Boring is cheap. Look at the way houses and apartments are being built now. Soviet Bloc Block Housing. No need for architects if the preexisting plans are pre-approved.
Yay capitalism.
Edit: a lot of people are missing the nuance. Surprise.
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.