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Comment by zedr | Hacker News Reader

Archive.org copy: http://web.archive.org/web/20211021141127/https://www.calver...

My favourite brutalist building is in Belgrade: the Western City Gate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_City_Gate

I love Belgrade and have stayed there maybe a dozen times in the past few years. Usually I stayed in Old Belgrade, in the formerly (or perhaps still?) state-run hotel, which is partly staffed by students from a hospitality/catering college attached to it as they do their training.

A couple of years ago I stayed at an AirBnB apartment in New Belgrade. Beautiful apartment, but the building was brutal and huge, built in a long sort of zig-zag that went on and on. The name of the street nearest to the entrance I was using translated as "Anti-fascist struggle street".

Here's a picture of it:

https://belgrade.tips/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/kineski-zid...

And here's the full article (not terribly good) about the building, from which I took the picture link.

https://belgrade.tips/index.php/2021/04/27/belgrade-is-adorn...

I was just about to mention Belgrade, imo it has the best brutalist buildings outside of the former Soviet Union countries, that's (also) why it is on my to-visit-soon list.

Belgrade was not a part of the Soviet Union

Uh...that's what he said? Had it been a part of USSR, it wouldn't have been outside of it.

That's why I've said "outside of the former Soviet Union", inside the former Soviet Union there are cities which can compete with Belgrade on the brutalist front, from what I was able to see from IG Sankt Petersburg and Kyiv are quite interesting on that front. To say nothing of the brutalist Soviet bus stations which deserve an architectural category/style all for themselves [1]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/sep/02...

Might be helpful for people interested in this, an acquaintance of mine recently started working on a project for an online archive of socialist modernist concrete-based (so not only brutalism in strict sense) architecture (contains photos, info, publications, art projects inspired by the subject, etc.): https://belgradesocialmodernism.com/

very cool!

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