BS: Soviet era housing blocks!

Subject: BS: Soviet era housing blocks!
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 02:19 PM

There is a Soviet era housing block near to our hotel in Modra, near to Bratislava in Slovakia - any colour you want so long as it's grey!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Soviet era housing blocks!
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 04:27 PM

There's a horrible old grain silo in Plymouth too.

Subject: RE: BS: Soviet era housing blocks!
From: Newport Boy
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 04:47 PM

And some wonderful new 'apartments' in London. Ilford

Subject: RE: BS: Soviet era housing blocks!
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 05:19 PM

There are any number, all over Russia. Some are grey, some are institutional green, some are dirty orange. The reason that most of them are only five storeys high is that buildings of five storeys or lower didn't require lifts to be installed.

Subject: RE: BS: Soviet era housing blocks!
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 06:40 PM

Having lived for several years in the 70s in a block famed for its brutalist architecture, complete with scary lifts variously replete with thugs, needles and urine, I'd view the policy of lift-free blocks to be progressive.

Subject: RE: BS: Soviet era housing blocks!
From: Jack Campin
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 07:18 PM

Soviet-era housing was very heterogeneous. This tells a different story:

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/mar/31/moscow-biggest-urban-demolition-project-khrushchevka-flats

Subject: RE: BS: Soviet era housing blocks!
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 08:16 PM

From the early 1990s I spent a lot of time staying in Czech/Slovak tower block hostels..
There were occasons I actually felt fear stepping into the rickety lifts.

One particular tower block in Bratislava was a certain fire death trap,
not helped by everybody chainsmoking in the rooms.. one careless match...
The first night I felt uneasy.
The following nights I was too drunk and happy to care...

Subject: RE: BS: Soviet era housing blocks!
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 27 Aug 18 - 01:43 AM

However, it was a wonderful wedding which included a Slovakian tradition of breaking a plate, which then has to be swept up by the bride and groom! And 32 Slovak & British children had their own games and activity area!

Subject: RE: BS: Soviet era housing blocks!
From: Senoufou
Date: 27 Aug 18 - 05:37 AM

I've lived in Glasgow tenements, four or five floors high and no lifts, only stairs (called a 'close') Old Victorian buildings, bit like those in the Gorbals.
No druggies in those days but many tramps/drunks sleeping in the close, and ladies of the night plying their trade round the corners under the stairs.
Out the back was the 'midden' or housing for the dustbins. Lots of happy rats lived in those!

Many were demolished and the tenants rehoused in soulless modern tower blocks (like that dreadful Grenfell Tower)
But the closes were jolly places, everyone knew everyone else. A scrubbing lady was paid to scrub all the stairs and whitestone them once a week. The rooms were quite classical with ornate plaster ceiling roses and cornices.
Teeming with life and quite cheery in my opinion. But grubby of course and could become slums.

Subject: RE: BS: Soviet era housing blocks!
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 28 Aug 18 - 08:39 AM

My daughter, when she worked as a journalist in Moscow, was one of those instrumental in revitalising public protests against demolishing the Narkomfin building:

Narkomfin

Her articles, published in 2014 in both Russian and English-language Moscow press, were taken up and expanded on by protesters.

But still, the main thing she's known for during her time in Moscow is breaking the story of the American student who got stuck in a sculpture of a vagina in Tubingen, Germany. Such is life!

Subject: RE: BS: Soviet era housing blocks!
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 31 Aug 18 - 02:13 AM

For many years we held the main events of Swindon Folk Festival in the building voted second ugliest in the country - The Lancastrian Hall.

It is still there. Closed down years ago. The council are waiting for it to fall down.

Subject: RE: BS: Soviet era housing blocks!
From: leeneia
Date: 31 Aug 18 - 09:27 PM

That's dismal-looking building all right, Dave.

Subject: RE: BS: Soviet era housing blocks!
From: Senoufou
Date: 01 Sep 18 - 04:13 AM

We have 'Sovereign House' in Anglia Square, Norwich. It was built in the 1960s as Her Majesty's Stationery Office.

It's absolutely hideous (I can't do blue clicky thingies, sorry) and there have been plans drawn up to demolish and replace it - with some equally hideous stuff, including a massive tower block totally unsuited to the historic architecture of Norwich.

There are folk called the Norwich Society who are trying to prevent this development, and then some others who think the original building should be preserved as a Sixties icon.

I'm so glad we live out in the villages where nothing much is over two storeys high except ancient church towers.

Subject: RE: BS: Soviet era housing blocks!
From: leeneia
Date: 03 Sep 18 - 11:18 AM

How about preserving the original building because taxpayers have already paid for it?

And because the concrete, metals, etc which went to make it will not be wasted that way?

And because otherwise a beautiful landscape somewhere will be ripped up to landfill the demolition debris from it?

If it's truly ugly, try a good paint job and some landscaping first.

Subject: RE: BS: Soviet era housing blocks!
From: Stanron
Date: 03 Sep 18 - 12:04 PM

Is this it?

Sovereign House
and another view

not my idea of a pretty picture.

Subject: RE: BS: Soviet era housing blocks!
From: Senoufou
Date: 03 Sep 18 - 12:35 PM

Oooh Stanron, you are clever! That's it! Thank you so much for doing the clicky thingy.

Sovereign House has been empty for many years and is boarded up all along the bottom, but the inevitable squatters and druggies have got in and heaven knows what goes on in there at night. There's graffiti all over the lower parts too.
I think a bomb might be the answer. Norwich is such a beautiful city, and a thing like that is an utter disgrace.

But the architects have gone mad with redevelopment plans, and to stick a huge tower block there is a simply awful idea. Low-rise blocks of flats, a nice community hall/swimming pool/gym etc might be a good thing, and rows of shops at ground level.

Subject: RE: BS: Soviet era housing blocks!
From: Rusty Dobro
Date: 05 Sep 18 - 03:40 AM

I actually joined HMSO in London for my first job, specifically because it would mean a move to Norwich. However it was not worth the boredom or the commute, so it was ten years before I managed to live in East Anglia. Blue and white shirts, though, not green and yellow.....

Subject: RE: BS: Soviet era housing blocks!
From: Senoufou
Date: 05 Sep 18 - 04:14 AM

Ha Rusty! At least they drew 1-1 in the latest derby match.
"Come on you Yellows!"

Norwich is a bit too far for a commute to London. Ipswich is a bit easier.