Grim as fuck, this one. It smacks of the ’60s – poverty and deprivation in the so-called swinging era. It’s the type of building a skag head would chuck himself off. Some things need demolished; this is one of them. Yuk.
Tag Archives: Building
Habitat 67.
I squirm at this but can’t stop staring. 146 apartments in Montreal, a breathing Lego kit with its own ecosystem. Designed by Moshe Safdie, this was meant to revolutionise affordable housing but its legacy is the opposite – a unit can set you back up to $1 million.
I guess it looks better than most dilapidated high-rises but for fuck’s sake, your crib is a tourist attraction. Every time you look out the window an army of Jimmy Stewarts are outside looking in, a Rear Window (1954) role reversal. Disturbing. What if you’re caught with a prossie?
If this is a glimpse of the future, I don’t wish to stick around for it.
Further reading:
https://www.mtlblog.com/lifestyle/what-a-1000000-apartment-looks-like-in-montreals-habitat-67
http://www.towertrip.com/inside-the-most-beautiful-habitat-67-unit-that-just-hit-the-market/
In a nutshell. Leith, Edinburgh.
Rambling around Leith today taking snaps. The port district is ugly but it has character. I would wager it has the highest concentration of junkies and creatives per square mile than anywhere else in Scotland. Everyone knows someone who’s on the smack, yet conversely their next-door neighbour will have aspirations of being this generation’s Bukowski.
The pubs also ‘suffer’ from deflation.
Straight Outta a Bond Villain. Under, Lindesnes. Norway’s underwater eatery.
Lindesnes, Norway. A meal at ‘Under’ can cost up to £350, this Europe’s first underwater munch den with 100 seats available for diners. Food has never interested me much (unless I’m pished and craving kebabs) save the architectural design of eateries; I suppose the idea behind this venue is that it’s an ‘experience’. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) comes to mind, the only decent Roger Moore number in the Bond canon. Though the restaurant is only five metres under the sea, it’s a step in the right direction, the ultimate aim a Pot Noodle in the wreck of the Titanic.
Further reading:
https://www.dw.com/en/worlds-largest-underwater-restaurant-opens-in-norway/a-48002099
House of Soviets in Kaliningrad.
What is it about the Evil Empire and their ugly-as-fuck brutalist buildings? A legacy imbued with obsessions of ‘social realism’ shows scant regard for anything ‘real’ about its constructs; concrete eyesores sticking out like sore thumbs, their centrepiece buildings merely highlight the lunacy of the ideology running the system.
In the Kaliningrad enclave, we have this anomaly plonked there, a robot geezer built beside the rubble of Königsberg Castle. It speaks to the USSR’s fixation with technology and its precedence over the human element. A central administration building, its interior was never finished and the project ran out of cash. It did, however, receive a paint job in 2005.
Nuts.
Further reading:
https://failedarchitecture.com/the-rebuilding-of-a-hornets-nest/
Trompe-l’œil in Reykjavík.
This was the pinnacle of Iceland for me. No, not the Blue Lagoon or expedition around the Golden Circle, but a striking visage transplanted on the side of a derelict warehouse by the port of Reykjavík. I don’t know where it’s from but it has something of the Persona (1966) about it. The capital had a lot of this going on – graffiti artists spraying walls seemingly willy-nilly, and in broad daylight. Avant-garde ghetto.
Turquoise anomaly.
Abbeyhill/Meadowbank is a veritable toilet, by all accounts a shithole. George Best once drank here at the Artisan Bar when he played for Hibs. That’s the legacy of this ghetto. These days it’s a junkie paradise. However, this building is nuts, totally #peacocking. Scenes.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 