It cannot be demolished, repaired: how the Germans turn their "Khrushchevki" into decent housing

We don't know if the Moscow housing renovation program is bad or good? Probably, there are more pluses than minuses. Thousands of families will get apartments in new houses, stop banging their heads against chandeliers. But there is a fear that Moscow will not turn into a solid Lyubertsy — the realm of multi-storey concrete, where there is no place for green. You say the courtyards will become more spacious? So after all, we will force everything with machines.

There are many nuances here, so it is useful to study foreign experience. In Germany, for example, the ancient "panels" are not demolished, but turned into cute modern houses that do not give away their age in any way. The author of the blog imir_rude walked through the sleeping areas of the town of Jena and captured how pumpkins become carriages.

Many people believe that in Germany everyone lives in cute gingerbread houses from a fairy tale, but in reality houses in residential areas of the former GDR (and in some Western lands) look something like this:

For residents of the CIS, the picture is familiar. Panel houses in the Winzerla area were built in the 70s and are now considered not the most respectable and in need of repair. However, no one is going to demolish them: the Germans are able to do high-quality repairs of buildings. The once dreary gray house now looks much better, although the work is not finished yet.

Comparison with the not yet renovated twin house:

In addition to purely cosmetic changes, there are more significant ones: the size of the loggias was increased in a rather interesting way, and some entrances moved forward. And from the back of the building there were additional exits through the basement.

This is how the entrance to a decent house looks like: flowers, a bench, a grate for cleaning shoes and water drain. Please note that mailboxes are accessible from the street, that is, the postman does not need to go inside, climb a flight of stairs and call all the apartments to open the door for him.

In the previous photo, it is not entirely clear where the bench is, so I attach a picture of a neighboring house that has already been commissioned and differs only in color. As you can see, that concrete slab near the entrance will become a bench when a wooden panel is screwed to it.

Here is another panel house of the 70s after major repairs:

It used to look something like this: