A Soviet-era airport, once the height of luxury, faces demolition in Armenia

It is technically still part of the airport, so it's private property and you can't enter there. Haven't tried how tight the security is myself.

I agree, it looks like it was all made cheaply from poured concrete that is now cracking and disintegrating.

> replace it

The movements for preservation of architecture would likely have something to say about that. A lot of people are tired of the whole demolish-build shtick, and yet others find it insulting in its disregard for what they find to be monuments. In my opinion, some of the most inspiring uses of space and architecture today are happening in ex-abandoned, ex-unused industrial buildings.

An example I've visited recently is the former Peugeot factory in Brussels [0] that is currently used for exhibitions, concerts, or just hanging out at the bars and food courts that have installed themselves there following a doctrine of minimal intervention. Shortly it will be transformed into a museum of modern art as an outpost of Centre Pompidou [1]. To quote the architects whose proposal won: "We want to radically engage with and trust what is there." That sentence pretty much sums up the trend I'm pointing out.

Another example is Rijeka, a city with a unique history, that has a heritage of an abundance of industrial architecture and very unique urban planning. Many of its industrial complexes lie abandoned, within earshot of city centre. Some of them are being brought back to life, spurred, in large part, by the European Capital of Culture 2020 that is happening there. This summer EASA took place there [1]. It used the revitalised Export building (in the photos look for the building that has "exportavo" witten on it). 600 people slept in the same hall for two weeks. I was there, it was a cool experiment.

[0] http://kanal.brussels/ [1] https://www.dezeen.com/2018/03/23/car-factory-transformed-ar... [2] https://www.flickr.com/photos/107959684@N04/sets/72157670142...

Well while it was not annexed by the USSR like Armenia it was behind the Iron Curtain.

It blows my mind how far behind schedule BER is. According to Wikipedia, construction started in 2006 and was scheduled to complete in October 2011 (aka about 5 years was allocated for construction). It's now almost October 2018. We're now 7 YEARS past the originally scheduled completion date. It's claimed that the airport won't open until Fall 2020. That means the airport won't open until at least 9 years past the original opening date. If that happens, construction will have taken 14 years when it was originally scheduled to take 5 years.

-In Tegel's defense, it was built when area was definitely at a premium, seeing as it was in former West Berlin which simply didn't have the luxury of expanding into the surrounding farmland.

The other West Berlin Airport - Tempelhof - was marvellous, though. Built during Weimar Republic years when air travel was for the wealthy few, the terminal was (and is!) as monumental as a palace.

> but even Tegel is a bit of a disgrace for the main airport of the German capital

Yes. A total disappointment. And the "main" terminals are the worse, the low cost ones are less crappy.

I think the Delhi metro is a good example of appropriate contemporary usage of brutalism: https://imgur.com/a/oJm9qHy

If the concrete was plastered and painted it would look bad after only a couple months in the sun and rain. (Medieval rulers had a similar idea but using red sandstone instead of concrete: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Fort#/media/File:Red_Fort_... )

>Frankly I'm struggling with the fact that there are links to that fascist shitrag

Maybe we should gather and burn its print copies /s

It's an article. Enjoy it or not on its own merits.

> Brutalism expressing domination over people - I've always seen it more as expressing function in form, which would be the opposite

It expresses the architect's idea of function, which may or may not have anything to do with the actual users. However, whenever the actual users of a building complain about the poor UX (noise, leaks, discomfort difficulty finding things in the layout) or their feeling of unhappiness induced by the blankness, it's traditional for Modernists to tell the public and users that they're wrong. It's that elitism which more than anything else characterises the failures of Modernism, of which Brutalism is a part.

It's unlikely to be popular in the UK again any time soon, it reeks of depressing grey misery and inhuman, unfriendly architecture. It also reeks of crap 1960s city centres.

I hope this 'revival' is strangled in infancy.

I also disagree that it is function in form - brutalist buildings often fail to perform their function well, usually due to ignoring human factors like requiring light and air, or encouraging criminality and vandalism by having dark, semi-accessible corners.

I look at brutalist structures like the Heyward Gallery and despair that anyone could have thought inflicting that on the world was doing it good, when looking across the river at what else London has to offer.

Not sure of your point? I agree it's nothing like suburban Britain, which is hardly a wonder in most places itself.

There's more than one type of ugly around. Brutalist buildings in the UK are some of the worst, bleakest and profoundly unfriendly places.