{"id":2012,"date":"2020-08-19T18:29:52","date_gmt":"2020-08-19T18:29:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/?p=2012"},"modified":"2024-04-02T21:11:19","modified_gmt":"2024-04-02T19:11:19","slug":"zelenogradsk-new-sea-view-apartment-blocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/zelenogradsk-new-sea-view-apartment-blocks\/","title":{"rendered":"Zelenogradsk New Sea View Apartment Blocks"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Zelenogradsk’s new sea-view apartment blocks are duneright amazing!<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Revised 1 April 2024 | First published: 19 August 2020 ~ Zelenogradsk New Sea View Apartment Blocks<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, whilst in Zelenogradsk, Russia, if you take the coastal route written about in my previous posts<\/a>, you will eventually come across what could with accuracy be described as an architectural wonder of our modern age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As noted in those previous posts, the block-paved thoroughfare runs parallel with the sea, but on walking it you reach a point where a series of low-level private flats, not so terribly old, obstruct you from making further progress. At this juncture, you have no option if you want to proceed but to continue your walk in land, a route that very soon brings you before a rather prosaic development residential in nature, most of whose flats which were up for sale last year are up for sale this year (2020). But as you turn to the right a most amazing visual thing happens, helped not a little, I suspect, by the mediocre tenor of the flats you passed a moment ago. In less than 18 months a new development has sprung from the ground, which, in its domineering height, prodigious bulk and latitude and by dint of its sheer proliferation in a relatively short space of time, really knocks you for six. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Completely out of scale with everything around it and consuming more ground than a migrant camp in Calais is the most enormous high-rise residential estate that I have ever encountered. With your senses still reeling from scale fright, the foreground flats and those behind them marching regimentally down the steep fall of the hill, grab you by the Gothics. If, like me, you are a Gothic freak, adore Gothic almost as much as drinking a pint of real ale in the company of Nigel Farage, then you will put aside any prejudices that you may have adopted against kitsch and lap what you see before you up like a Westernised Bela Lugosi on a boy\u2019s night out in Butlins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Gothic
Gothic ~ get the point!<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Here, there are more than enough perpendiculars, faceted angles, towers, turrets and pinnacles to give every Gothic addict the fix they crave and need. Yes, I know that these structures are modern, but I have personally consulted with Tom Cat Murr in whom, he has assured me, no catatonia has been induced by their 21st<\/sup> century origin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Zelenogradsk Apartment Blocks with a touch of Gothic<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I am\u00a0 not sure, however, that either he or I feel the same way about the estate’s alter ego, those just as massy structures that run in line with their Gothic neighbours along the unfinished roadside and which extend at right angles from them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Zelenogradsk flats, Russia: two styles face off against each other<\/strong> ~Zelenogradsk New Sea View Apartment Blocks<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The flip side to the Gothicised coin is a vast battery of impressive apartments built, correction embellished<\/em>, in the Neo-Classical and Neo-Renaissance spirit. Designed with corners, angles and twists enough to thwart prescribed conformity, and assisted in this respect by the natural decline of the landscape, along whose downward curve this Goliath series of buildings march in the most dramatic manner, the stacking effect of shelves and ledges, inclusion of white panels, many adorned with relief motifs, and woven into the frieze a colonnade of arches strike a Kensington\/Chelsea chord in me, chiming, whilst not exactly in tune but all the better for it, with a nuanced note in their juxtaposition against the light-brick infill. The icing on top of this pastiche cherry has to be the recessed oval, a final flaunting touch of extravagance clearly seen at the front and centre of the classic Dutch-styled gable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Zelenogradsk
The icing on the top<\/strong> ~ Zelenogradsk New Sea View Apartment Blocks<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Whatever your feelings towards these 21st<\/sup> century additions to Zelenogradsk\u2019s built and natural environment, you have to admit they are a big improvement on the experimental, rectangular-limited, mass-housing pre-fab models constructed during Stalin\u2019s reign and the clunky pre-cast concrete jobbies, known as the Khrushchyovka<\/em>, that went up at an alarming rate in the late 1940s and 50s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, for all their ubiquitous uniformity and quick-assembly triumph over the lauded principles of aesthetic finesse, they, these seemingly once drab predecessors, have, with the re-evaluation that typically comes with the passing of time and hindsight, acquired, especially in recent years, an era-defining nostalgic status similar in intrinsic import to the cult of personality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, whether today\u2019s apartments that are changing Zelenogradsk’s shoreline profile into a high-density urbanised landscape will be accepted so sympathetically by tomorrow\u2019s generations depends on values we cannot predict. As with everything in our immediate lives ~ only time will tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Zelenogradsk
We will see them from the beaches!<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9 2018-2024 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zelenogradsk’s new sea-view apartment blocks are duneright amazing! Revised 1 April 2024 | First published: 19 August 2020 ~ Zelenogradsk New Sea View Apartment Blocks Now, whilst in Zelenogradsk, Russia, if you take the coastal route written about in my previous posts, you will eventually come across what could with accuracy be described as an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2015,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[110],"tags":[538,533,541,514,115,543,534,511,506,542,536,540],"class_list":["post-2012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kaliningrad-region-photo-gallery","tag-cranz-architecture","tag-englishman-chilling-in-zelenogradsk-with-bear-beer","tag-englishman-in-zelenogradsk","tag-gothic-architecture","tag-gothic-style-baltic-coast","tag-kaliningrad-region-architecture","tag-mick-hart-in-zelenogradsk-russia","tag-social-distancing-in-zelenogradsk","tag-zelenogradsk","tag-zelenogradsk-architecture","tag-zelenogradsk-houses-streets","tag-zelenogradsk-new-sea-view-apartment-blocks"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t