areas, KNX-based smart home, etc.). It’s a piece of art on 110sqm, with very practical floor plan. To optimize space and material, every single wall has optimized thickness. Really impressive attention to detail some 100 years ago. Oh, and the roof has never leaked… (2.54 degree pitch btw)