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Comment by prmoustache | Hacker News Reader

The thing is, most of the 60's/70's building look like shit from outside but are pretty nice and super funcional from the inside while some older ones were made for an era where people had huge hotel particuliers with servants and stuff and the current appartments have been build by splitting those in parts. Those appartments that aren't as well made/functionnal despite being nice to look at and having lots of vertical space, nice carved/moulded ceiling, etc.

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In Spain it's not only 60s/70s, pretty much everything build between the 60s and the 90s is not only ugly AF, but very low quality. And Barcelona is not even the worst offender. In northern spanish cities there's a lot of grey in the buildings, with basically no insulation in a humid and cold climate. My GF used to joke it was colder inside her home than outside.

After the new construction code in the early 00s the quality has improved a lot but we still build very ugly buildings.

No wonder why people chose to gather and spend their time where the historial centers are.

Seems architects really refuse to extract some lessons from this.

Well I hate to say it as I am also living in Spain, in the south, but there is definitely a culture of making stuff with the minimum effort and a lack of focus on quality.

And I too do joke that it feels colder inside than outside from mid november to mid february.

And half the Barcelona buildings from the 60s/70s were made with concrete that turns to sand when it gets wet (aluminosis). People have died in buildings that suddenly collapsed.

The cold thing was the biggest surprise when I was in Barcelona one November

I’ve found most of the 60’s and 70’s building in the U.S. to be just the opposite myself. Often stairwells are hidden, sometimes behind multiple doors, so even going up a single flight of stairs usually involves waiting for an elevator. A lot of places seem to use space in a bizarre way - lobbies that are much too large and empty, the functional areas being cramped and small. Ceilings that are much too high, which not only waste space but lead to many functional issues (changing a bulb that’s 16 feet up is much more difficult than changing one that’s 8 feet up). Windows that are pulled back from the wall so they get much less natural lighting.

The whole thing feels like the architectural profession became interested in impressing each other with designs that they thought looked cool, and seemed to forget that people actually had to use these spaces. The areas here with buildings from that area usually feel much more dead than areas with buildings from almost any other era.

> having lots of vertical space, nice carved/moulded ceiling, etc.

Do you mean that being habitable without air conditioning is a negative feature?

"Do you mean that being habitable without air conditioning is a negative feature?"

in a specific climate, sure. but in other climates high ceilings might just be a burden on the air conditioning system

I didn't say that. Maybe I haven't phrased it correctly but it was meant to be understood like "despite lots of vertical space, nice ceilings, etc". These are nice things but it doesn't really matter if the floor space is illogical, the kitchen is barely larger than a small wardrobe and you have a piece of corridor that barely has any purpose, is difficult to organize and is only wasting space.

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