Old vs. New Series of Panel Buildings: 6 Differences in Facade Designs

Architectural Council portal publishes a set of photos to compare the old series of panel apartment buildings with the new design decisions for mass housing. Today we are going to see what changed in the appearance of a standardized apartment building.

Interpanel seams reduced to minimum

One of the main features of industrial buildings is interpanel seam, which rarely served as architectural element in the old generation series of apartment buildings. Only in the early experimental series of residential houses assembled in big blocks designed by Alexey Burov and Boris Blokhin, this part of a building was considered to be an architectural structural element which was intensified with the aid of half-round rustication. At the same time, in some designs seams were hidden with the help of “diamond-pointed rustication”. However, in the majority of the subsequent series seams became more like technology costs — wide, unsealed, rough and unaesthetic.

Modern series of apartment buildings do not have such defects, because the minimal seam size in modern panel buildings is from 10 to 20 mm. These buildings do not look like “made of panels”. It is also important that in addition to aesthetic values, the new panel jointing technologies provide wear resistance of facades and energy efficiency.

Wide range of facade finishes of high quality

Apart from the panel joints the quality of panels themselves in most of the old series leaves much to be desired. Colour accents are used, but in a very narrow range. Besides, in the early years of Soviet industrial housing, design variants included standardized decorative elements on the facades and monumental compositions on the sidewalls, etc. But high-quality and diverse decoration of facades did not become a mass phenomenon.

Today, products manufactured by our house-building plants have designs which are not inferior to foreign ones. A wide range of materials is used to make finishing: architectural concrete, clinker, ceramic tiles of various colours. Coloured window frames, perforated screens for air conditioners, balcony railings can be used. Moreover, thanks to new construction technologies, their position can be varied, so balconies can serve as additional design elements instead of creating the “thermometer” effect.

Convenient entrances

Most standardized series of apartment blocks have entrance staircases that complicate access for different categories of citizens. Sometimes the stairs can be steep, or rather low, but the entrances are almost always located high above the ground level. All sorts of ramps for people with reduced mobility in some cases do not provide easy access to the building; on the contrary, they obstruct the entrance, let alone the fact that all these structures spoil the facade.

Modern series are designed with the minimum height above ground level or without any stairs at the entrance and in elevator hall pursuant to the provisions of the approved 305-ППM standards.

It’s time to use transparent doors of modern design instead of solid iron entrance doors, which residents often install at their own expense in order to protect themselves from vandals and criminals. The point is that in places where everything is open to easy view, “social control” begins.

Commercially attractive ground floors with public premises

New series of apartment blocks offer lively street environment, multifunctional ground floors and special attitude to the architectural elements of the facade, considering the needs of the inhabitants of a building. The ground floors in old series, as a rule, consist of apartments; under the windows there is usually a front lawn; public facilities can also be found there, but in rare cases. By the way, in the famous Burov’s Tracery House, which is an experimental example of prefabricated large-block series, the ground floor was also intended for public functions: grocery store, canteen, nursery and kindergarten. But these functions were concentrated inside the building — according to Burov’s plan, the house residents could get into any of the public premises without going outside, through a special door in the lobby.

Modern commercial ground floors have higher percentage of glazing and convenient transparent entrances. They face directly the street, enlivening the surrounding area.

Individual architectural solutions: house identification

The modern panel building construction technology resembles LEGO game: in fact, architects have a box of parts that can be connected with each other and provide a huge number of options in response to market needs. This technology helps to abandon standardization phenomenon, which one of Eldar Ryazanov’s films was dedicated to. Nowadays, architects can create individual building projects, according to which house-building plants will manufacture sections. After that the sections are brought to the site where all the parts are assembled to form the final structure.

Special places for air conditioners

The chaotic installation of outdoor units of air conditioners has become a real problem in the last few decades; because no rules are established, residents install outdoor units as well as glaze their balconies and loggias in their own way. To avoid chaotic installation of air conditioners on the facades, special spaces for them are designed in advance — they are hidden in balconies or placed in special exterior modules, which form artistic and architectural elements of the facades.