Dude, who even knows.

6th May 2022

Post reblogged from Centrally Unplanned with 65 notes

centrally-unplanned:

resinsculpture-deactivated20221:

People who bitch about contemporary five-over-one architecture I’m convinced have some degree of last war brain going on. Cause like, in the 60s and 70s it was absolutely true that contemporary apartment bloc architecture was the actual worst dogshit in the entire world and was a hideous blight on every neighborhood where it was built, and even now is only appreciated semi-ironically by the kind of people with a picture of Stalin in their bedroom, or by parking garage aficianados.

But modern apartment buildings are fine. It’s just gaily-painted squarish dutch townhouse aesthetics with maybe some postmoderny mixed materials. Literally fine. Other than the parking garage guys literally who has a problem with this.

I love the genre of SF NIMBYs posting a picture of a 5-and-1 going up on their block and saying “look at this monstrosity!!!” and its just a cute wooden building with orange accent panels. Impossible to understand this mentality!

Like I think I’ve seen one of those where I’m like “yeah, that facade is really too busy” and setting aside how it might be permitting processes pushing “articulation”, like, I could make that judgement because from having seen all the other ones that that style could be done better

  1. froodycartographer reblogged this from centrally-unplanned
  2. objectivistnerd reblogged this from centrally-unplanned
  3. beastlyboysofabackstreetnature reblogged this from centrally-unplanned and added:
    I bitch because they have a short life span. Because they’re not made from durable materials. Because the materials they...
  4. sunnyroom said: @mtxyqmpsfqklt They theoretically draw people who can afford to live in them away from cheaper units that they would otherwise occupy, reducing the displacement of longtime residents from an area. In 40 years they’ll be the mid-price housing in the area (assuming we don’t have another homebuilding freeze) and *that’s* when they’ll be the cheaper option compared to whatever’s being built then.
  5. rendakuenthusiast reblogged this from kontextmaschine and added:
    I kinda like 5-and-1s (and I'm glad I now have a name to attach to "that style of apartment that means it was built...
  6. mtxyqmpsfqklt said: if there’s anything to critique about them it’s that all of them look exactly the same and end up in exactly the same spaces, often incongruously with the rest of the area because they’ve been forced to exist in this bizarre legal bubble. They’re a band-aid for the gaping wound that is American real estate. And besides that they’re often not cheaper than their surrounding area, so like what’s the fucking point?
  7. kontextmaschine reblogged this from centrally-unplanned and added:
    Like I think I've seen one of those where I'm like "yeah, that facade is really too busy" and setting aside how it might...
  8. sunnyroom said: I’ve been calling them kindergarten block buildings. They’re (sigh) ok, I guess. I don’t like parking structures but I do like midcentury libraries that look like parking structures, so…
  9. rosetintedkaleidoscope said: gotcha i like mixed material and gaily colored but i do wish we could have more interesting detailing. like a good old-fashioned swirly fence. a door with a little arch over it. a window with patterned panes. i wonder if you could make that work with a modern building
  10. xhxhxhx said: people! you don’t need *two* emergency stairwells! it’s fine to just have one!
  11. xhxhxhx said: cars bad, cars bad, cars bad, but parking lots? they are a thing of beauty
  12. xhxhxhx said: also? “postmodern”, “mixed material”, “gaily colored”? that shit sucks
  13. xhxhxhx said: I’m never going to protest densification, but these 5-over-1s look worse than their “missing middle” antecedents (dingbats, brownstones) and their design reflects regulatory constraints of dubious merit
  14. youzicha said: I was literally today thinking about writing a tumblr post complaining about how ugly current apartment buildings are compared to our brutalist forebears
  15. eightyonekilograms said: @rosetintedkaleidoscope the style of new apartment building that you see everywhere now
  16. youzicha said: lol u are so wrong