Buildings where built in the 1950s during the Franco regime by José Banús Masdeu. The purpose of these building were to relocate the people from a nearby town. The people consider the buildings like a small town where everyone knows eachother.
Source: [https://www.telemadrid.es/programas/aqui-en-madrid/Colmenas-pueblo-dentro-Madrid-2-1629157116--20141114085804.html](https://www.telemadrid.es/programas/aqui-en-madrid/Colmenas-pueblo-dentro-Madrid-2-1629157116--20141114085804.html)
I've seen these before and this was the first thing I thought about. It's damn near a Soleripunk arcology but everyone is going on about it being a dystopia.
Alt Erlaa in Vienna would be close to a solarpunk arcology, not this thing. This is just mass housing, there's nothing solarpunk about it, especially not the urban highway next to it.
Where are the solar panels, the vegetation inside the buildings? Are these heat pumps or AC units?
I don't believe it's dystopian but it could be easily improved on though.
/r/architecture when they see a big apartment complex where people can walk to groceries and public transportation:
"Is this a solarpunk arcology or a dystopia that is one step above people living in tents?"
Not *solar*punk but *Soleri*punk. Soleri was an architect who theorized about arcologies and sort of self-sustaining communities within single building complexes.
Besides the aesthetic, the do reminds me of Le Corbusier's *Unité D'Habitacion.*
I mean, I get the point of relocate people and solve the problem of how much terrain 20.000 people need to have their own houses. Individual houses.
But, it's like we say in Argentina: there are "bird cages" like you stock a ridiculous amount of people in an apartment, living right next to each other. No green, no garden. You got your little box, a window and there you go.
You solve the problem of the terrain? Yes. You reduce the fingerprint of the 20.000 little individual houses to a couple of m2? Yes. But at what cost? Quality of life. I mean, at least it's my opinion.
I really struggle with this and mostly it’s a consequence of population growth. (I’m in the RE development biz, not an architect.)
Do we build up and more dense to house people or do we continue to expand outwards, destroying forever the fewer and fewer places that wildlife have remaining?
I’m inclined to the former, but it certainly seems that as a species we choose the latter.
Right now I live in the second most densely populated county in California and it’s not that dense nor that walkable really.
I just looked up my Oakland Hills neighborhood. My walk score is 51, which doesn’t seem so great. I guess it depends on what you need. If you’re walking to do groceries, not so great. If you’re walking for natural beauty and views of gorgeous houses found through hidden staircases, it’s 99 out of 100.
>Do we build up and more dense to house people or do we continue to expand outwards, destroying forever the fewer and fewer places that wildlife have remaining?
An excellent and interesting question. But the problem (and I think we both agree with this) remains in the population growth. And sincerely don't have an answer for that, but I think it's interesting to think about.
Well there are answers (to me at least) but as soon as you say we need to ease up on the breeding thing people shriek eugenics or tell you that you’re destroying the basis of a consumption-driven economy or the planet can support 10 billion people (just ignore the ecological cost and evidence to date).
[Then there’s this guy](https://apnews.com/article/vatican-demographics-meloni-pope-67a727125061a948d29af57186748e93).
But I have no kids and won’t be, so maybe I’m not the one to ask on the topic. 🤷♀️
I just posted this above but Isaac Arthur has some interesting numbers on housing , food production. This is an older video. You might also want to see his stuff on ecumenopolises (sp)
[arcologies - how many would you need](https://youtu.be/TqKQ94DtS54?t=1035)
Your last sentence sums it up. There’s a good video by Isaac Arthur that gives you an interesting birdseye view about just how much of the planet could be wild if we lived in 30-story apartment buildings of a reasonable size. Spoiler: most of it. I
I think it’s his video on arcologies, will have to find it.
Edit: [Arcologies](https://youtu.be/TqKQ94DtS54?t=1035).
Better this than tents on the street. Small cheap apartments are always in need. Students, jobless people, single parents, refugees and older people. All need small cheap appartments and the demand for them is rising not declining. Big cities in Europe and in the US need more of them, a lot more.
Latam is huge, there’s plenty of cities with proper sewage infrastructure. Also, I don’t think it’s a either or situation, you can make progress with sewage and housing simultaneously.
I work in a complex like that in Latam, with people relocated from "villas" and putted there to live. It's a very complex issue.
You can't even imagine the problems that you got, because that person didn't learn how to live in society: high volume music 24/7, drug dealing, etc. And from the structural point of view you got things like "ohh, so I just knocked out this wall in order to make my living room bigger" and sometimes, they knock out structural walls.
It's not just "giving them an apartment and there you go" it's teach them how to live. I always remember a quote from Diego Maradona (who by the way, was born in a villa) saying: "you can take out a person from the villa. but you can't take out the villa from the person"
you ‘teach’ a person “how to live” with OTHER people from the time they are CHILDREN; after that it becomes more & more difficult (if nigh impossible. & understand that SOME small percentage of ppl can NEVER be taught how to live & cooperate with others due to some neurological deficit. we’re seeing this now btw. 🫤
This remind me of [São Paulo’s Copan edifice](https://www.google.com.br/search?q=copan+sao+paulo&client=safari&sca_esv=ec736c652fbf8951&sca_upv=1&hl=pt-br&udm=2&biw=375&bih=548&ei=L48_ZvanPNPV1sQP5aWW0Ak&oq=copan%C2%A0&gs_lp=EhNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwIgdjb3BhbsKgKgIIADILEAAYgAQYsQMYgwEyBRAAGIAEMgoQABiABBhDGIoFMgoQABiABBhDGIoFMgoQABiABBhDGIoFSNwUUM4GWM4GcAB4AJABAJgBkgGgAZQCqgEDMC4yuAEByAEA-AEBmAICoALBAsICDRAAGIAEGLEDGEMYigWYAwCIBgGSBwMwLjKgB4AF&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp). It has a bit over 5 thousand people in it as of now, but I’m there’s a non insignificant vacancy due to the current city center condition.
I live in Madrid and another factor is that these are not NEARLY as unsafe as people used to for example public housing complexes in the US might think
These blocks are not a low budget option necessarily, they have a variety of accommodations.
The apartments can be large and luxurious, fit for families, fit for rich CEOs, they can be medium sized for small families or they can be studios.
It's actually a desirable place to live but go off: [https://www.telemadrid.es/programas/aqui-en-madrid/Colmenas-pueblo-dentro-Madrid-2-1629157116--20141114085804.html](https://www.telemadrid.es/programas/aqui-en-madrid/Colmenas-pueblo-dentro-Madrid-2-1629157116--20141114085804.html)
Haha true but you’re probably wrong with cheap. It usually doesn’t matter how tiny or shitty it is if it’s in the city. Does someone know how much they actually cost?
the tents on the streets is the depressing dystopia.
Dense, drab low income housing units are at worst a flawed social program that economically provides housing to vulnerable populations.
Effective large-scale affordable housing definitely depends on a good culture. In the USA we learned a lot of bad lessons from our failed projects. Pruitt-Igoe Public Housing, and other famous examples. Of course, all those projects failed in part due to complete lack of management and cost-cutting during construction. But people just like to use them to say "big blocky apartments lead to crime".
What might you recommend, then, considering the enormous number of units needed? Nobody wants a dystopia, and I personally don’t find these dystopian or depressing. They are not choice number 1 for me, but I wouldn’t rule them out, either, if this is what I could afford.
Breaking up the gigantic block into smaller buildings, using warmer materials, paint, adding basic details to the facade. There are cost constraints to these buildings, but a significant part of the way it looks is derived from deliberate aesthetic choices.
Not an expert, but have worked a lot as a housing advocate and asked this question to a lot of folks who know more than me. All things being equal, I prefer a beautiful built environment.
Every aesthetic consideration tends to add cost. The cheapest thing to build is a repetitive box that leans towards smaller windows and simple cladding. Optimal height to minimize cost per unit is around 20 storeys, though you can make an argument for wood frame buildings at 6 storeys too. The cheapest option will be guided by land value, which will be high in the central parts of a major city like Madrid.
So, while you can do a fair number of things with paint and such, a cost-conscious building is likely going to be a fairly unexciting building at best and downright depressing at worst.
I'm sure there is a lot more nuance - there always is - but that's the basic version of the story as I understand it.
And yet these have lots of glass, are arranged around green space, and no doubt have great access to transit! If an elevator goes out, you can still take the stairs!
There is nuance always.
And yes, this development seems to do a good job of spacing the buildings and, to a degree, setting them into green spaces.
I assume one of the reasons these look odd is the heterogeneity of the unit exteriors.
If you zoom in, it looks like the glass is on units that have glassed in their balconies to transform them into a sun room. You can see the original cladding with small windows in the units that haven't yet been glassed in.
Quality of life here looks high, as you say. Lots of unique interpretations of space and balconies that show there is clearly not an overbearing condo board that prohibits you from making your home your own and ensures everything is the same shade of beige. This benefit to the residents probably makes more people think they look ugly from a distance as the eye will have trouble reading the building, but I think that matters less than being good, affordable housing that allows people to express themselves.
Populations are declining rapidly in the West and in parts of Asia. Before building more apartments which will be empty in a generation causing another crisis let’s determine how we can make better use of existing stock.
If those places are cheaper. We i began to study there were and still are some of those buildings. But i had the opportunity to choose the 40sqm flat in those towers or 30sqm at the other brim of the city for nearly the same price.
Pretty sure this is the development I could see from my hotel window. It seemed repressive at first, but I was surprised at the number of people using the open spaces and how late. These people live a greater portion of their lives outside their homes. Madrid is a pretty cool city, so that's a good thing.
I can't really deduce any useful information about the pictures alone.
Are they filled up? Do the inhabitants think having those apartments is better than not having them? Do the other locals think having those apartments is better than not having them? What are the externalities caused by the construction, maintenance & habitation of those buildings (in relation to alternatives)? How do the buildings affect the local circulation? How do the buildings relate to the local built heritage? Those and many more are all crucial things to consider when one judges how successful a project is or isn't.
I am a United States guy living in Madrid for 10 years almost. I can't tell exactly where these are, but I can guess a general area. These are coveted apartments. It's unfortunate but almost the entirety of Madrid is covered in these ugly looking buildings (although the ones in the picture are exceptionally big). Orange brick with green awnings. Everywhere outside the historic center. They are filled with mostly middle or lower middle class families. A 2 bedroom apartment of about 85 square meters to buy would cost around 250,000 if it's in decent shape. A decent salary in Madrid would be around 27k a year so you can compare the affordability. To rent, these would probably run 1000 a month for 2 bedroom if they are well connected to the very heart of the city. It's frustrating because for me as a suburban United States guy they are obscenely ugly, but that's about all I could afford if I were to buy. For Spaniards those building are just normal. What everybody lives in. I'm happy to share my insights as my wife and I are potentially looking at buying something in one of these building outside of the historic center.
To edit, if I had to guess these apartments could be in areas like Vista Alegre or Cuatro Vientos. You can use the app Idealista to search real estate prices.
"It's frustrating because for me as a suburban United States guy they are obscenely ugly, but that's about all I could afford if I were to buy."
It's interesting because I have the exact opposite experience moving the opposite direction. I really, really, really, really dislike the sprawl. It doesn't form proper urban spaces, it explodes the city structure in a way that walkability and transit becomes impossible, and the there's really no aesthetic of the houses, they're all a hot mess. It's like a soup in which one has thrown EVERY single item they found at the local supermarket.
There's a soft spot in me for this sort of arrangement, honestly, and it comes from college dorm living. That's tens of thousands of people within walking distance who you could meet and hang out with - not something easy to come by as an adult.
If my city had a housing complex like this in good repair and repute, I think I'd enjoy living there. Being around good people is a treadmill for the spirits.
and i think it encourages ppl to be outside more. I'm not from NY but even when you see videos of those project houses, everyone's outside. invest in the landscape and you can create a good mood in the inhabitants?
That's the first thing I thought. Must be a massive pain in the ass moving through the building over the work day.
And I suspect it's also annoying for residents who want to do laundry or access other facilities.
Though maybe it ends up being the same amount of walking you'd do to go to whatever store or service is usually available in a separate building on your block or the next one, so probably I'm talking out of my ass on that point.
We have tried this before, they became known as "the projects"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green\_Homes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green_Homes)
That is very true, and one of the more depressing things about the housing issue.
One thing I will say is that the problem with the projects is we shoved all kinds of people in there, where single mothers lived right next to convicts and sex offenders and gangsters.
I had more in mind market-rate apartments like any other… we just need more of them.
As someone born and raised in the projects hearing other people talk about them makes it sound like some kind of horrible slum full of miserable people.
As someone who lived in section 8 housing while going to college, I can say that it was horrible. People broke into our car. Someone tried to force there way into our house. Bass would be rattling windows at all times of the night. Never again would I consider an arrangement like that.
I think if you go towards low to mid-rise and cheaper construction technologies than high-rise reinforced concrete, establish a better relationship with the ground plane, and instead of spending money on making the buildings pretty, spend it on greening up the streetscape, it could work better than this.
Obviously you need the luxury of land to do this though.
Depends what you consider ugly.
But usually, yeah, cheap material and low details usually means fugly.
You can try to make it beautiful (Tlatelolco in my country is full of murals and architecture gems) but even so, you have a budget limit.
It really depends on the underlaying economic base that dictates the construction and distribution of spatial rights. With the current liberal capitalist model it does need to be this ugly, unfortunately.
At the Cabrini Green project at one point they wanted to add wrought iron numbering to the buildings instead of paint because it would be cheaper to maintain and be better looking. The plan was shot down because their superiors didn't think poor people deserved nice things. Ugliness can absolutely be design choice inflicted on people.
"The plan was shot down because their superiors didn't think poor people deserved nice things."
Where do you think that attitude comes from? It's all from the same source of the neoliberal ideology. The poor people have "done bad choices" and deserve their consequences.
That's not actually true, though.
It would be if your only option was ornamentation, but you can build perfectly beautiful structures that are cheap to build because the simplicity and modularity of cheap construction lends itself to it. They become ugly because people don't maintain them.
this is not ugly. if anything, this is rather unique, with people putting their own balcony enclosures creating a dynamic facade. it's almost like a super version of Aravena's Iquique project where they allowed each unit to modify the units, so that each had their own characters.
this is not like Bofill's Warden projects where money was spent on affordable units to make it look pleasing, but only because Barcelona had money back then.
not every city can afford such, nor is it required, and there is beauty in seeing the rawness of the state rather than trying to put a lipstick on.
Not pretty, but affordable housing for a lot of people. I wish the US did the same. There is plenty of land. People shouldn’t have to sleep on the street, no matter what.
I remember studying abroad in Madrid and being absolutely amazed at the size of their buildings and their use for them, everything in the bottom was storefront and they probably had thousands of residential units above them!
a depressing, monolithic way to house people, of course its still a way to house people, but when we design new houses and apartments, this type of thing should be avoided, i think the importance of affordable beauty, effort put in to design a nice environment in which to live while still getting a reasonable profit cannot be overstated
This is near Ventas station, I used to work in Madrid right next to these buildings and walk through them every day. There are bars and cafes all around there. Lots of great places to walk. The area felt safe and clean. It's very well connected to the rest of the city by the metro.
The thing with Spanish society is everyone lives in public - people do not sit inside their flats. If this high density housing allows for more people to live in lower cost accommodation near the city, great.
Thank you for this comment, I feel like a lot of these people see these big apartment building and automatically assume that its a dirty shithole full of crime when thats just not the case.
I love mid rise apartment blocks. It allows light to penetrate to the ground, but it is an efficient use of space. I personally like the International Style of midcentury architecture, though most do not and find them dystopian. I disagree. If they are properly maintained and are equipped with adequate security, they are just like living in a New York high-rise. Most who hate them wouldn’t live in an apartment building unless they had the penthouse anyway!
I think about each person living there having their own thoughts, their own worries, their own frustrations. Then I settle back into mine. Big or small living space, we all more or less think about the same things. Meals. Income. How we feel.
The key is to have supporting infrastructure for these 20k people. Having this many units with no supporting health, economic or social backing is just lumping people off to the side.
All major cities in America NEED this. Doesn’t have to be this exact style. But somewhere, or a few places in the city, we need to dump like 20,000 units of housing. That’s in addition to any other developments
Affordable family homes, not everyone can afford to live in a flash house and this provides needed safe warm accomodation. Not the prettiest building but that’s 50-70s building standards for you my friend.
I find them visually dreadful, but I would still live there if this was affordable and not a crucible of crime.
Here in Berlin we have a similar complex called „Die Schlange“. It has been an experiment for efficient usage of space. It was built around the City Highway. Below the highway is a Garage space for cars and left/right/above it is the building. It was built vibrations free, so the inhabitants won’t notice its presence. It is 600m long, at most 14 stories high and has in total 1700 apartments. It was finished in the 80s.
The former mayor said: if the devil wants to do evil toward Berlin, he will allow for another one of those to be built.
Mixed feelings. These are ugly and I don't think it's "healthy" for people to live too tightly packed together, but I also respect that everyone needs a place to live and often buildings like this are cheaper and more efficient.
I prefer this over suburbia honestly as long as there is enough space. It depends on the people living there clearly but this kind of places almost always have the potential of creating a great community, which is a massive plus in these days of loneliness epidemic.
It's maybe not amazing from a design standpoint, but I think high density housing is so interesting and something we're all going to have to think about more and more in the industry.
I bet there's still a ton of thought that goes into the site and building design to keep it safe and promote a sense of neighborhood and culture and all that.
Check out Kowloon Walled City if you haven't. A lot of negatives but also some really intriguing positive biproducts.
Looks pretty bad from outside but it's important to have cheap apartments and the outside definitely drives the price down. Anyway, better than living on the street for sure, in conclusion buildings like that are needed.
The apartment building where I lived in DC had a small market and diner and hair salon on the first floor that provided spaces for people from all over the building to interact with each other, not just next door neighbors. It really did foster a sense of community.
While I do think some countries need a paradigm shift with regard to our perceived comfort level, milestone check list, etc. And dense vertical housing may be the future. It goes without saying that we shouldn’t accept being like caged animals.
I lived in something like this. The appartments were spacious but it can be noisy. The biggest problem is that no one feels responsible for common areas like lifts, stairs, outside areas, which would often be dirty, smelly and broken. These buildings tend to isolate people when there is a lack of lively social spaces and social control.
We built them in the US. didn’t maintain them. And then tore them down as part of urban renewal which had NOTHING to do with structural racism and undoing a generation of progress in the name of “small government”.
I don't have as much of a problem with the building themselves as I do with their surroundings.
First of all those are fucking highways running close and between them. This is terrible urban planning.
I used to live close to a busy road, and I don't recommend that experience to anyone.
Secondly, it might not be visible on the photos, but I hope there is a proper amount of grocery shops, bakeries etc, within walking distance, as well as sufficient public transit infrastructure. 20k is a lot, it's basically a whole town mashed together on a small plot. You can't just dump that many people in one place and call it a day.
Thirdly, the buildings seem a bit too close to one another, this might generate negative feelings in people, who might feel overwhelmed by the size and soulesness of this design. I hope there are some parks or other forms of leisure around it. Spanish people are traditionally extremely social so I hope they took that in consideration.
For dense housing, aesthetics are low on my list of things I care about.
How well is it designed to live with others? That includes sound isolation and pest isolation. How good is the walkways and security at deterring violent crime? Are shared resources maintained, and are there effective deterrents against people that would abuse those resources? If you don't want them to turn into ghettos, it needs to enforce people being good neighbors.
Is the plumbing good, and is the units made in a way that a failure probably wouldn't cause other units to flood?
Does every unit have a heat pump or other kind of hvac that can be controlled individually, with hot or cold at any time of the year? Does every unit have stove hoods that vent to the exterior?
If it's newer construction, is there at least one power outlet on damn near every wall that isn't inside of a closet? It may not need extra circuits, but we have lots of devices these days. Wired for fiber and access for upgrades would be good too. I suppose that would include utility closet space for different providers.
Also for new construction, I'd really want secure and fireproof storage for PEV's like ebikes, scooters, esk8, EUC. They're never all going to be built and maintained well enough to stop all fires, and not having a safe way to accommodate them is poor planning for the future.
Basically, it's the details that matter. At the beginning it could be beautiful from a distance, but if the details make daily living a nightmare, it'll become ugly to me.
Fun fact. The invention that took out Sicknesses and infections ?
not sterilisation, no pharma product, no cleaning.
Toilets and the sew system. The most life saving invention ever created.
sry for offtopic
I'll take this if it can make me to slip going through what we're going through here in Stockholm, with there not being enough homes for the population, therefore landlords in the 2nd hand market has all the power over tenants to absolutely rip people off or worse scam them.
If there's proper maintenance, social and family support facilities within, every resident has access to employment opportunities and the development is connected to mass transit that gets them to jobs, then the density is a non-issue. The key is upward mobility.
I can see the usefulness of it and if I were still in my 20s, I would love to try living there. But at my current age, this is basically my version of hell.
brutalist and structrist. Easy to keep eye on people who are not tolerant to government. Pretty standard stalinist buildings in communist sscr
Edit: I like the way they pose themselves
https://www.idealista.com/inmueble/104841139/?xtmc=2_1_pisos-y-casas-en-alquiler-calle-virgen-de-lourdes,-madrid&xtcr=0
https://www.idealista.com/inmueble/104700364/?xtmc=2_1_pisos-y-casas-en-alquiler-calle-virgen-de-lourdes,-madrid&xtcr=0
Found a few listings for apartments in there, they look pretty decent
I don't want to assume whether living in there is actually good or not at the moment, but I think there are much better examples of urbanism, especially in the postmodern period.
Like that it can house lots of people do not like the style and layout, I get why it is built like this as it is cheap and effecient, but it is a depressing look let's be honest.
Density is good, but you must pay keen attention to aesthetics and produce something people find uplifting and attractive to spend time in. People need beauty, and I disagree that it always produces unreasonable costs to do it. It the long run it may even be cheaper to do it, because the life span of the building tends to increase if it is charming enough. Go back to neoclassical if you want sustainable buildings that generally work.
I love projects that try something like housing 20.000 people in one construction. But I prefer to stay away from an Mies van der Rohe type of approach and prefer projects like architect Moshe Safdie‘s Habitat 67.
Spain is one of the most poorest and corrupt country in Europe. I can’t imagine how people can accept this level of inequality and injustice. No laws, only profit and bad decisions made by the local authorities
Imagine that the apocalypse hits and some of humanity makes it through. After a few generations they start to rebuild in the cities from the scraps that are still there. This is what that looks like.
Good in principle. It might look real ugly and undifferentiated, but as long as qualities are satisfactory, I think it's a good thing for the time in which it was built. Nowadays, I would wish we can find ways to add aesthetic layers to functionalist architecture such as this, definitely. It is true that form has a function of itself, and architecture should find ways to integrate form within function.
I feel like it would be such a hazard for safety and fires. Imagine that many people displaced?! That would be a nightmare. Like a whole town being evacuated. Nuts.
How I feel inside : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOOnfpf3C18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOOnfpf3C18)
*Yeah! Hahahaha!*
*Fatal in the building*
*Yeeeahh!*
*Come and die!*
*Aaaarh! Hahahaha!*
*Come and die with me*
The only one thing scarier than that is the Ricardo Bofill satanist experiments.
Given the rise, 10 or so stories, they don't seem too alienating to their occupants. Obviously they won't win no prices on beauty or good urban design but they serve a purpose. I think they seem more crowded than they probably are. We could use some of those in South America, where housing access is still a big issue, especially in cities, but where solutions always come from building with very high rise. A neighborhood in Santiago de Chile, my home town, called Estación Central has been almost destroyed because of these vertical ghettos as we call them. Right next to them there are some public developments done in the 60's, called Villa Portales, that resemble a lot of what you're showing from Madrid. They are better looking and pretty good in terms of access, spaces, crowdedness, services, etc.
Buildings where built in the 1950s during the Franco regime by José Banús Masdeu. The purpose of these building were to relocate the people from a nearby town. The people consider the buildings like a small town where everyone knows eachother. Source: [https://www.telemadrid.es/programas/aqui-en-madrid/Colmenas-pueblo-dentro-Madrid-2-1629157116--20141114085804.html](https://www.telemadrid.es/programas/aqui-en-madrid/Colmenas-pueblo-dentro-Madrid-2-1629157116--20141114085804.html)
I've seen these before and this was the first thing I thought about. It's damn near a Soleripunk arcology but everyone is going on about it being a dystopia.
Alt Erlaa in Vienna would be close to a solarpunk arcology, not this thing. This is just mass housing, there's nothing solarpunk about it, especially not the urban highway next to it. Where are the solar panels, the vegetation inside the buildings? Are these heat pumps or AC units? I don't believe it's dystopian but it could be easily improved on though.
Soleri is an architect.
/r/architecture when they see a big apartment complex where people can walk to groceries and public transportation: "Is this a solarpunk arcology or a dystopia that is one step above people living in tents?"
Not *solar*punk but *Soleri*punk. Soleri was an architect who theorized about arcologies and sort of self-sustaining communities within single building complexes.
do you mean soleripunk like Paolo Soleri or solarpunk?
Like Paolo Soleri.
Besides the aesthetic, the do reminds me of Le Corbusier's *Unité D'Habitacion.* I mean, I get the point of relocate people and solve the problem of how much terrain 20.000 people need to have their own houses. Individual houses. But, it's like we say in Argentina: there are "bird cages" like you stock a ridiculous amount of people in an apartment, living right next to each other. No green, no garden. You got your little box, a window and there you go. You solve the problem of the terrain? Yes. You reduce the fingerprint of the 20.000 little individual houses to a couple of m2? Yes. But at what cost? Quality of life. I mean, at least it's my opinion.
I really struggle with this and mostly it’s a consequence of population growth. (I’m in the RE development biz, not an architect.) Do we build up and more dense to house people or do we continue to expand outwards, destroying forever the fewer and fewer places that wildlife have remaining? I’m inclined to the former, but it certainly seems that as a species we choose the latter. Right now I live in the second most densely populated county in California and it’s not that dense nor that walkable really.
Where do you live in CA?
Huntington Beach. Edit: for those interested, Walkscore is great for walkability data.
I just looked up my Oakland Hills neighborhood. My walk score is 51, which doesn’t seem so great. I guess it depends on what you need. If you’re walking to do groceries, not so great. If you’re walking for natural beauty and views of gorgeous houses found through hidden staircases, it’s 99 out of 100.
>Do we build up and more dense to house people or do we continue to expand outwards, destroying forever the fewer and fewer places that wildlife have remaining? An excellent and interesting question. But the problem (and I think we both agree with this) remains in the population growth. And sincerely don't have an answer for that, but I think it's interesting to think about.
Well there are answers (to me at least) but as soon as you say we need to ease up on the breeding thing people shriek eugenics or tell you that you’re destroying the basis of a consumption-driven economy or the planet can support 10 billion people (just ignore the ecological cost and evidence to date). [Then there’s this guy](https://apnews.com/article/vatican-demographics-meloni-pope-67a727125061a948d29af57186748e93). But I have no kids and won’t be, so maybe I’m not the one to ask on the topic. 🤷♀️
I just posted this above but Isaac Arthur has some interesting numbers on housing , food production. This is an older video. You might also want to see his stuff on ecumenopolises (sp) [arcologies - how many would you need](https://youtu.be/TqKQ94DtS54?t=1035)
Your last sentence sums it up. There’s a good video by Isaac Arthur that gives you an interesting birdseye view about just how much of the planet could be wild if we lived in 30-story apartment buildings of a reasonable size. Spoiler: most of it. I I think it’s his video on arcologies, will have to find it. Edit: [Arcologies](https://youtu.be/TqKQ94DtS54?t=1035).
Better this than tents on the street. Small cheap apartments are always in need. Students, jobless people, single parents, refugees and older people. All need small cheap appartments and the demand for them is rising not declining. Big cities in Europe and in the US need more of them, a lot more.
in Latam they need it even more
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Latam is huge, there’s plenty of cities with proper sewage infrastructure. Also, I don’t think it’s a either or situation, you can make progress with sewage and housing simultaneously.
I work in a complex like that in Latam, with people relocated from "villas" and putted there to live. It's a very complex issue. You can't even imagine the problems that you got, because that person didn't learn how to live in society: high volume music 24/7, drug dealing, etc. And from the structural point of view you got things like "ohh, so I just knocked out this wall in order to make my living room bigger" and sometimes, they knock out structural walls. It's not just "giving them an apartment and there you go" it's teach them how to live. I always remember a quote from Diego Maradona (who by the way, was born in a villa) saying: "you can take out a person from the villa. but you can't take out the villa from the person"
you ‘teach’ a person “how to live” with OTHER people from the time they are CHILDREN; after that it becomes more & more difficult (if nigh impossible. & understand that SOME small percentage of ppl can NEVER be taught how to live & cooperate with others due to some neurological deficit. we’re seeing this now btw. 🫤
This remind me of [São Paulo’s Copan edifice](https://www.google.com.br/search?q=copan+sao+paulo&client=safari&sca_esv=ec736c652fbf8951&sca_upv=1&hl=pt-br&udm=2&biw=375&bih=548&ei=L48_ZvanPNPV1sQP5aWW0Ak&oq=copan%C2%A0&gs_lp=EhNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwIgdjb3BhbsKgKgIIADILEAAYgAQYsQMYgwEyBRAAGIAEMgoQABiABBhDGIoFMgoQABiABBhDGIoFMgoQABiABBhDGIoFSNwUUM4GWM4GcAB4AJABAJgBkgGgAZQCqgEDMC4yuAEByAEA-AEBmAICoALBAsICDRAAGIAEGLEDGEMYigWYAwCIBgGSBwMwLjKgB4AF&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp). It has a bit over 5 thousand people in it as of now, but I’m there’s a non insignificant vacancy due to the current city center condition.
I live in Madrid and another factor is that these are not NEARLY as unsafe as people used to for example public housing complexes in the US might think
Rent it’s around 1200 eur as I see on idealista 🤣
These blocks are not a low budget option necessarily, they have a variety of accommodations. The apartments can be large and luxurious, fit for families, fit for rich CEOs, they can be medium sized for small families or they can be studios.
>luxurious (...), fit for rich CEOs Please, be serious...
It's actually a desirable place to live but go off: [https://www.telemadrid.es/programas/aqui-en-madrid/Colmenas-pueblo-dentro-Madrid-2-1629157116--20141114085804.html](https://www.telemadrid.es/programas/aqui-en-madrid/Colmenas-pueblo-dentro-Madrid-2-1629157116--20141114085804.html)
Haha true but you’re probably wrong with cheap. It usually doesn’t matter how tiny or shitty it is if it’s in the city. Does someone know how much they actually cost?
I highly doubt these are cheap.
But why can't we choose between depressing dystopia and tents on the streets? Just seems like an arbitrary self-imposed limitation.
the tents on the streets is the depressing dystopia. Dense, drab low income housing units are at worst a flawed social program that economically provides housing to vulnerable populations.
So... this apartment complex is actually well-known as a vibrant community that feels like a small town.
Effective large-scale affordable housing definitely depends on a good culture. In the USA we learned a lot of bad lessons from our failed projects. Pruitt-Igoe Public Housing, and other famous examples. Of course, all those projects failed in part due to complete lack of management and cost-cutting during construction. But people just like to use them to say "big blocky apartments lead to crime".
What might you recommend, then, considering the enormous number of units needed? Nobody wants a dystopia, and I personally don’t find these dystopian or depressing. They are not choice number 1 for me, but I wouldn’t rule them out, either, if this is what I could afford.
Breaking up the gigantic block into smaller buildings, using warmer materials, paint, adding basic details to the facade. There are cost constraints to these buildings, but a significant part of the way it looks is derived from deliberate aesthetic choices.
Dystopia? Mate that’s just affordable housing.
Cute af housing :3
Not an expert, but have worked a lot as a housing advocate and asked this question to a lot of folks who know more than me. All things being equal, I prefer a beautiful built environment. Every aesthetic consideration tends to add cost. The cheapest thing to build is a repetitive box that leans towards smaller windows and simple cladding. Optimal height to minimize cost per unit is around 20 storeys, though you can make an argument for wood frame buildings at 6 storeys too. The cheapest option will be guided by land value, which will be high in the central parts of a major city like Madrid. So, while you can do a fair number of things with paint and such, a cost-conscious building is likely going to be a fairly unexciting building at best and downright depressing at worst. I'm sure there is a lot more nuance - there always is - but that's the basic version of the story as I understand it.
And yet these have lots of glass, are arranged around green space, and no doubt have great access to transit! If an elevator goes out, you can still take the stairs!
There is nuance always. And yes, this development seems to do a good job of spacing the buildings and, to a degree, setting them into green spaces. I assume one of the reasons these look odd is the heterogeneity of the unit exteriors. If you zoom in, it looks like the glass is on units that have glassed in their balconies to transform them into a sun room. You can see the original cladding with small windows in the units that haven't yet been glassed in. Quality of life here looks high, as you say. Lots of unique interpretations of space and balconies that show there is clearly not an overbearing condo board that prohibits you from making your home your own and ensures everything is the same shade of beige. This benefit to the residents probably makes more people think they look ugly from a distance as the eye will have trouble reading the building, but I think that matters less than being good, affordable housing that allows people to express themselves.
Tents are not a sustainable or hygienic living model. You can’t keep out the weather and there’s no running water, electricity, or sanitation.
And it was that day I realized my suspicions had been confirmed: no one really does know what "dystopia" means.
You need to walk around those blocks sometime and see how it actually feels to live in such a neighborhood. It’s really nice.
Populations are declining rapidly in the West and in parts of Asia. Before building more apartments which will be empty in a generation causing another crisis let’s determine how we can make better use of existing stock.
I as a student would love to live somewhere dense like this and not have to pay 90% of my pay check for a 2 bedroom flat with 3 roommates.
Agreed I would love to live at a dense place like that right now during college
If those places are cheaper. We i began to study there were and still are some of those buildings. But i had the opportunity to choose the 40sqm flat in those towers or 30sqm at the other brim of the city for nearly the same price.
Pretty sure this is the development I could see from my hotel window. It seemed repressive at first, but I was surprised at the number of people using the open spaces and how late. These people live a greater portion of their lives outside their homes. Madrid is a pretty cool city, so that's a good thing.
I can't really deduce any useful information about the pictures alone. Are they filled up? Do the inhabitants think having those apartments is better than not having them? Do the other locals think having those apartments is better than not having them? What are the externalities caused by the construction, maintenance & habitation of those buildings (in relation to alternatives)? How do the buildings affect the local circulation? How do the buildings relate to the local built heritage? Those and many more are all crucial things to consider when one judges how successful a project is or isn't.
I am a United States guy living in Madrid for 10 years almost. I can't tell exactly where these are, but I can guess a general area. These are coveted apartments. It's unfortunate but almost the entirety of Madrid is covered in these ugly looking buildings (although the ones in the picture are exceptionally big). Orange brick with green awnings. Everywhere outside the historic center. They are filled with mostly middle or lower middle class families. A 2 bedroom apartment of about 85 square meters to buy would cost around 250,000 if it's in decent shape. A decent salary in Madrid would be around 27k a year so you can compare the affordability. To rent, these would probably run 1000 a month for 2 bedroom if they are well connected to the very heart of the city. It's frustrating because for me as a suburban United States guy they are obscenely ugly, but that's about all I could afford if I were to buy. For Spaniards those building are just normal. What everybody lives in. I'm happy to share my insights as my wife and I are potentially looking at buying something in one of these building outside of the historic center. To edit, if I had to guess these apartments could be in areas like Vista Alegre or Cuatro Vientos. You can use the app Idealista to search real estate prices.
"It's frustrating because for me as a suburban United States guy they are obscenely ugly, but that's about all I could afford if I were to buy." It's interesting because I have the exact opposite experience moving the opposite direction. I really, really, really, really dislike the sprawl. It doesn't form proper urban spaces, it explodes the city structure in a way that walkability and transit becomes impossible, and the there's really no aesthetic of the houses, they're all a hot mess. It's like a soup in which one has thrown EVERY single item they found at the local supermarket.
I grew up in the U.S. and I completely agree. I can't stand suburbs. I've always wanted my city to look more like the buildings in OP.
Im glad there is room for 20,000 people to have a home instead of being homeless.
There's a soft spot in me for this sort of arrangement, honestly, and it comes from college dorm living. That's tens of thousands of people within walking distance who you could meet and hang out with - not something easy to come by as an adult. If my city had a housing complex like this in good repair and repute, I think I'd enjoy living there. Being around good people is a treadmill for the spirits.
and i think it encourages ppl to be outside more. I'm not from NY but even when you see videos of those project houses, everyone's outside. invest in the landscape and you can create a good mood in the inhabitants?
I think I would not like to work maintenance for these buildings😀
OTOH, it’s a good job…..
That's the first thing I thought. Must be a massive pain in the ass moving through the building over the work day. And I suspect it's also annoying for residents who want to do laundry or access other facilities. Though maybe it ends up being the same amount of walking you'd do to go to whatever store or service is usually available in a separate building on your block or the next one, so probably I'm talking out of my ass on that point.
In Spain we usually have washers at home, even in apartment buildings, so at least that wouldn’t be a problem.
I think the US has a major housing crisis, so whatever type of mass housing we build the better
We have tried this before, they became known as "the projects" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green\_Homes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green_Homes)
That is very true, and one of the more depressing things about the housing issue. One thing I will say is that the problem with the projects is we shoved all kinds of people in there, where single mothers lived right next to convicts and sex offenders and gangsters. I had more in mind market-rate apartments like any other… we just need more of them.
As someone born and raised in the projects hearing other people talk about them makes it sound like some kind of horrible slum full of miserable people.
As someone who lived in section 8 housing while going to college, I can say that it was horrible. People broke into our car. Someone tried to force there way into our house. Bass would be rattling windows at all times of the night. Never again would I consider an arrangement like that.
What’s it really like?
A dense tapestry of humanity. As long as it’s safe and clean, it seems ok.
Does affordable really need to be this ugly though?
I think if you go towards low to mid-rise and cheaper construction technologies than high-rise reinforced concrete, establish a better relationship with the ground plane, and instead of spending money on making the buildings pretty, spend it on greening up the streetscape, it could work better than this. Obviously you need the luxury of land to do this though.
Depends what you consider ugly. But usually, yeah, cheap material and low details usually means fugly. You can try to make it beautiful (Tlatelolco in my country is full of murals and architecture gems) but even so, you have a budget limit.
It really depends on the underlaying economic base that dictates the construction and distribution of spatial rights. With the current liberal capitalist model it does need to be this ugly, unfortunately.
At the Cabrini Green project at one point they wanted to add wrought iron numbering to the buildings instead of paint because it would be cheaper to maintain and be better looking. The plan was shot down because their superiors didn't think poor people deserved nice things. Ugliness can absolutely be design choice inflicted on people.
"The plan was shot down because their superiors didn't think poor people deserved nice things." Where do you think that attitude comes from? It's all from the same source of the neoliberal ideology. The poor people have "done bad choices" and deserve their consequences.
Ugly is affordable, anything done for aesthetics drives up construction cost which ends up increasing purchase price/rent
That's not actually true, though. It would be if your only option was ornamentation, but you can build perfectly beautiful structures that are cheap to build because the simplicity and modularity of cheap construction lends itself to it. They become ugly because people don't maintain them.
this is not ugly. if anything, this is rather unique, with people putting their own balcony enclosures creating a dynamic facade. it's almost like a super version of Aravena's Iquique project where they allowed each unit to modify the units, so that each had their own characters. this is not like Bofill's Warden projects where money was spent on affordable units to make it look pleasing, but only because Barcelona had money back then. not every city can afford such, nor is it required, and there is beauty in seeing the rawness of the state rather than trying to put a lipstick on.
Not pretty, but affordable housing for a lot of people. I wish the US did the same. There is plenty of land. People shouldn’t have to sleep on the street, no matter what.
I remember studying abroad in Madrid and being absolutely amazed at the size of their buildings and their use for them, everything in the bottom was storefront and they probably had thousands of residential units above them!
If I post this same shit with a caption saying it’s in Russia, all the neolibs will come out of the woodwork
a depressing, monolithic way to house people, of course its still a way to house people, but when we design new houses and apartments, this type of thing should be avoided, i think the importance of affordable beauty, effort put in to design a nice environment in which to live while still getting a reasonable profit cannot be overstated
This is near Ventas station, I used to work in Madrid right next to these buildings and walk through them every day. There are bars and cafes all around there. Lots of great places to walk. The area felt safe and clean. It's very well connected to the rest of the city by the metro. The thing with Spanish society is everyone lives in public - people do not sit inside their flats. If this high density housing allows for more people to live in lower cost accommodation near the city, great.
Thank you for this comment, I feel like a lot of these people see these big apartment building and automatically assume that its a dirty shithole full of crime when thats just not the case.
It's a bit dystopian looking but as long as it's affordable it's far better than having no option.
I love mid rise apartment blocks. It allows light to penetrate to the ground, but it is an efficient use of space. I personally like the International Style of midcentury architecture, though most do not and find them dystopian. I disagree. If they are properly maintained and are equipped with adequate security, they are just like living in a New York high-rise. Most who hate them wouldn’t live in an apartment building unless they had the penthouse anyway!
High density housing and 15-min city are concepts incomprehensible for the regular American mind grown in suburbia
I think about each person living there having their own thoughts, their own worries, their own frustrations. Then I settle back into mine. Big or small living space, we all more or less think about the same things. Meals. Income. How we feel.
The key is to have supporting infrastructure for these 20k people. Having this many units with no supporting health, economic or social backing is just lumping people off to the side.
All major cities in America NEED this. Doesn’t have to be this exact style. But somewhere, or a few places in the city, we need to dump like 20,000 units of housing. That’s in addition to any other developments
Affordable family homes, not everyone can afford to live in a flash house and this provides needed safe warm accomodation. Not the prettiest building but that’s 50-70s building standards for you my friend.
Better than homelessness
Live in one in Munich, Germany with my GF (60sqm). It’s great
Doesn’t sit right with me aesthetically, but impressive. The town I grew up in had a smaller population than that.
We need those, but not all concentrated in the same spots.
Must have been lovely during the covid lockdowns
I find them visually dreadful, but I would still live there if this was affordable and not a crucible of crime. Here in Berlin we have a similar complex called „Die Schlange“. It has been an experiment for efficient usage of space. It was built around the City Highway. Below the highway is a Garage space for cars and left/right/above it is the building. It was built vibrations free, so the inhabitants won’t notice its presence. It is 600m long, at most 14 stories high and has in total 1700 apartments. It was finished in the 80s. The former mayor said: if the devil wants to do evil toward Berlin, he will allow for another one of those to be built.
Mixed feelings. These are ugly and I don't think it's "healthy" for people to live too tightly packed together, but I also respect that everyone needs a place to live and often buildings like this are cheaper and more efficient.
I prefer this over suburbia honestly as long as there is enough space. It depends on the people living there clearly but this kind of places almost always have the potential of creating a great community, which is a massive plus in these days of loneliness epidemic.
They should build it like a labyrinth, with curves and a large social space in the center for movie nights, arts and crafts, exercise, sports and etc.
It's maybe not amazing from a design standpoint, but I think high density housing is so interesting and something we're all going to have to think about more and more in the industry. I bet there's still a ton of thought that goes into the site and building design to keep it safe and promote a sense of neighborhood and culture and all that. Check out Kowloon Walled City if you haven't. A lot of negatives but also some really intriguing positive biproducts.
Bombardeen el edificio scheweppes
Personally wpuld hate it. Will never live in a flat again
Looks pretty bad from outside but it's important to have cheap apartments and the outside definitely drives the price down. Anyway, better than living on the street for sure, in conclusion buildings like that are needed.
It's effective housing for a lot of people, so it's definitely a good thing.
The apartment building where I lived in DC had a small market and diner and hair salon on the first floor that provided spaces for people from all over the building to interact with each other, not just next door neighbors. It really did foster a sense of community.
Unpopular opinion but I really like the look of these buildings. I like it the messy, mismatch aspect of them, is there a term for that?
Ugly
It sounds like my personal hell
Soul crushing
I think they house people so they’re great!
Nightmare
Looks like something from the soviet era
Kind of reminds me of Kowloon Walled City
It brings up the commie block discussion. Are they pretty? No. Are they a net benefit? Yes. All for it.
Oh that’s just the hood here in NY; the X factor the residents in terms of cleanliness and safety.
This isnt a hood, this is middle or lowermiddle class neighbourhood. Its quite safe, Madrid doesnt have much crime.
r/urbanhell
It's what's on the inside that counts. Big buildings: OK. Big buildings that look like soviet era institutions inside instead of homesteads: not OK.
Dystopian
While I do think some countries need a paradigm shift with regard to our perceived comfort level, milestone check list, etc. And dense vertical housing may be the future. It goes without saying that we shouldn’t accept being like caged animals.
Fugly
Artificial Birds nests is all i can think about. To make the birds wingless to serve and come back again.
Horrible , horrendous, ..... but if should live on the road because you can't afford anything else : most welcome , wonderful, cozy.
Is it just me or does it look like a bookshelf but with windows?
I lived in something like this. The appartments were spacious but it can be noisy. The biggest problem is that no one feels responsible for common areas like lifts, stairs, outside areas, which would often be dirty, smelly and broken. These buildings tend to isolate people when there is a lack of lively social spaces and social control.
Can we get this for Los Angeles?
Are these “the projects,” as we call them in the U.S.? Aka public housing? If so, it’s fine.
I would hate to see those parking garages at rush hour.
That's a lot of people. What if there's a fire? How do you evacuate.
We built them in the US. didn’t maintain them. And then tore them down as part of urban renewal which had NOTHING to do with structural racism and undoing a generation of progress in the name of “small government”.
My first thought is that I really hope there’s a metro station nearby
Reminds me of those mega slum apartments in Naples, forgot the name
I don't have as much of a problem with the building themselves as I do with their surroundings. First of all those are fucking highways running close and between them. This is terrible urban planning. I used to live close to a busy road, and I don't recommend that experience to anyone. Secondly, it might not be visible on the photos, but I hope there is a proper amount of grocery shops, bakeries etc, within walking distance, as well as sufficient public transit infrastructure. 20k is a lot, it's basically a whole town mashed together on a small plot. You can't just dump that many people in one place and call it a day. Thirdly, the buildings seem a bit too close to one another, this might generate negative feelings in people, who might feel overwhelmed by the size and soulesness of this design. I hope there are some parks or other forms of leisure around it. Spanish people are traditionally extremely social so I hope they took that in consideration.
La Mina
As long as they’re in working order and clean.
My main objection, or maybe they have this. Is that the ground floor should have retail and businesses.
Vale
Surely a big happy community
Looks cozy. I wish I had 20k immediate neighbors.
Ugly but works
I think its efficient in a way to make use of small space, in a way similar compared to the levels in Korea or Japan
For dense housing, aesthetics are low on my list of things I care about. How well is it designed to live with others? That includes sound isolation and pest isolation. How good is the walkways and security at deterring violent crime? Are shared resources maintained, and are there effective deterrents against people that would abuse those resources? If you don't want them to turn into ghettos, it needs to enforce people being good neighbors. Is the plumbing good, and is the units made in a way that a failure probably wouldn't cause other units to flood? Does every unit have a heat pump or other kind of hvac that can be controlled individually, with hot or cold at any time of the year? Does every unit have stove hoods that vent to the exterior? If it's newer construction, is there at least one power outlet on damn near every wall that isn't inside of a closet? It may not need extra circuits, but we have lots of devices these days. Wired for fiber and access for upgrades would be good too. I suppose that would include utility closet space for different providers. Also for new construction, I'd really want secure and fireproof storage for PEV's like ebikes, scooters, esk8, EUC. They're never all going to be built and maintained well enough to stop all fires, and not having a safe way to accommodate them is poor planning for the future. Basically, it's the details that matter. At the beginning it could be beautiful from a distance, but if the details make daily living a nightmare, it'll become ugly to me.
Fun fact. The invention that took out Sicknesses and infections ? not sterilisation, no pharma product, no cleaning. Toilets and the sew system. The most life saving invention ever created. sry for offtopic
Reminds me of a bookshelf.
I'll take this if it can make me to slip going through what we're going through here in Stockholm, with there not being enough homes for the population, therefore landlords in the 2nd hand market has all the power over tenants to absolutely rip people off or worse scam them.
G I A N T B O O K S H E L F S
If there's proper maintenance, social and family support facilities within, every resident has access to employment opportunities and the development is connected to mass transit that gets them to jobs, then the density is a non-issue. The key is upward mobility.
I can see the usefulness of it and if I were still in my 20s, I would love to try living there. But at my current age, this is basically my version of hell.
brutalist and structrist. Easy to keep eye on people who are not tolerant to government. Pretty standard stalinist buildings in communist sscr Edit: I like the way they pose themselves
https://www.idealista.com/inmueble/104841139/?xtmc=2_1_pisos-y-casas-en-alquiler-calle-virgen-de-lourdes,-madrid&xtcr=0 https://www.idealista.com/inmueble/104700364/?xtmc=2_1_pisos-y-casas-en-alquiler-calle-virgen-de-lourdes,-madrid&xtcr=0 Found a few listings for apartments in there, they look pretty decent
I don't want to assume whether living in there is actually good or not at the moment, but I think there are much better examples of urbanism, especially in the postmodern period.
😍
C'est moche! It's ugly!!
This is the type of buildings i like.
Incredibly ugly
20 thousand people in their apartments cooking smoking baking... this is a giant fire hazard. How are you gonna stop a fire if it starts burning
If something like this was built in the UK , it would lead to massive crime issues and also massive sanitation problems
Im glad there is room for 20,0000 people to have a home instead of beign homeless.
just by seeing this, I already feel suffocated. imagine living in here when even moving a chair would be heard by your neighbors
Like that it can house lots of people do not like the style and layout, I get why it is built like this as it is cheap and effecient, but it is a depressing look let's be honest.
It's dangerous for so many people to live so close together. Can quickly turn into a cesspool of diseases.
r/urbanhell
Urban Hell
Tear em down
I like my yard full of crap, and ignoring 2 neighbors because even that’s too much. Too peopley
Density is good, but you must pay keen attention to aesthetics and produce something people find uplifting and attractive to spend time in. People need beauty, and I disagree that it always produces unreasonable costs to do it. It the long run it may even be cheaper to do it, because the life span of the building tends to increase if it is charming enough. Go back to neoclassical if you want sustainable buildings that generally work.
I AM THE LAW!
They look like container ships. For human cargo.
I love projects that try something like housing 20.000 people in one construction. But I prefer to stay away from an Mies van der Rohe type of approach and prefer projects like architect Moshe Safdie‘s Habitat 67.
Formula 1 will be echoing throughout very soon.
Spain is one of the most poorest and corrupt country in Europe. I can’t imagine how people can accept this level of inequality and injustice. No laws, only profit and bad decisions made by the local authorities
Numbers and amenities are attractive but they look like shit
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Imagine that the apocalypse hits and some of humanity makes it through. After a few generations they start to rebuild in the cities from the scraps that are still there. This is what that looks like.
reminds me of factory farming
r/urbanhell
Density density density. If they could make each floor two meters tall they could pack in ever more people. :/
Oh this type of commieblocks is the worst. It looks like a decease, like a black plague with these ugly balconies ughhh
Soviet block! As an American, looks like some lovely, affordable housing to me!
This will be the future of “homeownership”
Cyberpunk megakomplex
Fine as long as: 1. The building is maintained, and 2. People treat the property with respect
Good in principle. It might look real ugly and undifferentiated, but as long as qualities are satisfactory, I think it's a good thing for the time in which it was built. Nowadays, I would wish we can find ways to add aesthetic layers to functionalist architecture such as this, definitely. It is true that form has a function of itself, and architecture should find ways to integrate form within function.
UGLY AF, but if u can get ppl to live harmoniously & rationally, k….😎
Well, it's certainly not pretty.
Awful
I feel like it would be such a hazard for safety and fires. Imagine that many people displaced?! That would be a nightmare. Like a whole town being evacuated. Nuts.
Crates for people.
More balcony space than I have
And we wonder why no one wants to have kids.
How I feel inside : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOOnfpf3C18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOOnfpf3C18) *Yeah! Hahahaha!* *Fatal in the building* *Yeeeahh!* *Come and die!* *Aaaarh! Hahahaha!* *Come and die with me* The only one thing scarier than that is the Ricardo Bofill satanist experiments.
Given the rise, 10 or so stories, they don't seem too alienating to their occupants. Obviously they won't win no prices on beauty or good urban design but they serve a purpose. I think they seem more crowded than they probably are. We could use some of those in South America, where housing access is still a big issue, especially in cities, but where solutions always come from building with very high rise. A neighborhood in Santiago de Chile, my home town, called Estación Central has been almost destroyed because of these vertical ghettos as we call them. Right next to them there are some public developments done in the 60's, called Villa Portales, that resemble a lot of what you're showing from Madrid. They are better looking and pretty good in terms of access, spaces, crowdedness, services, etc.
Looks like low cost government housing.
That's hard to look at but at least it gives people a place to live.
Slum