apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

WOW! Every city with concrete prison-like buildings should do this.

This drives me mad inside my head.

I love the concept and this execution, although I start to feel a bit of vertigo in that up shot!

My only concern for this kind of project is upkeep. It looks fabulous now, but if the paint started to flake or fade, it would rapidly become ugly. So as long as maintenance is factored in and actually done, I'm an advocate!

this great. i was suprised to read that these pictures were from Russia. After all, the country is fairly famous for its, well, er...Soviet architecture....

I remember reading about something along these lines in Jonathan Kozol's "Savage Inequalities." Only in that instance, it was a complex of projects located near a commuter expressway, and the building walls were painted to depict happy scenes, to make a more pleasant commute for the folks driving between their suburban homes and their high paying jobs downtown. Kozol interviews several residents who were, understandably, very insulted.

All that to say, these photos are definitely visually pretty (and for all I know these could be super expensive apartments and the residents themselves requested the murals). But... I think generally the emphasis should be on building structures that actually look good and are livable underneath the paint job, and not just settling for whatever is easiest or first suggested by a developer. And even more important, we should be making sure residents have access to needed resources and a good quality of life to match the bright colors. I really don't think that all affordable housing (or any housing for that matter) needs to be ugly, and then get a bandaid slapped over it once we realize that the people who have to live in the buildings aren't the only ones who have to live with seeing them.

it's charming!

So happy! :)
Great post.

I grew up in this kind of buildings (different country, same matchbox apartment buildings for forcedly industrialized populations) and I can guarantee that they must have looked quite ugly before. The exteriors really do not hold up well, now that it is no longer the responsibility of the communist state to maintain them. Drive through any Eastern block country any you will see thousands of these peeling, graying, molding monuments to depersonalized life.

I can see the problem with maintaining the paint job and I hope some thought was given to that.

If anything, the occupants can point at their building and instead of saying "see that grim exterior with no balconies and small windows? mine is the third left on the 5th row from top", they can now say "that's my window, right by the red sail, and my friend is over there on the top of that mountain".

this great. i was suprised to read that these pictures were from Russia. After all, the country is fairly famous for its, well, er...Soviet architecture....

Ah, but it can't stop there. These photos, minus the art, look reminiscent of the Cabrini-Green and Robert Taylor Homes projects in Chicago. Bleak, souless, and absolute failures. At least the photos are more colorful than what Le Corbusier did with his buildings.

I think it's actually quite common to try to cheer up old communist block architecture with bright bold colors. You see it all over eastern Germany...

@Alaricus

Good point. Souless industrialized housing projects certainly aren't limited to the Eastern block. Funny how the housing we provide for marginalized people tends to look the same, regardless of where it is erected.

Hmmm, but still, who'd want to live there?