Technology

Soviet Bloc Block Housing

Yep, 35 storeys and 400 units of plain beige whatever.

But you're missing the value of the modern mixed-use building. They just finished one nearby and it's insane:

• ground-floor light commercial - a pizza place, a daycare and I think a pet store in there so far
• parking is secure and underground, with a loading bay,
• 2 floors of professional - physios and notaries and some ad-hoc wework space
• 30 floors of apartments
• an entire floor of guest space - airBnB units, essentially - and common play-space.

All these pictures are accurate as I remember from the tour:

The units will look more familiar if you've been to Northern Europe, but a bit bigger. We looked at a 1150sqft 3bd unit with huge triple-pane windows and - 2024 building code - A/C built-in. If you don't count a garage - underground parking - the bigger ones are like small ranchers stacked on one another -- in concrete, so you don't notice you have neighbours.

They're not Bloc blocks; they put a few of these together and they have a small city.