the roof thing

[beige_alert]

My German friends were bemused with my fascination with all the tile (and even slate!) roofs is Germany. Want to know why? I have a photo taken from higher ground in the public park across the road from a fancy new expensive condominium development in a fancy expensive part of town by the river. Note that not only are these rooftops visible from the park across the road, but are visible from some of the units in the buildings themselves. This is not hidden away, but part of the view out the windows of the very building itself. An expensive view, no less. This is how we do it in America when we are spending plenty of money on a fancy place:

Comments

[lisande.livejournal.com]

Oh. I understand.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

You obviously live in either an area that gets little/no snowfall, or those roofs had better be far stronger than they look!

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Oh, and soundproofed if you live in an area that gets any substantial amount of rain!

[beige-alert.livejournal.com]

Snow? Nothing shocking about waking up and seeing 20cm fresh wet snow waiting for you in the winter. But flat roofs are common on commercial buildings and they know to build them strong enough that collapse is very, very rare. Even those buildings, which look like they might fall under their own weight, have survived at least one winter so far.

I suppose you hear the rain, but, then, get a good thunderstorm going and the thunder will distract you from the rain noise. Until the hail starts, anyway.

[bardling.livejournal.com]

I guess that dealing with snow thing is a concept thing, too. Having a pitched roof simply avoids unneccessary stress via snow-weight, so why not do it? Makes for good attic storage space, too, or attic rooms built into the roof, and insulation for the rest of the house. Also, better for rain run-off...

[jaelle-n-gilla.livejournal.com]

I guess it's a general concept thing. Germans build for eternity. My grandfather built a garden hut. Really, just something to hold the lawn clippers and stuff. That was in the 50s. After his death they tried to take it down with hammers and rock drills. they finally succeeded with no less than a wrecker's ball. Go granddad!

In the US I've seen many houses made of wood constructions. Germany is full of stone masonry instead. Not that it's necessarily better. It's a lot more expensive for one thing.

[beige-alert.livejournal.com]

Here, we sometimes literally build garden sheds out of plastic. They start warping the moment sun hits them the first time.

One could probably make the case that all the masonry is excessive in some cases. One could easily make the case that US construction is absurdly poor in many cases.

Germany tends to look really beautiful to someone used to American buildings, though!

[jaelle-n-gilla.livejournal.com]

I'm sure they took you to the nice places, though :-) There are pretty ugly houses in some areas, built in the 50s, 60s, and sometimes 70s where Germany was growing and needed room quickly, especially after the war.

Things like this: http://www.daburna.de/Bilder/HGW/plattenbau_greifswald_004.jpg

Or this:
http://www.welt.de/multimedia/archive/00292/plattenbau_DW_Wirts_292928g.jpg

I agree though. In general, Germany is pretty nice :-)

[beige-alert.livejournal.com]

60s-ish was a pretty remarkable period here to for ugly buildings. That horrific building right next to Milwaukee's 1890s German-inspired city hall comes to mind, or the police headquarters made of concrete and resembling something you clamp onto a computer CPU for cooling.

And yes, we did tend to seek out the pretty. That second photo is pretty bad. The first doesn't really look to me like a particularly striking example of ugly. No worse than medium ugly. I mean, it even looks like it has those spiffy German windows that open and everything.