The era of radical concrete | Hacker News Reader

The era of radical concrete

bbc.com

71 pointssmacktoward25 comments

I grew up in a "radical" concrete neighborhood built by the Soviets in the 1980's. Closest thing to the "garden city" dream promised by concrete utopia planners.

Looks something like this http://www.niekonaujo.lt/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/14-tv_pa...

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/43031765.jpg

Very fun place when I was a kid. Kindergardens, schools and stores all walking distance in those images. Remove some of the green space and you get a dystopian looking brutalist nightmare.

But functionally you can fit dense housing, a public backyard for your kids, a place to have a picnic, stores, schools in the middle of a city. Some people just balk at the idea because so much of this utopian planning went wrong in one way or another, often in ways that have nothing to do with the housing style but became associated with it.

> often in ways that have nothing to do with the housing style but became associated with it.

We had a similar problem in the UK, We uprooted and moved entire communities onto vast estates that had no real infrastructure (lack of shops, medical centers etc) and in the process destroyed community bonds.

It was an absolute mess often created with the best of intentions (and little thought).

Indeed -- here in the US, I not-infrequently hear people describe Brutalist buildings as "Soviet-style architecture."

(This of course despite the fact that the Brutalist style had plenty of American practitioners, and derived its name from a French word picked up by a Swede.)

Plenty of Singapore looks similar, and works fairly well.

I was struck by how similar some of those pictures - both of the old tenements and the new towers - looked to Hong Kong. Hong Kong seems to work quite well; a friend of mine who grew up there waxes lyrical about how wonderful a childhood spent on the streets in the sky was. Although she now lives in a detached house in a small town in Cambridgeshire, so i should take that with a pinch of salt.

This is classic architectural brutalism. Just getting a wider glimpse into the history of this is totally fascinating to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutalist_architecture

"Brutalist architecture is a movement in architecture that flourished from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, descended from the modernist architectural movement of the early 20th century."

"Examples are typically massive in character (even when not large), fortress-like, with a predominance of exposed concrete construction, or in the case of the "brick brutalists" ruggedly detailed brickwork and concrete together. There is often an emphasis on graphically expressing in the external elevations and in the whole-site plan the main functions and people-flows of the buildings. Brutalism became popular for educational buildings (especially university buildings), but was relatively rare for corporate projects. Brutalism became favoured for many government projects, high-rise housing, and shopping centres to create an architectural image that communicated strength, functionality, and frank expression of materiality."

This was because concrete was cheap, more than anything.

And, if mixed and cured properly, impervious to just about everything.

I'd much rather live in a concrete house than one built out of sticks and glue like most of suburbia.

Tornadoes and hurricanes would be much less of an issue throughout much of the US, at least.

I lot of modern architecture utilizes various forms of concrete these days to incredible effect:

http://themodernhouseblog.net/

Only problem is they also use a ton of glass to facilitate lots of natural lighting.

In her classic book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" Jane Jacobs made a powerful argument against both alienating high rise buildings and suburban sprawl. Instead she advocated for an approach that emphasized mid-rise buildings and short mixed use blocks to get the right mix of density and human scale streets. Worth a read

I was surprised The Barbican wasn't mentioned.

I went there (from the US) for a trade show several years ago, and the low ceilings were oppressive. Can't imagine what the tower flats were like.

There's a little nod to it toward the end: "London's Trellick Tower and The Barbican are now both listed and desirable places to live."

It's actually an amazing place to be, if your life circumstances fit. I have a friend with a flat there. It's very small, and the tech. is a bit old now (electric burners are a hassle, for instance), but the flat and building services are very well organised and the Barbican centre has fantastic amenities. His flat is a studio. There are larger flats but I haven't seen inside them.

[Decoder key: flat in UK = apartment in US]

1.45 million pounds for a 3 bedroom? OMFG. "Life circumstances", indeed!

It's the middle of London ... prices are comparable to other major cities.

Regarding life circumstances, I was thinking about my own living situation with two young kids. I can't imagine how we'd physically store all the plastic crap they have accumulated in a Barbican sized flat, let alone prepare meals or keep up with the laundry. It would require a very different lifestyle. I'm sure people do it, but you gotta really buy into it and probably spend a lot of money on activities outside of home to keep them amused. Likewise if you are a real homebody I can't see the Barbican working for you, unless that homebody-ness is accompanied by a strong liking for minimalism.

This one? http://www.primelocation.com/for-sale/details/34204707#Kdb5k...

In the US a "flat" is an apartment that spans an entire floor of a building. In that sense it is the opposite of a townhouse (an adjoined multi-unit dwelling where the units are vertical instead of horizontal).

Some say it is rarely used but there are currently thousands of "flats" available for rent on craigslist/sfbay, so I think it's not that rare.

electric burners are a hassle

Eh? Since when? Maybe compared to induction, but normal people still have either electric or gas...

Compared to gas.

It still looks horrific from the outside though. The Barbican and the National Theatre etc should be flattened and rebuilt.

Ah, commie blocks http://www.skyscrapercity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=477

In places where they are not ultra-dense, these can mean that a good 80% of the land is green space.

Maybe I just never understood the appeal of having a teeny fenced off piece of land, instead of a large shared one.

My first year accommodation at the University of York was somewhat similar to this, having been built in the 60s from prefabricated concrete panels. I lived in Derwent college, which is some of the cheapest accommodation due to it being in this old part of the campus, a lot of the other accommodation is newly built hotel-standard stuff with en-suites. While a lot of people find it unattractive and an eyesore, I thought it had a certain unique appeal. Despite the concrete there's a lot of greenery, and the covered walkways were very convenient in the rain. It's possible to walk between most points in the campus without ever leaving a covered walkway, you probably wouldn't see that level of pragmatism in a modern build.

Here's a (fairly large) image as an example: http://www.york.ac.uk/media/abouttheuniversity/supportservic...

The full set of high-res photos can be found here.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jrjamesarchive/sets/

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