The outlandish architecture of Astana, Kazakhstan

[SD45T-2]

The Strange, Post-Soviet Architecture of Astana, Kazakhstan

I can't help but wonder if drugs were involved.

 

[grey_beard]

The Strange, Post-Soviet Architecture of Astana, Kazakhstan

I can't help but wonder if drugs were involved.

[MENTION=15246]SD45T-2[/MENTION] :
I'm wondering about the budget for the local version of the Environmental Protection Agency; aside from anything else, if there is such a thing as "noise pollution" then by analogy there must be such a thing as "sight pollution" and some of these buildings are *definitely* examples of that!

 

[SD45T-2]

I'm wondering about the budget for the local version of the Environmental Protection Agency; aside from anything else, if there is such a thing as "noise pollution" then by analogy there must be such a thing as "sight pollution" and some of these buildings are *definitely* examples of that!

I thought the "beer cans" were garish, but the flying saucer thing for the circus seems pretty cool.

 

[Flâneuse]

Visually, I find this city so ugly, artificial and depressing, but also fascinating. I get why people would want to build stuff like this after the 70-year period of communism ended, though.

Most of the buildings look like something from a theme park, but the concert hall and some of the residential buildings aren't hideous. The entertainment center also isn't bad looking when it's lit-up.

 

[011235813]

I think it looks cool. I don't know why you people are being so negative.

 

[Cellmold]

I actually like the palace of creativity, its shape is perfect for catching ideas.

 

[ceecee]

If you read the book Where The West Ends by Michael Totten, he talks a lot about the Soviet architecture left in the post Communist world. Most of it is depressing and it looks even worse where they have built modern looking buildings next to the old weird stuff. I think they call it Turkitecture in the book. Poorly constructed with cheap materials.

 

[Riva]

They look really beautiful.

Will it mean I am odd if I say that non of them - except the one which looks like a pot - look outlandish?

 

[gromit]

Very interesting! There's an interesting whimsy to the designs.


I like the beer cans

...and the palace

...triumph of Astana, although my favorite is the palace

I don't really like those skyscrapers that are in the middle of nowhere, though, from an urban design perspective. They feel too random. Same with some of the other more municipal buildings.

 

[Retmeishka]

I love foreign architecture. I get bored if everything I see always looks the same. I do not want to imagine a world where everything and everybody all over the planet dressed the same way, wore the same hairstyles, and built the same type of buildings. With USA media companies broadcasting their TV shows and movies all over the planet, people are starting to dress like us and copy our hairstyles, and they're listening to the same horrible crappy music we listen to. The more foreign a place looks, the more interesting it is to me.

 

[OrangeAppled]

I don't like it from an aesthetic standpoint, but I appreciate that creativity was allowed.

Having grown up in the doldrums of the SoCal suburbs, where originality goes to die & tract homes & big box shopping centers spring up in its wake, it's refreshing to see anything not confined to some extremely dull & narrow idea of "good taste".

I guess to me, experimenting & creativity trumps safeness. Modern architecture seems to play it too safe, not just in the suburbs. However, the futuristic slant of those striving to break out of the box is getting boring now too though. It's like all these dudes grew up on scifi movies/novels (and have small penises). It's all lacking in romance, gracefulness, & "femininity".

 

[Stansmith]

Ha, kitschy. Would love to see some of these places at night.

 

[SD45T-2]

If you read the book Where The West Ends by Michael Totten, he talks a lot about the Soviet architecture left in the post Communist world. Most of it is depressing and it looks even worse where they have built modern looking buildings next to the old weird stuff. I think they call it Turkitecture in the book. Poorly constructed with cheap materials.

"Le Corbusier was to architecture what Pol Pot was to social reform. In one sense, he had less excuse for his activities than Pol Pot: for unlike the Cambodian, he possessed great talent, even genius. Unfortunately, he turned his gifts to destructive ends, and it is no coincidence that he willingly served both Stalin and Vichy. Like Pol Pot, he wanted to start from Year Zero: before me, nothing; after me, everything. By their very presence, the raw-concrete-clad rectangular towers that obsessed him canceled out centuries of architecture. Hardly any town or city in Britain (to take just one nation) has not had its composition wrecked by architects and planners inspired by his ideas."

The Architect as Totalitarian

I guess to me, experimenting & creativity trumps safeness. Modern architecture seems to play it too safe, not just in the suburbs. However, the futuristic slant of those striving to break out of the box is getting boring now too though. It's like all these dudes grew up on scifi movies/novels (and have small penises). It's all lacking in romance, gracefulness, & "femininity".

"One of Dickens’s villains boasts that he’s never moved by a pretty face, for he can see the grinning skull beneath. That’s realism, he says. But it’s a strange kind of realism that can look through life in all its vibrancy to focus only on death.

Much of today’s architecture brings that misanthrope to mind."

Can We Still Build Real Architecture?

 

[grey_beard]

I don't like it from an aesthetic standpoint, but I appreciate that creativity was allowed.

Having grown up in the doldrums of the SoCal suburbs, where originality goes to die & tract homes & big box shopping centers spring up in its wake, it's refreshing to see anything not confined to some extremely dull & narrow idea of "good taste".

I guess to me, experimenting & creativity trumps safeness. Modern architecture seems to play it too safe, not just in the suburbs. However, the futuristic slant of those striving to break out of the box is getting boring now too though. It's like all these dudes grew up on scifi movies/novels (and have small penises). It's all lacking in romance, gracefulness, & "femininity".

[MENTION=6561]OrangeAppled[/MENTION] --

Apparently self-contradictory non-sequitur ALERT.
Wouldn't lack of male endowment *correlate* with femininity?

(INTJ literal brain, goes into conniptions, like the reputed behaviour of a scorpion, which, when rubbing alcohol is placed on the back of its head, will sting itself to death.)

THANKS. A. WHOLE. FREAKING. BUNCH.


PS -- Ni casting frantically about comes up with a putative explanation: overcompensation, by analogy to overly-tricked out pickup trucks, especially those with "truck nuts" under the rear bumper...

 

[grey_beard]

"Le Corbusier was to architecture what Pol Pot was to social reform. In one sense, he had less excuse for his activities than Pol Pot: for unlike the Cambodian, he possessed great talent, even genius. Unfortunately, he turned his gifts to destructive ends, and it is no coincidence that he willingly served both Stalin and Vichy. Like Pol Pot, he wanted to start from Year Zero: before me, nothing; after me, everything. By their very presence, the raw-concrete-clad rectangular towers that obsessed him canceled out centuries of architecture. Hardly any town or city in Britain (to take just one nation) has not had its composition wrecked by architects and planners inspired by his ideas."

The Architect as Totalitarian

"One of Dickens’s villains boasts that he’s never moved by a pretty face, for he can see the grinning skull beneath. That’s realism, he says. But it’s a strange kind of realism that can look through life in all its vibrancy to focus only on death.

Much of today’s architecture brings that misanthrope to mind."

Can We Still Build Real Architecture?

That bolded part sounds like it came right out of P.J. O'Rourke (cf What Do They Do For Fun In Warsaw? out of Holidays in Hell):

Commies love concrete, but they don't know how to make it. Concrete is a mixture of cement, gravel, and straw? No?
Gravel, water, and wood pulp? Water, potatoes, and lard? The concrete runway at Warsaw's Miedzynarodowy airport is coming to pieces. From bumpy landing until bumpy take-off, you spend your time in Poland looking at bad concrete. Everything is made of it -- streets, buildings, floors, walls, ceilings, roofs, window frames, lamp posts, statues, benches, plus some of the food, I think. The concrete that hasn't cracked or flaked has crumbled completely. Generations of age and decay seem to be taking place before your eyes.

In the meantime, to return to the thread topic, I'll see you and raise you one: here is the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, at the Southeast corner of the Washington Avenue bridge across the Mississippi River (yes, the Mississippi cuts the campus in half):


To my mind, it looks like a cross between a roll of aluminum foil in the process of being exploded by an M-80, and the cover of Pink Floyd's The Division Bell.

 

[OrangeAppled]

[MENTION=6561]OrangeAppled[/MENTION] --

Apparently self-contradictory non-sequitur ALERT.
Wouldn't lack of male endowment *correlate* with femininity?

(INTJ literal brain, goes into conniptions, like the reputed behaviour of a scorpion, which, when rubbing alcohol is placed on the back of its head, will sting itself to death.)

THANKS. A. WHOLE. FREAKING. BUNCH.


PS -- Ni casting frantically about comes up with a putative explanation: overcompensation, by analogy to overly-tricked out pickup trucks, especially those with "truck nuts" under the rear bumper...

Yes.

But that comment of mine was mostly snark for its own sake.

Oh, and lack of masculinity is NOT femininity.

 

[grey_beard]

Yes.

But that comment of mine was mostly snark for its own sake.

Oh, and lack of masculinity is NOT femininity.

[MENTION=6561]OrangeAppled[/MENTION] --

*Need not necessarily* be...

rapid-fire snarks right back at'cha. (INTJ heaven)

To quote from the Benjamin Franklin character in the musical 1776:



Dr. Benjamin Franklin: Please Mr. Dickinson, but must you start banging? How is a man to sleep?

[laughter from Congress]

John Dickinson: Forgive me, Dr. Franklin, but must YOU start speaking? How is a man to stay awake?

[More laughter]

John Dickinson: We'll promise to be quiet - I'm sure everyone prefers that you remained asleep.

Dr. Benjamin Franklin: If I'm to hear myself called an Englishman, sir, I assure you I prefer I'd remained asleep.

John Dickinson: What's so terrible about being called an Englishman? The English don't seem to mind.

Dr. Benjamin Franklin: Nor would I, were I given the full rights of an Englishman. But to call me one without those rights is like calling an ox a bull. He's thankful for the honor, but he'd much rather have restored what's rightfully his.

[laughter]

John Dickinson: When did you first notice they were missing, sir?

[laughter]

 

[OrangeAppled]

[MENTION=6561]OrangeAppled[/MENTION] --

*Need not necessarily* be...

rapid-fire snarks right back at'cha. (INTJ heaven)

No, no, it really is not. That would make femininity inferior, something "less than", which it is not. Removing masculinity in itself does not lead to existence of feminine qualities.

Edited to add: Okay...."woman" is not merely "man" without penis. But metaphorically.

 

[grey_beard]

No, no, it really is not. That would make femininity inferior, something "less than", which it is not. Removing masculinity in itself does not lead to existence of feminine qualities.

Edited to add: Okay...."woman" is not merely "man" without penis. But metaphorically.

[MENTION=6561]OrangeAppled[/MENTION] --

Sigh. "Lack of" need not imply that "the lack came about by removal of."

The Ben Franklin quote was merely for humor, not illustration.

Don't worry, I'm here to help.

 

[OrangeAppled]

[MENTION=6561]OrangeAppled[/MENTION] --

Sigh. "Lack of" need not imply that "the lack came about by removal of."

The Ben Franklin quote was merely for humor, not illustration.

Don't worry, I'm here to help.

But the "lack" is not what defines it. That's the point. To define by the lack is a problem, IMO.

These buildings - lacking in femininity, yet, suggesting making up for lesser masculinity. So it's more "boyish" than feminine.
I'd generally say when an adult male is not "acting like a man", he is not acting like a woman either, but a boy.

Don't mean to hijack, but it weirdly applies to these buildings & their aesthetics.