…architecture representing the image of Socialism and Communism. Is it too early to think about soviet architecture and the like as retro, Is it wrong to detach the architecture from its political background to be able to appreciate the architectural language?
well, I think even though some of the buildings do look rather scary, they offer quite interesting details. As a person who grew up in a Western Country, I can perceive such architecture, or the image of if, disconnected to any kind of political regime. I suppose that doesn’t work for those who grew up in such an environment and state, or at least it’ll take some more years until people are able to appreciate the architecute without seeing it as a symbol for the system it represented.
Frederic Chaubin took this and more great pictures on his trip around the world, documenting architecture. More pictures such as this one by and an interview with him can be found in the Japanese pingmag here .
On the other hand, I guess the 60s and 70s brought us interesting superstructures on a worldwide level
Thinking about buildings as the Berlin Convention Center ICC, that greatly resembles Battlestar Galactica in the city:
If you have any more of those buildings, no matter where, let me know or link it in the comments!
This one is more or less the sequel to the post I wrote about huge experimental or just practical dwelling projects: a tribute to the Utopian urban and architectural ideas and visions from the 60s and 70s and what happened to them from a contemporary point of view. I found this principle here:
and immediately thought of Constant and his New Babylon:
The so called Metastadt structure is a steel frame structure that can be assembled in many ways and built almost unlimited structures. The 70s-style round-edged frames can be filled with wall-pieces, windows, or nothing, thus being living space, storage, office, or balcony / terrace.
But what’s the Metastadt’s big difference to Constant’s vision? It became real!
There was a first test version in Munich, and after that, this structure has been built in Wulfen as well.
Unfortunately, it had to be demolished due to serious material and therefore structural damage and decay, already 15 years after it had been built.
Still though, I very interesting approach, and a shame that it got demolished, it would be interesting to find out how it worked or works from an architectural, social and urban point of view.
What other structures, visions and ideas of the 60s and 70s became – partially or completely – real and what happened to them?
An article I found here (German only) discusses the situation and future of (Plattenbauten) dense dwellings out of prefabricated concrete slabs built in the 60s and 70s in Western Germany.
Even though in the former GDR, the amount of those buildings, the decreasing material quality etc. produced an image for the whole country, but also in the Western part, those ‘worker’s lockers’ have been built, with from an contemporary point of view, the same mistakes, and the same result.
there are some really interesting videos up showing both Western and Eastern projects.
This one is from the Eastern city of Schwedt, which lost nearly half of its inhabitants after the wall came down:
While this one is a documentary about the new concept of constructing a complete New City in the Coal mining Ruhr area, called New City Wulfen. Unfortunately, it is only in German, but if you do understand it, you sure will have to laugh at some of the ad-style, enthusiastic comments they have on that super-modern way of living and building:
On the other hand, it indeed has some interesting experimental thoughts on how to generate a city:
1. There is only one TV-Antenna that was supposed to serve for all the 10.000 households, not to disturb the image of the city by a forest of antennas on the roof ad provide constant good reception for everybody.
2. The only energy source the new city has is electricity. Therefore, there are no chimneys, no pollution.
3. the city works completely without traffic lights, the streets are organized in a honeycomb-way with regular street rules. Footpathes cross the streets by tunnels or bridges, so even for that, no traffic light is needed.
4. Even in the late 60’s, the architects were trying to learn from mistakes from early Plattenbau projects by designing a diverse appearance of the large otherwise rather monotonous blocks and creating a mixture of different types and sizes of apartments to create a mixture of inhabitants.
Also interesting is the reason for its continuous failure:
The coal mine didn’t succeed and only created 450 jobs. The city which was supposed to have 50.000 or more inhabitants by 1990, today, there are 11.000 people living there.
Thus, the whole prediction and success of project was so dependent on the development of one economical foundation, that as this parameter vanished, the whole project failed. Still, I think it would be interesting to know, “What if….”
Find out more about Wulfen and other Western and Eastern German Plattenbau-Siedlungen on youtube:
Keywords:
Neue Stadt Wulfen, Plattenbau, Schwedt, Hellersdorf, Marzahn, Märkisches Viertel
As a result o Sputnik Shock and Space Age, the NASA also researched on the idea of living in space, setting up colonies.
The pictures of a summer study project form the 1970’s are on the webpage in high resolution. Besides the fact that those pictures are beautifully drawn, from an architectural point of view, they also contain a lot of interesting facts.
First of all, the houses shown in those pictures remind me more of Bauhaus, or in general, modern style rather than the cliché American homes you would expect:
Also, taking a closer look at the agricultural sector of the colony….MVRDV also did this once, calling it Datatown:
Well, this is the space colony piled up and organized food production, and MVRDV’S Datatown:
Since I’m busy with graduating, I lack the time of taking care of this site, even though I come across a lot of interesting and also crazy things about architecture while researching. This one here though I couldn’t leave out: I came across this piece of art already some time ago, and just remembered them. Eric lerner did this rendered abstract ‘Misters’ which resemble stereotypical people in an urban environment and are placed into real movies. Enjoy!
This post will be different to the others, since I am not trying to present architectural oddities, but a task:
Currently, I am researching on the topic “Architecture and Digital Media – Rethinking and Re-positioning in the design process” as my thesis. As part of that research project, I am planning to involve people’s thoughts and also their contribution. That means, I will try to establish a network of interaction, So I will feed info into the web, and whoever wants to contribute can do so and will definitely influence my research. The info I will feed into the web will be tasks. I don’t want to expose too much of the research, since I don’t want it to influence the contributors with too much info ahead. First of all i would like to figure out who’s interested in contributing….
The first thing I will try to put up is a comparison of an analogue, or “classic” design process, and the digital method. Whatever the digital method is doesn’t matter, what I am looking for is people interested in experimenting, working on this research, on a new way of designing and working in a contemporary way. The first thing I would like to ask is fulfilling a tiny design task, or rather the process of such task.
The important thing is to protocol the process of the steps you take, i.e. what did you do when.
There’s only one rule: The computer or any digital media shouldn’t be used, or it’s use should be very reduced (including the internet!), to drawings. If you’re interested, let me know via a post and you’ll get the details. Shouldn’t take more than a day or two.
I am looking forward to what will happen and thank you in advance for contributing in this research, just post a comment and i will contact you!
But, I won’t let you off without at least one weird project. This one i found while researching on Greg Lynn’s homepage, and reading this article in icon magazine.
I don’t know whether this has to be commented at all, but I am wondering whether someone (including the Greg Lynn and Form) actually took this serious even for a second.
Also, I was wondering whether it is impudence or irony that contributed in giving it the name of an ark…..
Recently, the competition for the huge Russian gas company gasprom moved to the next stage – the chosen projects could be voted for on the internet, one vote per domain, so some serious poll. The neighbourhood of new “Gasprom City” calles the winning project by British architects RMJM “Corn on the cob” (German only).
I found it quite interesting to see first of all the projects they chose, and second, how the polls ended.
Honestly, I think that Libeskind thing is just weird
That Libeskind somehow reminds me of another in my opinion rather ridicilous design from OMA for the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, that looks like a stock diagram – image or link will follow as soon as I found one.
But what is it with skyscrapers nowadays? they either look like a phallus such as the Nouvel in Barcelona and the Foster one In London, or they get in all kind of weird shapes such as the HdM one for Gasprom. Truly one of the better designs from all the projects handed in – not that I consider it to be any good, but among the blind the one-eyed is king.
Nouvel:
Foster:
HdM:
But for the votes: Clearly OMA sucked, and I am curious about the voting reasons: Did really the superficiality of the image quality decide, or is it the project in general? Did people vote for the slick renderings of some of the projects, or because they actually liked the projects?
Got some more architectural virility? Post it here!
I came across this building and couldn’t believe it first of all, it looks unreal and the story behind it sounds like it as well.
In the 1980’s, the North-Korean government decided to built a hotel of 330m in heigth, for all the thousands of visitors coming to Pyongyang. The building got never fished, instead, there’s 330m tall ruin towering over the city since the constructions ceased in 1992.
I think this is just amazing. A ruin, testifying a time, an ideology and political dictatorship and it’ll take some time to vanish. I say leave it, consider it as a sculpture, and you have the hugest concrete sculpture there is. Great……
By the way, this is the office that build it. No wonder they didn’t get any other contracts after that one…..
Amazingly, Foster is builing a – fairly smaller but still somehow outrageous – pyramid in Astana / Kazakhstan referring to the ideas of Boullée. Last but not least, it is called “Palace of Peace and Reconciliation”. What a Euphemism.
So, this is a cenotaph by Boullée:
Boullée had amazing ideas, but they were and should stay, ideal forms and designs, paper architecture so to say.
Ok. I know barcodes can be somehow interesting, fascinating and all that, but I haven’t seen any example yet where a barcode has been used in a way that it looks cool besides some graphic design or on a box or something. I t a useful thingy on all the packaged goods we buy, and I also have a book that is organized by some sort of barcode system, though I have to say it doesn’t work properly. There is a barcode font, people have barcodes tattooed somewhere….
Still: What’s the point? Aren’t there patterns that are a lot more subtle than a barcode? What’s with barcodes anyways?
I think the peak of all this is a building in Russia:
This is so direct, stupid and lame it’s not even funny anymore. Sorry but this is the same as building a fish, a guitar or something else translated directly into architecture.
Does anyone have more examples of such direct, banal architecture? Send me the links / pics, I’ll post them!
A lot more interesting is what I found on the same site about socialist architecture in Russia. I wish I could go there and see those buildings!
…a wonderful piece of art that is demolished right now.
The “Beukelsblauw” on Beukelsdijk in Rotterdam was originally supposed to last only for 3 month, until the demolition of the five former apartment buildings. The one in the middle was squatted even after it got painted blue – they had to put blue curtains and blue sticky foil on the windows. . Due to very lucky postpones, the buildings lasted for almost another two years, and so did the artwork.
Very quickly, it became more than just a piece of art, but also a landmark in the fabric of Rotterdam.
Find out more about it and the work of artist Florentijn Hofmann here
This blog is about talking and writing in architecture, architectural thoughts, buildings, ideas, concepts, architects, film, media, philosophy, everything that somehow is or could be related to architecture. BUT: without the cryptic style of architectural magazines, without being afraid of critisizing a building of a so called star architect and being able to issue your own thoughts and theories without a whole chartlist of sources that shall prove you right.
Who cares?
That doesn't mean architectural thoughts and theories are all amplified beyond recognition, but in my opinion, there has to be level somewhere between the abstract theory,the practice, and the magazines.
This is what this blog is all about.
