What’s wrong with our cities? Why they are so grey and dull? I want to share with you this video, guys – and say some thoughts on this topic. 

In fact, this channel, ArtBlanche, was a huge inspiration on me when I created this blog. It showed me that you can dive deeper into art – not just rewriting internet articles. 

In the video, the guy tries to analyze our panel houses – how they affect our cities image, and how they affect us. Just imagine! The whole country was built of these houses. All major cities of Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, etc. Thousands of identical buildings – mostly grey and without any decorations. And even after 60 years, the majority of buildings are panel houses. 

Of course, it will affect our culture. And I find very interesting to research that. In fact, there are some aestethics in these houses. In our microdistricts. In abandoned buildings. They create unique aesthetics – and we have many arts related to that. 

Mostly it’s music. We all know famous Russian rock songs. And many of them have some words about “greyness” and “micro-districts”. Just remember “Rayony, Kvartaly”.  Modern music also doesn’t forget about that. For example, Haski’s song “Panelka”. 

The films and games are also trying to analyze that. Very often we see the image of identical houses and grey life between them. Even the most famous Soviet New Year film “Ironiya Sudby” narrative is based on the panel houses. Such a story cannot happen in Europe, for example – you cannot fly from Paris to Bruxelles – and didn’t realize that. 

This is all a very interesting topic to research. The people that time, in 50-s and 60-s, really thought, that the function is important, aesthetics – not. But in the end, it was wrong. It’s not cool – to have a grey city. We, Almaty people, maybe do not realize this properly – because we have plants everywhere. But cities like Temirtau or Omsk are horrible – just a bunch of identical boxes. 

But you know, there is a fun thing. I really got used to panel houses. They gave me nostalgia – I grew up in such microdistricts. And they are actually not so bad. In comparison to modern anthills of course. These new houses horrify me. Soviet panel houses at least were low-rise. But look at this anthills! Identical grey houses with 20 floors and yards-parkings! How person can live in this? No one in Europe builds this anymore. They understood the lesson – and abandoned the functionalism. Only we, on post-soviet space, not only kept the functionalism, but made it worse, replacing the “Chruchevkas” by 20-floor anthills! 
And only when the architecture will once again became an art, not a planning, our cities will flourish again.