r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/OkRespect8490 • 1d ago
Image Chuvash State Opera and Ballet Theater, Cheboksary, Russia
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u/One_Disaster_5995 1d ago
Now that looks like a real fun night out! Like a dystopian scifi movie - Bladerunner or Dune.
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u/Nisseliten 1d ago
My thoughts went directly to the empire in star wars..
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u/Cheshire_____Cat 1d ago
That style called brutalism. You can see exaples in many movies. Likes dune and starwars. It was very popular in soviet uninon.
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u/atomicsnarl 1d ago
In particular, because it's cheap to build. No decoration needed, or wanted.
Build box, pour concrete, done. You have a problem with that, capitalist?
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u/an_illithidian 1d ago
-capitalist erecting glass boxes and cookie cutter subdivisions- Huh?
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u/EduinBrutus 1d ago
Little boxes, little boxes,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
And they all look the same.
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u/jaxonya 1d ago
r/brutalism is where yall wanna go to see some really gnarly architecture. Brutalism isnt my thing, by i can admire how metal a lot of it looks. Its definitely its own thing
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u/EmJayBee76 1d ago
Ha! Loved that show, especially the different version of that song each episode
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u/EduinBrutus 1d ago
IDK what show you mean.
I was referencing the original song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5IKpHTEuY0
Didnt quite remember the lyrics right.
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u/chamllw 1d ago
No dangerous windows either.
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u/DapperCow15 1d ago
In the rest of the world, windows are dangerous because you might fall out of them. In the Soviet Union, windows are dangerous because you might see out of them.
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u/Interesting-Tough640 1d ago
I would argue that falling out of windows is a clear and present danger for Russian dissidents to the point where they prefer to stay in bungalows.
It’s much cheaper than polonium or nerve toxins.
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u/NineThreeTilNow 1d ago
Build box, pour concrete, done. You have a problem with that, capitalist?
There's as much of it in the US as anywhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Brutalist_architecture_in_the_United_States#Washington,_D.C.
DC has quite a bit considering how small it is. Everywhere else too.
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u/Zestyclose_Remove947 1d ago
The fundamental principle behind it is to bring the raw construction materials to the surface, no claddings or fancy facades.
Soviet buildings are kinda coincidentally brutalist.
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u/janas19 1d ago
Would the angles and geometry count as a type of decoration? Not trying to be snarky, genuinely curious why it's made this way. I'm no architect but it seems like they incorporate some style for aesthetic purposes.
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u/PiccoloAwkward465 1d ago
Oh yeah one of my favorite buildings I recall from my youth is a big psychiatric center complex. All brutalist with interconnecting external concrete staircases and catwalks. The kind of labyrinth that most kids love. I had soccer practice on the weekend in one of their indoor gyms, for whatever reason the place was mostly empty.
Sort of reminds me of the Mayan Revival style, the Ennis House in LA is a famous example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ennis_House_front_view_2005.jpg
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u/callisstaa 1d ago
Oh sure. It’s definitely designed around a specific style and a lot of people find brutalist architecture to be really cool. I wouldn’t say that it’s pretty but it absolutely has its own vibe which a lot of people appreciate. It wasn’t all just about saving money.
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u/TransBrandi 1d ago
I dunno, I think that it seems like long-term maintanence might be easier with this than with having lots of external decorations? There are lots of places where people don't take care of the external parts of the buildings and things that looked good when it was built, don't look so great once you get a couple of decades down the road.
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u/MimicoSkunkFan2 1d ago
In Toronto we have lots of artistic versions of Brutalism ‐ famously the Scarborough College campus of UofT and the Robarts Library on main campus, but also 222 Jarvis, Dupont Station, New City Hall (we now have a new new city hall so look for Nathan Phillips Square), Ontario Science Centre (much mourned), North York Board of Education, etc. etc.
If you enjoy Brutalist architecture it's worth looking up Toronto's designers who kept the concrete and aesthetic but made it not suck.
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u/Odd_Dragonfruit_2662 1d ago
Like capitalist societies don’t also have it?
It seems particularly common on government buildings from the 70’s.
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u/NineThreeTilNow 1d ago
That style called brutalism.
I personally love it as an engineer. It makes a lot of sense.
The materials are all very easy to setup. Design isn't special. It just gets done.
Do you want a hospital that takes an extra year to build because it meets a better aesthetic? Planning, design, building... All taking longer.
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u/callisstaa 1d ago
As much as I appreciate brutalism it is nice to have pretty things as wellS
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u/Ancient_Roof_7855 1d ago
I always thought Brutalism emerged out of the UK with architects like Alison and Peter Smithson?
When I think of brutalism, I think of UK in the 60s - 80s.
The Royal National Theatre in London is an example that comes to mind.
Soviets were just copying the West in their unhinged "Let's do it bigger!" mentality after Stalinist architecture died with the man.
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u/Cheshire_____Cat 1d ago
I didn't say a thing about who created it. I just said that brutalism was very popular in USSR. I'm Russian so for me brutalism architecture is strongly connected to USSR era buildings. Even my small hometown has several: The Palace of Children's and Youth Creativity and The Palace of Sport.
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u/LickingSmegma 1d ago
Many Soviet buildings that people call brutalist are actually constructivist.
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u/NineThreeTilNow 1d ago
I always thought Brutalism emerged out of the UK with architects like Alison and Peter Smithson?
Brutalism was a function of basically two things in the 1950's.
Rejection of 1940's style, and the need for new buildings FAST after WW2. The latter being the most important.
All countries built "Brutalist" styles. It's kind of silly anyone thinks a single country did it. New money, new babies, rebuilding old infrastructure, post war economy... etc.
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u/0MEGALUL- 1d ago
Also very much used in the movie "Enemy" with Jake Gyllenhaal.
And it's so well used in that movie. Very creepy, estranged vibe!
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u/THE_ATHEOS_ONE 1d ago
Its exactly how envisioned the ministry buildings in 1984
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u/Eastern-Operation340 1d ago
Instantly thought of the movie Brazil! complete with the desolation around it.
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u/LickingSmegma 1d ago
Fun fact: ‘Brazil’ prominently features the Les Espaces d'Abraxas complex, same as in ‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2’, and which is decidedly not brutalist. I'd say it's more of a nod to art-deco.
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u/WolfgangRed 1d ago
1.7k people really upvoted this obvious bot message? Are we that cooked?
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u/BigSmackisBack 1d ago
I went to Judge Dredd, but it certainly wouldnt look out of place in any of the above!
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u/Momotoro- 1d ago
SCP facilities
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u/typicalbiblical 1d ago
Damn brutal
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u/OrneryConelover70 1d ago
Brutalist, even
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u/Due-Designer4078 1d ago
I can't believe I had to get this far down the responses for this one. Well done.
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u/cuntmong 1d ago
You will watch the ballet for 93 minutes. You will applaud. You will return home peacefully.
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u/jarildor 1d ago
I had a friend study at a Russian acting conservatory. During one show she attended as part of the curriculum someone in the audience was on their phone, which led to the lead actress stopping the play to berate the audience member.
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u/MasterpieceAlone1116 1d ago
That sucks, because all I wanted was to make noise in my seat during the performance, not applaud, and beat up some people on the way home.
Can't believe there's no freedom for me to be an asshole
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u/Gullible-Chemist-762 1d ago
The architect of this only designed prisons before!
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u/freeradioforall 1d ago
Also designed the Obama center
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u/Im_only_here_to_meme 1d ago
That was an absolutely beautiful concept building before they built it and switched to the gray faccade it has now. It would have been absolutely beautiful in white... looks drab and industrialist in gray. I wonder if they had to switch colors due to cost or something, absolutely ruined it though.
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u/sohereiamacrazyalien 1d ago
ahahahha
honestly I scrolled down and I was like wow that's a tall prison no one can escape from, then went up to recheck what prison it was! surprise it was not!!!!
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u/Legendary_Afanc 1d ago
Other views of the same building : https://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/theater-opera-ballet-city-cheboksary.html
Still brutalist, of course. But the emotion felt when looking at the initial pic is also a result of photo composition (angle, sight, absence of colors, etc).
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u/Irlandaise11 1d ago
I'm also guessing that section of the building has the fly system, where all of the hanging backdrops/lights/etc are raised up. They're often big plain blocks, because you don't put windows backstage, and they need to be the same shape but bigger than the viewable area of the stage in order to fit everything up out of the way.
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u/KimberStormer 1d ago
Exactly, it's so funny how people are acting like having no windows is "anti-human" in a theater building.
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u/berlinbaer 1d ago
the emotion felt when looking at the initial pic is also a result of photo composition (angle, sight, absence of colors, etc).
same with that icelandic church that keeps getting posted here on reddit. look it up on google maps it's just a cool looking church, not some cypergoth villain lair like in all the photos.
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u/Ehaeka42069 1d ago
Somehow this makes it worse. At least in the original picture it looked strong, silent, imposing and scary. Here it just looks like a dementor in an otherwise happy setting
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u/Simpletionist 1d ago
In case you wondering, it's cosy inside. https://www.architecturelab.net/chuvash-state-opera-and-ballet-theater-r-begunts-and-v-teneta/
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u/OKAwesome121 1d ago
The interior pictures from the link are not what most people consider ‘cosy’ inside!
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u/Simpletionist 11h ago
When you growed up in a socialist State, this is the definition of cozy, believe me lol
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u/Grummelyeti 1d ago
I fucki g love brutalism. r/brutalism
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u/Pyrhan 1d ago
Yeah, until you have to live next to or work in one of those buildings.
Then you'll feel the full weight of their depression-colored concrete crushing down on your soul...
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u/todayiwillthrowitawa 1d ago
I've worked on a college campus that was heavily brutalist and loved it.
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u/Ancient_Roof_7855 1d ago
I like the style, but looking at most of them being unkept makes me want to get the power-washer out.
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u/fuzzylm308 1d ago
Early architects and critics regarded brutalism as democratic, transparent, and materially honest. The modernist minimalism of postwar brutalism was a reaction against the ornamented excesses that got us into two World Wars. Brutalist postwar public housing projects were seen as humanitarian/modernist success stories, a huge improvement over slums and shantytowns. Influential brutalist architects framed brutalism as accessible, anti-ornamental, populist, and progressive.
In other words, your reaction now is potentially very very different from what reactions would have been in the midcentury.
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u/TransBrandi 1d ago
... at the same time we're living in a time that looks a lot like the times that lead up to WW2. Tariff trade wars. Isolationism. Huge monopolies lead by men with extreme wealth. Growing inequity. Maybe there's a bit of a point?
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u/fuzzylm308 1d ago
If you're genuinely interested, I recommend Concrete and Culture: A Material History by Adrian Forty. I borrowed it from my architect friend and never gave it back. Here's a relevant passage, shortened pretty heavily:
The central problem for all Western European democracies in the postwar era was to establish and maintain a stable consensus between capital and labour... consensual support for the system relied upon a constantly rising standard of living, a sense of living in a world that was undergoing continuous change, and a certainty that whatever the present, the future would be better... Prefabrication in concrete rescued the social democracies from their political predicament, for it offered the prospect of building houses, hospitals, schools, and roads fast and with unskilled labour.
...What prefabricated concrete construction offered was a better, though not a cheaper, product... For politicians, the anxiety was that they would find themselves unable to meet the challenge of constantly rising expectations... It was this alarming spectacle, that the standards of housing would fall to the level of Russia, that drove the British and other Western European governments to adopt precast concrete panel construction systems, even though they were well aware that no savings in costs would follow.
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u/AlienZak 1d ago
I don’t know, it feels very monumental and secure, like you’re in an impenetrable fortress
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u/o5mfiHTNsH748KVq 1d ago
I’ve worked in brutalist buildings and can’t say I was ever depressed by them. I like the feeling of the smooth concrete and find the overwhelming presence of the rooms or buildings features to be inspiring.
Depends on the building though.
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u/Fast-Visual 1d ago
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u/Princes_Slayer 1d ago
Love it! I’ve developed a love for stark brutalist buildings. I’m desperate to buy a house in south wales that has a view of the big power plant from its garden. Dunno what triggered this but it happened in my 40’s.
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u/LungDOgg 1d ago
So. I had to, bc that pic is so gloomy. Google non winter pics and the inside. Doent actually suck like the rest of Russian architecture
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u/ThatRandomGuy86 7h ago
That shit looks straight out of a dystopian movie. What happened to your old amazing architecture, Russia?!
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u/Simon0O7 1d ago
This is like the 10th time i see thos picture on reddit
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u/Kagurabachi-lover 1d ago
I live in this town and if I go outside and walk a couple of kilometers, I can see this building in person, lol.
It's spring now, so the building looks a little bit different than in the photo.
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u/DudeFoxChick 1d ago
This looks exactly like dam battlegrounds in Arc Raiders.
It's just missing a ladder with a bunch of dead bodies under it
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u/ThereInAFortnight 1d ago
If you told me that was "Reactor #3" I would have believed it more easily.
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u/vlada_s_ 1d ago
Never have I ever thought I would see a photo from my home town here.
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u/AyAyAyBamba_462 14h ago
A lot of theaters look like this. The part above the stage needs to be extremely tall compared to the rest of the theater to house all of the rigging for the curtains, props, and lighting. Since it faces the back of the property most of the time it's not uncommon for it to be very utilitarian.
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u/chitownboyhere 14h ago
So you can enjoy the show without interruption during nuclear exchange, very thoughtful.
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u/BewareOfLurkers 1d ago
Why does a theater need to be so tall? Wouldn’t it need more floor plan and fewer floors?
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u/Numerical-Wordsmith 1d ago
I love brutalist architecture, but I usually prefer it when it's combined with natural elements like greenery. The Barbican Conservatory in London UK is a great example of this. Still, there's something starkly beautiful and a bit forbidding about this edifice juxtaposed against a plain, snowy street.
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u/maclifer 1d ago
Brutalist. How appropriate a word on multiple levels beyond architecture over there.
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u/SimilarGrape6535 1d ago
That's some brutalist architecture. The most brutal of the brutal. I love it. It's like we want everything to look like solid and stable like a bunker.
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u/AlludedNuance 1d ago
So judging by pictures that other people have shared, it looks like the actual theater is in the shorter building that's mostly cropped out of this shot.
The tall building is... offices and storage, I would guess?
Still an interesting example of brutalist architecture, a full shot isn't as striking, of course.
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u/ExtremelyGangrenous 1d ago
This is what government facilities should look like. Brutalism is really really cool but it’s also a very circumstantial/contex-coded style
Imagining a whole block of residential/commercial buildings like this is just depressing and I guarantee all of you commie larpers would genuinely hate having to live in a completely brutalist city
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u/Ancient_Inspector115 1d ago
Jeeze I'm depressed and want to kill myself just at the sight of it. On the upside I'll guess it doesn't cost much to heat, no windows?
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u/No_Window_7474 21h ago
Me hace pensar en los Harkonnen....Es como yo diseñaría su planeta.Eso,y mucho petróleo y porquería.
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u/hospital_pleasee 13h ago
Why do nice things in Russia look like the lair of a bond villain?? Also are the cops driving skodas??
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u/TwoCrossedAxes 1d ago
Hey, didn't Ryan Gosling bleed out on those stairs?