Isn’t this authoritarian architecture and not left wing architecture?
Generally left wing is ‘making things better for people would be nice’
And is mostly bitterly divided between ‘cool, so let’s get started!’ And 'we must form a committee and personality cult to do capitalist accellerationism, only then can we murder everyone in the first group and then do the thing’ with some absolutely batshit jewels of ideology mixed in.
And is mostly bitterly divided between ‘cool, so let’s get started!’ And 'we must form a committee and personality cult to do capitalist accellerationism
Who are those “cool, let’s get started” leftists, and what housing did they build? Just so I can compare their housing to that of the “personality cult capitalist accelerationists”.
We’re around. And I personally have-though admittedly not much; I’m not one for manual labor.
So “we’re around-type” leftists have built how many homes exactly?
Dunno, not my department. Like I said, at least a few that I’ve personally seen, but they also don’t try to kill other leftists for no fucking reason. So it’s probably easier.
Ah, I see, there are no real examples of “cool, let’s get started” leftists building millions of housing units, so you’re comparing an actually existing state having to deal with capitalist and fascist subversion in a world dominated by capitalism, with idealistic nonexisting societies. That’s your problem right there. You’re welcome!
‘Having to deal with capitalism’ there it is. Last time I credit you murderhobo shitsticks with anything.
Go back to the soviet Union.
And the commie blocks are really in the center of that venn diagram. The party that made them was soaked in leftist blood, but the reason they look like that is because building them fast meant people got homes faster, so they were less concerned with giving each one a unique style.
Yep. They did a lot of bullshit and I’d argue they were profoundly reactionary, but the Bolsheviks were still minimum viable communist, and did a lot of communism when it wasn’t purge time.
Which sounds and was pointlessly awful, but I have spent a lot of time with people on the streets, and I think that’s still less terror, less pointless death and suffering.
That moment when ensuring housing for everyone and eradicating homelessness is considered “authoritarian architecture”.
And let’s pretend like we know what makes architecture “authoritarian.”
Why is ensuring housing authoritarian? Isn’t the cheapest most depressing architecture authoritarian? No one says it had to be depressing and lack deicent design… unless the dictator mandates it. No true left wing design would look this bleak and forced.
If you’ve come to look at a given architectural style (or any object for that matter) in its abstracted, ahistorical form, then you may not find much value nor truth to what it actually signifies. You must instead look at the material conditions that led to its creation.
First of all rutalist architecture emerged in the USSR after the end of WW2 after the economy and the entire infrastructure of the country were entirely wiped out. Simplified construction techniques using concrete were revolutionary in the sense that they were efficient and easy to streamline on a national scale for millions of people on the one hand, while being cost effective on the other hand. Whilst the rate of homelessness was not decreasing (if not increasing) in capitalist economies, socialist countries were at the vanguard of providing free housing for everyone.
In short, brutalist architecture was shaped by the material conditions of the post-war era and developed further as the economy progressed in later decades. This is simply because policies and social and cultural phenomena are not the mere product of ideas and thoights as much as the material conditions which are the basis for every human movement.
Secondly, the term “brutalist” does not give credit to what the Soviets and other socialist countries have achieved in the architectural fields. Most pictures that are publicized on the Internet picture either abandoned and unmaintained buildings or pictured thata are taken in the gloomiest period of winter, since this id what is believed to fit the narrative or the “aesthetics” of socialist architecture.
Lastly, in reality there isn’t really an artistic style that dictates what leftist architecture should look like. If you search through pictures of Soviet architecture or even DPRK or PRC architecture for something recent, you will find that they vary so much in colors and shapes, because it all depends on the architect’s individual and distinct taste. Rather, what distinguishes leftist (or your so-called “authoritarian”) architecture is that it serves the needs of the proletariat, contrary to capitalist societies that boast about their individualism.
Left wing is so loosely defined you can ask two people and get three answer’s. In this case the poster seems right wing and for him left wing=USSR. Ignoring that, this building style is probably the most efficient way to house as many people for as cheap as possible as fast as possible, which seems pretty left wing to me
Why is total efficiency left wing? Isn’t maximizing profit right wing? The buildings should be built to maximize happiness of the people who, together, decide on the architecture… at the expense of profit.
Making anything better is left wing.
efficiency and maximum extracted profit are not the same thing
the modern western housing construction process from start to finish is an incredibly inefficient process which is designed around minimizing as much risk and maximizing as much profit to the financiers, nothing about it is designed around effecient home-building.
I mean, it’s the left-wingers who want to increase the level of education for everybody, and that’s one of the things that is shown to slow population growth. It’s the insane population pressures that result in the need for building stuff like that.
Also projects are not left wing architecture. They’re compromise with shitstain conservatives that will never properly fund a project even if it gets approved.
Population across the west will start decreasing, fertility rates are all lower than they should be to sustain population. I think the main reason it increased so much is the average life span is high these days with all the advances in medical care.
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Please note that you sound like an eco-fascist
Is that a joke or an actual warning?
It would be a simple and completely non-fascist thing for governments to stop incentivizing having children and to instead provide access to birth control and education. We would use less space, water, electricity, food, etc. instead of constantly expanding. Having fewer children won’t make us extinct, but making the planet uninhabitable might.
Having children is not the problem OMFG. Unsustainable consumerism and capitalism is, however
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I think you may be mistakenly assuming I’m suggesting we outlaw or limit the right to procreate. There are currently people having children who don’t even want to be having them. I’m suggesting governments stop forcing that to happen by allowing people to plan their own families.
Yup, approximately 50% of pregnancies are unplanned globally. The U.S. has a rate similar to the global rate.
Focus on preventing unplanned pregnancies. And make being child-free socially acceptable. That’s it. No “eco-fascism” measures needed.
Imagine what “left wing architecture” looks like after we end manufactured scarcity…
Vast forest arcology-scapes.
Enough to increase the carrying capacity of earth past 300 trillion humans, with vast space enough to live in lush nature…
But no, we have to keep the polluting rents extraction to keep the little people down, to keep the billionaires on top, even if it means even the billionaires have vastly less than they could in egalitarian emancipatarian abundance. At least they have more than others. That’s the most important measure. /s :-/
And pay no attention to the imminence of the bubble popping. ;D
Crazy how detached from reality, compassion, and morality, some are, that they pleep about aesthetics, preferring to keep millions destitute and homeless, to maintain their profiteering gamble.
Enough to increase the carrying capacity of earth past 300 trillion humans, with vast space enough to live in lush nature…
I want what you’re smoking
At the time I was researching the technology and doing the maths, 20 years ago, I was mostly smoking Power Plant. High beta-pinene. Sharp clarity.
Don’t be an idiot. Leftist housing looks like mass manufactured concrete and gyprock, supplemented by packed earth where appropriate, and probably some cardboard/glass/LDPS. At least for the next half a millenia or so.
Wanting to be approximately decent doesn’t overcome physics.
We can build a world where people live densly and affordably without inventing fantasy bullshit.
Don’t be an idiot. Leftist housing looks like mass manufactured concrete and gyprock, supplemented by packed earth where appropriate, and probably some cardboard/glass/LDPS. At least for the next half a millenia or so.
Wanting to be approximately decent doesn’t overcome physics.
We can build a world where people live densly and affordably without inventing fantasy bullshit.
Fun spray of fallacies there.
Starts with Ad-hominem (plausibly/presumably projection), proceeds through a lack of a constructive argument/engagement (ignoring what I said) with false dichotomy, appeal to status quo, appeal to authority, begging the question, circular argument, … and seems like incurious arrogant naive realism, and lack of an educated mind (as in the expression "it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without necessarily accepting or rejecting it).
You assert “Leftist housing looks” only one way. … So anarchist or agrarian housing are not “leftist” in your meaning of “leftist” (like it’s only the one type) are not “leftist”? Sounds like circular argument, appeal to definition, begging the question, a cherry picking lie of omission, a false dichotomy, appeal to cynicism, reification (new term to me). and whatever else I missed. Gets me wondering if this is a case of “received opinion” that’s not been introspected upon and scrutinised.
Perhaps for a more constructive argument, you could elaborate on what specifics of “physics” you think refute the possibility specific to my thought experiment I invited readers to imagine. Otherwise it looks like handwaving an appeal to authority to close the argument.
“We can build a world” amuses me, for the open positivity opening, and the limitation of just “world”, because much of the suppressed technology that avails such vast construction overlaps with the technology that avails all space to us (not limiting us to just a world). Though the amusement is short lived with the rest of that sentence falling to the false dichotomy, and the dismissive presumptive strawman for the ending portion of that false dichotomy.
I look forward to your elaboration on the physics aspect of your counter-argument. Or better yet, your entertaining the idea in curiosity, engaging in the thought experiment, leaving the incurious cynical presumption behind, getting constructive in a “how can we” rather than a “stupid cant”.
[Edit: PS, just for a fun extension to this, bouncing off a piece of an llm’s dubious analysis, that I looked at after hastily churning out ^,
capitalist/neoliberal housing also relies on specific materials and technologies, yet its limitations are rarely framed as “physics” but as market failures or policy choices. Funny how ‘physics’ only becomes an insurmountable obstacle when discussing leftist or egalitarian housing. When luxury skyscrapers or McMansions are built, we call it ‘innovation’ or ‘market demand’—not an immutable law of nature. Why the double standard?
reminds of a fun idea asserted emphatically as an invitation to entertain in the recentmost episode of derp with kurp that “if communism didn’t exist, capitalism would have to invent it” (paraphrased from memory ~ works better in original context/video/wording). ~ (albeit apparently using the newspeakified definition of “communism”, obviously not as originally coined by anarchists at least 5 years before Marx usurped it and handed it over to the tankies, authoritarians, totalitarians, fascists etc to wield as a means to abuse us by).]
You getting paid by the word count?
just xkcd386’d into brandolini’s law.
& always been more verbose than the average cat.
Vast forest arcology-scapes.
Go build yourself a house that is a forest archology-scape, something with trees and other plants growing all over the building. Not only is that significantly harder and more expensive to build, but you also have significantly more water intrusion issues, meaning the building won’t last nearly as long and will require horrifically expensive fixes on the regular.
end manufactured scarcity
Making everything a forest archology-scape is a great way to make housing even more scarce and expensive.
significantly harder and more expensive to build, but you also have significantly more water intrusion issues, meaning the building won’t last nearly as long and will require horrifically expensive fixes on the regular.
This sounds like the kind of argument I hear against spaceships for everybody, that’s basically like “We can’t have spaceships! Screen doors don’t work in space!”. Yeah, well, don’t build them like that.
[Edit: Also sounds like people complaining about indoor plumbing, not understanding what that meant, imagining poop all over the place inside. No. We have tubes to manage where stuff goes. Ample dry clean space.]
Go build yourself a house that is a forest archology-scape,
:3
A house that is a forest arcology-scape… lol… just one house, going from horizon to horizon, with vast layers big enough to fit giant trees in… just a house? Seems more than a little opulent-overkill.
And, by myself? :3 If I had the resources, I would not do it just for myself.
Also, I did draft a small example (and even 1000 variations) of a largely self-sustaining house, using environmentally friendly materials, that would strengthen over time, and as intended to be lived in would increase in capacity to produce food and energy over time, and I was enslaved to do this design work while at my worst health, under promise I’d be put in it, if I’d only design a house fit for my needs, then, after much blackmail, slavery, and torture, they defrauded me, and built a design that inverted every key design element for my health, turning a healing home into a torture box, and what’s worse, it cost them at least twice as much. … I still don’t really know why they did that. Can only presume some kind of sadistic narcissistic Munchhausen-by-proxy. Gets me wondering how much more human potential is being squandered for utterly insane reasons. By this worse-than-Sisyphusian task, I have envied Gregor Samsa. … And I shall recover enough health, and build it properly, and more, yet.
Making everything a forest archology-scape is a great way to make housing even more scarce and expensive.
You’re kidding, right? That’s insanely farcical. Not even funny. If we’ve availed the means to build forest arcologyscapes, you think this makes housing building more scarce and expensive? I would love to hear your reasoning behind that, correct or incorrect. I wonder where your’re presuming screen doors. Like… concrete? LOL. Or perhaps unimaginatively in cognitive dissonance presuming aspects of the current economic paradigm would persist along side the deployed ability to construct vast linked forest arcologies…?
Also, just the same as we don’t have to increase the carrying capacity of earth into the hundreds of trillions, nor fill that capacity, and that’s just an example to illustrate some of the headroom we have with proper resource management, we don’t have to make everything on earth a forest arcologyscape.
Anyhoo, please don’t be put off by my reflexively scoffing incredulity, and do elaborate on how “Making everything a forest archology-scape is a great way to make housing even more scarce and expensive”. You might be right. I wouldn’t want to be barking up the wrong tree. (Pun not intended, noticed, and did nothing to avoid.)
But where would all the cars go? /s
“Roads? Where we’re going… we don’t need… … “roads”.” – Doc Emmett Brown, Back To The Future trilogy.
eli5 how this is specifically left-wing architecture?
Brutalism is associated with Soviet bloc buildings.
This is functionalism. There is none of the architectural expression of brutalism here.
Housing people efficiently so everyone can have a roof over their head, running warm water and central heating; regardless whether they have money or not
Excellent answer
People are sardined like this because so little land and money are allocated towards housing them and none for providing essential services there. Then the same people who denied the funding and land permits complain about how difficult it is to keep gangs from running them.
Seen a lot of appartments built by developers that are similar in a smaller way. I always put it down to cheapest cost and maximum profit. Nothing to do with ideology just expedience or greed.
Critiquing the visual appearance of architecture sounds like some Woke Leftist Liberal Arts shit to me.
My parents raised me in a hole under a tree stump and it built my character. Now I’m the assistant manager at three different car dealerships. You lefties with your indoor plumbing and central air will never have this much success
Also, how can this be considered ugly with all the greenspace?
Please use a /s 😭
As someone who’s grown up in one of those and now rearing a child in Canada, I’d like to tell you that it was an absolutely incredible place to grow up in. The urban planning is such that there’s parks with kid playgrounds sprinkled between the buildings. There’s ample trees. There’s schools and kindergartens at walking distance where kids would often walk alone to/fro. There’s convenient public transit stops. There’s density that lets kids make tons of friends and always have someone to play with. Parenting in such a social environment is so much easier than what parents face in Toronto, it’s not even funny.
square footage? what kind of weird camera are you using?
That’s my Canada goose brain talking. 😆🪿 It’s literally the common term used to refer to the total area of a housing unit. Here for example a major real estate firm explains the importance of square footage measurement.
For extra entertainment, this is a handy flowchart of Canadian units of measurement:
It’s similar in the US. We use gallons for milk and fuel, liters for mid size beverage (like a liter of water or two liters of soda) and fluid ounces for single servings (12 oz can). Pints are used to measure beer served from a keg into a glass. Medications use mililiters.
Large quantities of weed use Pounds and ounces, smaller quantities use grams. Hard drugs pretty much exclusively use metric. Medication uses metric exclusively while most other commerce uses pounds and ounces. Firewood is sold by the “cord”
Yeah. That said, I think on average there’s more imperial in the mix in the US than Canada. Canada went through an intentional Metrification process but it didn’t go all the way through. In part due to trade with the US. 😅
FWIW, a lot of the bougie drinks (fancy soda water, juices, pre-mixed cocktails, etc.) now come in 330mL cans, probably because at 11.7 fl oz, it’s a form of shrinkflation. And those mini cans of soda are technically 222mL.
Also, do note that a U.S. customary pint is different than an imperial pint. (You get 20% more beer in Britain.)
💀
Wtf 😱 is that real?!
100% and it’s accurate. It’s how we do here. 😅
It’s missing how we measure long distances in driving time. ie: “other city is 3 hours away”
Which is also somewhat accurate in train time too given the sorry state of VIA. 😅
I would measure my apartment in square meters, but I’ve realized I would use the phrase “square footage” to refer to the surface area of a living space. Is there an alternative? “Square meterage” doesn’t work.
Surface? That’s the term we use in Italian ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Area, surface, size.
Living space, m2, usable area
“Area”
It’s probably fine if you’re used to it but man I’d be so depressed living in such a densely populated city.
Same here. I guess different people like that but I cant be around that many people.
Pandemics happen easier because of dense populations too.
China has incredibly dense cities compared to the USA and the effect of the COVID pandemic was much smaller in deaths per capita
There’s density that lets kids make tons of friends and always have someone to play with without “playdates.”
man, that’s what i missed as a kid sooo much. i would have needed this.
In Germany?
in austria, but it was some conservative rural backwater nowhere
Ah. That makes sense. Let me make you feel better. In some provinces in Canada (or all?) children can’t be left alone, without adult supervision until the age of 12. It’s illegal and parents get in trouble for it. Even leaving your kid to play in your backyard in the suburb while you’re in the shower can become a problem if your bored neighbour calls the authorities. Imagine growing up with that kind of lack of autonomy. Even if there are kids around and even if there’s public transit. I still heven’t figured out how to workaround that for my kid but I suspect I’m gonna be breaking the law. 😂
man, that sucks. i wish you good luck :D
I still live in one of these, walking my dog is a treat, so many trees, kindergarten, school, pharmacy, groceries, even a pub all within 200 meters.
The part I hate about this place the most is that they made a roundabout in front of the school so parents can drop their kid off by car easier, it’s the most americanized aspect, absolutely disgusting, there are literally two bus stops next to this school going in both directions.
Dude I love brutalism
Dude I love brutalism
Reminds of one of my fave quotes:
“We are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege and injustice, and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.” ― Mikhail Bakunin
...
(So, lets have both.)
Brutalism is the architectural style of these buildings, the commenter above isn’t calling them “slavery and brutality”
The weird thing is that I don’t mind that architecture. Gray buildings? OK. That’s fine.
Of course very old buildings have their own issues. They all do. And so do many new buildings… But looking at this picture, I just wonder what is supposed to be so bad… Shit, I mean, go to modern suberbia or gated communities and tell me you like the look of the cookie cutter homes that will fall apart in twenty years.
Ok, but we have to agree that Soviet blocks are systematic government slop that destroy individuality and make people miserable.
No, we don’t have to agree to that. The abolition of homelessness didn’t make people miserable, guaranteed housing made people thrive.
We’re talking of a country that in 1929 was a preindustrial feudal backwater nation with 85% of the workforce being peasants who, with a bit of luck, worked their landlord’s land with a horse, and without luck they worked it with their bodies. These people lived in poverty conditions without running water, electricity or more heating than a simple fireplace.
By 1970, even after suffering catastrophic destruction at the hands of the Nazism they heroically defeated, it was a fully industrialized country with a majority of the workforce in cities. People, for the first time, enjoyed access to commodities such as running clean water, central heating and electricity. This was literally a revolution for most. This housing was guaranteed, most people accessed it through their work union, and its rent costed a meager 3% of monthly income on average.
The USSR didn’t have the 200 year long process of industrialization that the UK, Germany, France or the USA enjoyed. They literally had to build new, modern housing for a hundred million people in a few decades. The only way possible to do this was with industialized panel construction. Since unemployment was abolished and jobs were guaranteed, everyone was employed in the country. It was literally impossible to build more housing.
This housing was not only guaranteed, it was also designed in walkable neighborhoods with easy access by foot to public transit, basic services such as childcare, shopping and medical attention, and there was a wide variety of cultural centres, sports facilities and other public activities. The socialist country created social people.
I don’t get the individuality aspect. Do you mean the uniform aesthetic? You can still personalize inside, you know, the place you usually see where you live. I live in a beautiful altbau building in Germany and I couldn’t care less, like fuck do I care about the outside of the house, inside I cannot drew one hole into the wall without it becoming a day long project.
You cannot really express individuality with housing, unless you are building a house from scratch, which few of us do. We can hardly afford to rent anything, it’s not exactly pick and choose?
I’d argue insulation and soundproofing are bigger issues than individuality and making people miserable.
[citation needed]
They are designed with productivity in mind, much like capitalist architecture, they aren’t designed to be liveable.
I would like evidence supporting
systematic government slop that destroy individuality and make people miserable.
I was under the impression they were centrally planned, modern brutalist buildings that didn’t meet all expectations as 2was typical of modernist project of the time (c.f. le corbusier’s projects).
Not some darstardly unliveable conspiricy.
Why did they leave so much room for light and green space?
I loved to hate these buildings, but behind those grey boxes there was planning. Lots of nurseries, kindergarten, schools, playground, pharmacies, shops, and parks in-between, and public transportation. Whereas modern construction is all for maximizing profit, “luxury residence” everywhere, putting the most of sq meters in every plot, and f.ck the rest.
Also: the size layout of the flats is really good, not like the 39.5sqm random polygons of a modern buildding.
I can see some of that given the uniformity, but suburbia isn’t exactly all that diverse. So ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah, I know. But these are exclusive to America and the underdeveloped world, and we’re not defending that. It also has similarities with it. Europe has good housing (Though unaffordable) that isn’t suburbia, but modern day commie blocks aren’t exactly affordable in Russia either.
Funny story, suburbia is systemic government slop that destroys individuality, too.
Yeah, they’re both pretty crap compared to what they could be
And yet, there’s more greenery around this blocks than you’d see in a US city.
Of course! What use are green spaces? Cant extract profit from it.
Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #102: “Nature decays, but Latinum lasts forever”
:3
Stop promoting left-right brain rot. Is what they want
Yup. Freedom first.
“Stop promoting the knowledge that homelessness was successfully abolished 50+ years ago with socialist policy in a country with much fewer resources and technological development than what we have in 2025”
Right wing architecture
TIL the hammers in The Wall were based on Nazi architecture.
Bonus: this happened while we’re listening to Pink Floyd and bakimg christmas cookies.
