The paragraph about size and cost of West-German houses described as "palaces" .

West-Germans trying to lure East-Germans to their side with luxuries was a recurring theme of East-German propaganda though in this paragraph the complaint is that even the wealthier average Western worker couldn't afford such luxury.

Quote - One associates socialist architecture with either impossibly heavy neoclassic buildings like the proposed Palace of Soviets of Moscow or drab parallelepipeds but it was not always that way: e.g. see the Tbilisi Roads Ministry Building or the Friendship Sanitorium in Yalta. The shape of the second building is so strange that CIA (having only access to satellite photos) kept considering it some kind of secret military installation.

Or of course, the Glorious Peoples Republic of the North Pole, as scene in that fine documentary of Socialist Life "Polar Express".

Quote - Schon bei einer kleinen Wohnung verschlingt allein die Miete einen so erheblichen Teil vom Durchschnittsverdienst eines normalen Arbeiters oder angestellten in Westdeutschland, daß viele andere wichtige Bedürfnisse zurücktreten müssen.

And the sad message is that parts of this today have become regular truth. With rents and additional costs for normal flats eating up more than 50 % of the family income ...

B.t.w. that appartment blueprint is not such far from layouts also in western germany. My own flat is having 80 m², so a bit bigger but with some similar order. But it's not a Plattenbau !!!!!!!!!!!!! :thumbupboth:

"Plattenbau" refers to a system of construction with pre-fabricated plates which wasn't and isn't restricted to the DDR. If your house was constructed in a similar way then it IS a local variaton of Plattenbau ... :lol:

That cross reflection is amazing. I have tried to reproduce it. I'm using a procedural shader with displacement, so I can instantly try lots of different pyramid shapes and aspect ratios. I have tried bending them every which way and I cannot get such a distinct cross as seen in the photo. Attached is the best I was able to do.

In my opinion, that was no accident. It seems like finding the exact geometry needed to produce that effect was a planned action.

quote :

In my opinion, that was no accident. It seems like finding the exact geometry needed to produce that effect was a planned action.

Very possible. The architects were not invited at the opening ceremony but that wouldn't have been their only punishment if those in power had suspected the effect was planned.

Above : the antenna, about 115m (377ft) high. The crane on the right was used during construction and left up there.

The warning light on top was red during the DDR period,  then changed to white after the reunification. Now it's back to red.

Quote -  I would hate to see what the rest of the apartment looks like!

Eh, don't look at the picture above then. Note that this is only a recreation in a museum but the size of the room is about right 

OMG! I can't imagine anyone being able to fit into that squishy place to sit on the toilet!  LOL

I'd have to call fire rescue to come unstick me!!!

I found this image from Wikipedia which hints at the trick. The surface is highly polished (tight reflection pattern) and the little pyramids have 4 sides flat surfaces which is going to create a four sided symmetrical pattern with, again, a tight reflection beam. Overall, it is not different from the idea behind the F-117 structure: create very narrow radar reflections pointing away from the transmitter antenna (great idea... until confronted with bistatic radars).

I think that this effect is just the consequence of designing a simple and highly repetive structure and the usual german penchant for mechanical perfection, not of some hidden scheme by the designers. Pareidolia and political propaganda did the rest.

Quote - > Quote -  I would hate to see what the rest of the apartment looks like!

Eh, don't look at the picture above then. Note that this is only a recreation in a museum but the size of the room is about right 

 

OMG! I can't imagine anyone being able to fit into that squishy place to sit on the toilet!  LOL

I'd have to call fire rescue to come unstick me!!!

Well i grew up in the 60ies in an apartment at roughly that size. 68m2 is considered quite spacious for apartments here (and that's in Denmark, western Europe and all) The place I grew up was BIG. 72m2. It was a large apartment. 3 rooms (living room, dining room, bedroom (+ a kitchen and a bathroom)

So I find it amusing how many here think this place is "cramped"

the bathroom is bigger than what was in my grandmother's apartment (that one was hardly bigger than a closet,  there wasn't even room for a sink) - it is not just an eastern european thing, this. the big difference is that Eastern Europe stayed at the "1930" style of building and doing things. It'slike a time machine :)

I've never seen that cross on the Fehrnseeturm before. Interesting. And most likely made quite deliberately :)

My youngest kid has just been in Berlin this whole week with her school. I'll ask her if she noticed the cross :) (or rather whether or not they were told about it - all SHE notices is probably the shopping areas ;)  she's a teenager after all...)

A teenager on a shopping-spree in Berlin and she doesn't even have to worry about changing money : simply insert your Danish debit card with "Maestro" function in a German ATM and out come the Euros.

:scared:

Only the fact that the shopping precincts are widespread and probably she won't be able to reach them all will save you from bankruptcy.

I hope at least she buys something for you too ...

Quote - A teenager on a shopping-spree in Berlin and she doesn't even have to worry about changing money : simply insert your Danish debit card with "Maestro" function in a German ATM and out come the Euros.

:scared:

Only the fact that the shopping precincts are widespread and probably she won't be able to reach them all will save you from bankruptcy.

I hope at least she buys something for you too ...

 

Hehe we sent her off with Euro notes. It's much easier than having to calculate what something is in DKK. If she has 10 Euro and something costs 9.99 well then it's cheap enough L

(and we sent her off with .. uhm apparently too much money, because she phoned home today asking if she was allowed to use the surplus on some shirt she'd seen O.o (dear me she had almost €200 for this week as pocket money and she has SPENT them? She BETTER bring me that Ampelmann-cap I requested - I had one and it broke.. well the clasp at the back broke.. kinda hard to break a cap L)

Heh are we getting totally OT or what L

Quote - 68m2 is considered quite spacious for apartments here (and that's in Denmark, western Europe and all) The place I grew up was BIG. 72m2. It was a large apartment. 3 rooms (living room, dining room, bedroom (+ a kitchen and a bathroom) So I find it amusing how many here think this place is "cramped"

My 1 bedroom apartment is 950 square feet, which is about 88.3 square meters. My  It is considered very large for a 1 bedroom, and it is larger than some houses here too.

Quote - quote :

 Is that a pass through to the dining room I am seeing behind the counter?

Yes, with some creative refurbishing the building became more spacious.

A typical apartment was (and is) 6m wide by 12 m deep. There are houses with* rooms* larger than that.

On the positive side the rent including services was incredibly low.

I'm amazed that there are people who think those dimensions represent some sort of extreme deprivation. 

That square footage will get you $200,00 CAD here easily (Victoria, BC). It's about average for a one bedroom apartment or condo, and will rent for about $750 - $1500 a month.

Where is everyone else living that they can afford so much more spacious accomodations, I wonder? ;)

I live in a place with hubby that's about 900 square feet. Got plenty of room. Room enough to avoid each other in...lmao.

Just kidding - sorta

Laurie

Quote - Where is everyone else living that they can afford so much more spacious accomodations, I wonder? ;)

I'm in Winnipeg Canada. The highest taxed province in Canada, west of Quebec. Our cost of living is atrocious here.

However, rents here are widely varied. In the more rundown areas, a 1 bedroom will run about $500 to $600.  And a 2 bedroom maybe $650 to $700 per month.

In other areas 1 bedrooms go for $700 to $850 per month.

In my area a 1 bedrrom typically is around $800 to $1,000 per month.

I'm currently paying $775 for my 950 sq ft 1 bedroom. The building is under rennovation and once it's completely done, 1 bedrooms will be around $900 per month and 2 bedrooms will be $1100.00 per month. No balcony, no air conditioning, coin operated laundry on each floor, no insuite storage and parking extra (only outdoor parking). Plus you pay your own hydro and cable. Heat and water is included in the rent.

Of course there are exceptions to the rule. Less than a mile west of me is a very affluent area.  A 2 bedroom I looked at was $1500 per month, and that is cheap for that area. I think it was about 1100 sq feet.

Some apartments include all utilities except for cable and phone. While others don't include anything except for water.  Having to pay your own utilities really adds up. One place I lived in cost me about $100 per month just in hydro because I had an electric hot water heater. If I had to pay for the heat on top of that the price would have more than doubled in the winter time. And if there had been AC, it would have doubled in the summer too.

Yeah, I don't think it's so much as "rich" as it is...we're used to space, LOL.  That, and we're addicted to BIG THINGS, so small apartments make us feel cramped. 

The smallest place I've ever lived was a studio.  It wasn't tiny, and I don't remember the square footage, but, the CLOSET was huge. I used that as my bedroom, lol.  Just put a mattress on the floor and go ;)  I had nice, open spaces, though, lol.  The kitchen was a little small, but, it's not like, at 18, I was cooking much for myself anyway :P

Quote - That's a better shader than I could ever produce. Do you mind sharing the settings ? I would like to use it for my freebie. With due credits of course.

Ha - I did not get email about this thread.

How big are you going to make this towere - Poser life size? Because I was testing on a sphere less than 10 feet across.

Also I want to do a better job and make the windows and the little groupings of pyramids.

When you have that part modeled, let me know. You'll want to UV map the sphere using spherical coordinates. It should work just like my Env Sphere. U goes 0 to 1 around, and V goes 0 to 1 vertically. Whether or not you include the imaginary remainder of the core of the sphere in the UV map is up to you. I suppose it would be easier for me if you made the side fully 0 to 1, but it will work just as well as long as I know precisely where the boundaries of V are.

As for UV mapping, you've got me completely lost. The program I use (a house creator!) allows me to size the textures, then it automatically does its own mapping. For instance I can set a square size, allowing seamless tiled textures or a size identical to the object for example a poster. Or set no texture at all, then the object remains unmapped when exported. Though until now I only worked on rectangular surfaces. The sphere, part of a minimal modeler within the program is new to me.

I haven't really worked out yet how to do the sphere as it should include a minimal interior for the 2 floors visible through the glazing. It should consist of 3 main sections, the upper and lower section being the closed parts of the sphere, using your shader and the middle section representing the 2 glazed floors. To begin with I should try to find out how many windows there are exactly.

I could construct the parts in the aforementioned modeler but as this modeler lacks precision the assembly should be done in Poser. In all a very complicated model that would be almost as great an achievement as the real thing. It would probably also take as long to build as the real thing, about 3 years.

The mapping I was talking about is called Equirectangular.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equirectangular_projection

You want to model the windows? I suppose you could, but I thought you'd be taking a sphere, already UV mapped for equirectangular projection, removing the top and bottom caps, and that's it. The shader would create the illusion of all the pyramids and of the windows. No detail is necessary at all. Should be about 90 seconds to model. Maybe you want to bevel the cap cutouts.

If you want to place a couple floors inside, that would be fine, but nobody can see in there anyway.

You understand that if the UV mapping is not ultra precise, the texture will have one or more seams. That's why I suggested equirectangular.

This is no ordinary tile we're dealing with, like a square full of grass or something. Each unit has to be exactly one pyramid, and we can't have a fraction of a pyramid somewhere.

Something new in the freebie section of this thread :

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2817948&page=4

Now it's a matter of making the model worthy of that shader. Should take some time, the deadline is September 2012 though.

Some experimenting with the settings I understand, reduced the height of the pyramids and cranked up the reflection.

The parameters are:

PM:Pyramids (vertically) - how many pyramids per unit of V texture coordinate.

PM:Aspect Ratio (H/W) - the ratio of height versus width of the pyramid in UV space. For spheres you want it near 2. I noticed in the real photo that they were not square, so I used 2.2.

PM:Pyramid Height (inch) - how far the peak sticks out, in inches

PM:Bias (Curves faces) - .5 is neutral and makes flat sides. Values above .5 (up to 1) will bow the sides outward. Values below .5 (down to 0) will curve the sides inward towards the base.

Here I applied it to Andy using:

Pyramids=20

Aspect Ratio = 2

Height = 1

Bias = .25

Quote - In the DDR you would have been rewarded with the National Prize of East-Germany (for scientific achievements).

It doesn't sound as badassed as the equivalent russian award of Hero of Socialist Labour :thumbupboth:.

East-Germany knew  "Heroes of Labour" too . Weird, for an "anti-militarist" state most of the medals, orders and rewards were given for military achievements.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders,_decorations,_and_medals_of_East_Germany