Lisnaholic

Wow! I'm being quoted by Yac! This is a total honour. I don't suppose any of us know about the architecture of Poland, so I hope you'll post us some more pics.

And your photos are very interesting; they show how, with a little bit of paint, vegetation and imagination, our cities could look so much better, which in all seriousness, can really lift peoples' spirits. There is also an immediate bonus, in the UK at least, of reduced vandalism if people are given a reason to be proud of where they live. I particularly liked the artwork in your first photo, Yac, with it's discreet pattern and Dali-style animal: compared to the annonymous flats of Zagreb, how much nicer to be able to say, "My flat is the one above the antlers." (Of course not so cool for the guy who has to say, "Yeah, I live in the moose's butt.")


^ I've never seen Ibrox Park, but you're right about the symmetry, etc. I am particularly impressed with the curved stair towers that've been added on; a pleasing shape, clearly from a different era, but blending into the original design. That's not an easy thing to get right.

^ You are very well informed, MLM. I think you have given the little-known Archibald Leitch the honour of being the first architect to get his own personal name check in this thread!

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

Yac

Wut. I don't know about it being an honor But I can share some info on our architecture
There's a lot of "commie blocks" in Poland, and I mean A LOT. The country was almost literally razed to the ground during ww2, there were millions of homeless people after that, so something needed to be done.
Most were created using prefabricated concrete elements and looked buttugly from the start. A couple of years ago everybody was sure these building will start collapsing, many are 50+ years old and "they were never designed to last this long"... People were doing their best to move away.
Now ? Now that cities started actually caring about the way they look, now that they started renovating these buildings along with the surroundings, it doesn't look half bad. The fact that steel reinforced concrete, when properly maintained, turns out to have amazing longevity doesn't hurt either
Here's some examples of what is being done to these buildings, it's still not as common as I'd like, but if they don't get a mural, they at least get proper insulation and a new paintjob, so it's no longer an eyesore. I'll put these photos inside a spoiler tag as some are quite big.

Lisnaholic

^ Yes, I'm afraid the people and country of Poland were hit particularly hard in the Second World War.


^ Those blank end-walls are just the perfect site for a mural; I think these two are my favourites, especially the last as it has a carefully designed paint job on the long facade too.

In England, on a much smaller scale, we also had post-war "prefabs", which also were used for decades longer than originally planned:-



We also have plenty of sixties tower blocks; it was a time when planners talked optimistically about "streets in the sky", ignoring the reality that a dull, narrow and windswept access-balcony miles from any communal facilities is nothing to enthuse about:-

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

Plankton

Can't have an Arch thread without FLW. A lot of his work is local to me, and I've visited a few places, but that was a long time ago when I was in school. You can see his influence in a lot of the later buildings around here too, so Frank Lloyd Wright 'inspired' designs are pretty common. I just perused a few images, here's some of the more popular works he's done:

Falling Water


Robie House


The Rookery


Unity Temple


Larkin Building


Taliesin West (his winter home)

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Lisnaholic

^ Nice pics! "Falling Water" must be the most photograped house in the world I should think, though I liked the Robie House more - and the Winter home one too.
The Brit equivalent of FLW might be Charles Voysey; in the 1900s both were building houses for the rich in a style that everybody copied for years to come:-



He wasn't as innovative as FLW and in fact you have to bit a bit of a specialist to see that they're innovative at all. Also, he never got a song written about him either, so if this is an Architecture Wars thread, I'll concede this round to the USA.

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

Plankton

^Without having any prior knowledge of him, and looking through a few of his works, I'd say his innovations were in the use of arches and off angles. Just a layman's observation.

...and, didn't we already beat you guys in some kind of war a while back? The War thing is so 3 centuries ago.

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Frownland

Guy Dreier is a local dude with some cool stuff. Not sorry for the big pics.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Lisnaholic

^ Now those buildings are exciting! Especially the top two.

^ Yes, that's about all I see too, also he occasionally went.... assymetric !

^

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

Cuthbert

Cheers mate. Yeah it's definitely one of the better ones from the pre-war era imo, has the four individual stands that the old grounds have but the roofing is all level and well done, other grounds don't have that. Probably a bit lucky with it's location in that there is loads of room around it, grounds like Goodison are not really possible to just expand which is a shame.

I too would like to see posts from our European forumistas, I think Zaqarbal might be good in this thread. Hope he sees it.

Loving all these posts and pics

Cuthbert

Reminds me of Paisley Park.