day 11 – 13.07.09

Posted: July 17th, 2009 | Author: Gergana Milusheva | Filed under: fun, trips and notes | No Comments »

we have left our cozy hotel and I cannot make peace with the idea that they have almost no new constructions… the night before I opened Google Earth and looked around the main canals (since we already know that they build the new, nice stuff around the water) and marked a couple of places… there is, actually, a housing crisis in the city and it seems there are not enough new apartment buildings but when I heard the price range (of about 4000 EUR sq. m), I really could not see how there could be more of them… this is expensive even for the Swedes plus they have a policy that doesn’t allow anyone to win a lot from lending property

here is the first place:

map 2

the part that is under construction on the previous picture was already completed when we were there:

there is an enormous staircase on two levels in front of me, leading to the inner yard

the compound is not a closed one as you can see on the print above but it looks like it is closed and gives you that feeling too

mhmmm…

the next place is over a significantly larger area and although it looks very close to the first spot on the map, there is no direct road or water connection to it… meaning that there is a road leading to the first place that does not go anywhere else

map 1

a few more facts before the pictures 🙂

their apartment building belong to small communities and the owner of an apartment does not exactly own the apartment, but rather has a part of the entire building plus a part of the yard and the common areas; not living in an apartment you own is NOT allowed: you can rent it out only if you have respectable reasons to do so such as going away to study, having to undergo medical treatment somewhere else or going to the military but you have to obtain the approval of the local council in order to do that; you cannot, actually, own more than 1 housing unit (except if you are that well off that you can buy one of the 30 000 islands and build a house there)

the maintenance fee for a two bedroom apartment is about 300 EUR per month

and you get a zero crime rate, tranquility and this for it

maybe it is not hard to sell the first floor apartments in that case…

and not just them

the ones situated in the arched area (come on now, who did not look at the blueprint?)

the inner courtyards

bridges

and the garden along the inner canal

for a while there, I was wondering what this strange glass building is for in the context of this white-coated architecture around (not that it is bad like that): was it a bank, a café, a shop… it turned out it was:

it even has its own bell tower

the buildings are not similar at all (as it is obvious, perhaps); there are also glassed atriums

some fun balconies

photovoltaics on the facades

painted railings

and even some lavish solutions of solid wood facades and a little bit of black… just the way they do it in Denmark 🙂

from up close the black is

and all of that is built like this

I take a closer look… aha!!! precast reinforced concrete units construction! even this building, which is obviously going to be a public one, hides something reminding me of the University System # xxxxxxx behind its promising façade

I read somewhere inside the architecture museum yesterday that up until some 20 years ago ALL houses in Sweden were catalogue ones: you go to a housing expo, you get in the first house you see… too small, the second one… mmm, noooo, the third one… too many windows… and so on until you find yours

I don’t think they were trying to make cuts in planning costs back then….

there is even a term for it – Swedish functionalism (and there was another word to it such as simple, strict or clean… )

our next destination will kill this term once and for all

a look at the only architectural highlight that I have made a note to see while still in Sofia

K:fem

(the colon is part of the alphabet but I did not understand how they were pronounced)

a small local neighborhood mall… no need to comment…

I will only point out that there is no parking lot! this building is the beginning of a small commercial district in the neighborhood and the parking is on the -1 level inside an apartment building across the street… and it is free for the first 2 hours

a façade

a main entrance

up on the escalators

the staircase

the atrium

looking up

upstairs

on the escalators, going back down (there are two on the way up and one on the way down)

an exit on the other side towards the rest of the stores

a little bit of ceiling of the overused type

and a little bit of the special type

my jaw dropped…

after having satisfied my hunger for architecture, we head to the harbor where we hope to get a “last minute” promotion on one of the big ferries to Helsinki; a big mistake! the only cabin available is a deluxe one for the discounted price of 700 and something EUR (one way)…. it travels for 15 hours and we do not even discuss the option of sleeping while sitting; the king is dead, long live the king, or, in other words, hello, sunny Copenhagen!

we load up the Volvo, trying to get rid of the last Swedish Kronas we have left and off we go.

16:30 h

600 kilometers of these plains await us