There are more photos at the tweet.
Igor Vasilevsky's classic Druzhba Sanatorium (1978) in Crimea, designed so each room had a balcony view of the sea but privacy from the other balconies.
The building was intended for discreet treatment of Soviet elites, not, as with some Soviet mental health facilities, forced treatment of people considered Undesirable.
Like George Chakhava's transportation ministry building in Tblisi, Georgia, the Druzhba came from a period where Soviet architects were enchanted with the idea of building on steep land using massive columns to lift the whole structure. Creates a great hovering effect.
it me, in the parallel life where i became an architectural historian but somehow still ended up in Peoria
The building was intended for discreet treatment of Soviet elites, not, as with some Soviet mental health facilities, forced treatment of people considered Undesirable.
That's sad. People with mental disabilities deserve dignity and nice places to stay.
"undesirables" in this context refers to people whose ideology was seen as so incoherent and irrational that it could only be explained as a form of mental illness. there was this idea that fascists and the like were just fundamentally damaged people who required treatment, not punishment. but that treatment quickly became just another form of punishment.
this punitive approach to psychiatry was ... well, it's an incredibly problematic approach, to say the least, and not only because it comes with a stigmatization of mental illness and other deeply ableist ideas. there's a whole other can of worms here.
on one hand, i actually do think that a lot of nazis, incels and terfs are traumatized, abused, deeply hurt individuals who have built their ideology on the foundation of the untreated psychic damage inflicted on them, that their ideology does constitute a symptom of their trauma that has taken on a life of its own and that re-educating them is only possible when you adress their trauma first. and obviously, rehabilitation would be preferrable to mere punishment. their trauma doesn't excuse them in any way, but it does explain why they are the way they are. these people do need treatment.
but ofc such treatment is only possible when the patient complies and cooperates. you cannot treat mental illness against the will of the patient. that's not only deeply unethical, it is outright impossible that such a forced therapy approach could ever be successful. therapy requires that the patient heals themselves. the therapist's assistance can be absolutely necessary for that, there's stuff you just can't work through on your own, blind spots, things that are buried so deeply you need help in accessing them, but all of that invaluable assistance is just that, assistance in the patient healing themselves.
so yeah, this whole idea is something that we as socialists should take as a warning, as a historic mistake and as a lesson to be learned. we cannot heal our enemies against their will, even when they actually would need healing.
the only way to go about this is to offer free and easy access to good, compassionate mental health care to everyone. i think when we, as outside actors, instead tie the ideology of some of these patients to their trauma instead, we actually make it harder for them to seek help, because then seeking treatment becomes something that attacks how they view themselves. this can only cause them to double down, to resist the help that they need and to preserve their reactionary ideas.
tl;dr: punitive psychiatry was a grave error that should not be repeated in future socialist projects
such treatment is only possible when the patient complies and cooperates
I think that's why Puyi was able to be rehabilitated, and why the USA had to say that American defectors in the Korean and Vietnam wars were brainwashed.
actually they just had two giant gears left over from the USSR Gundam super-soldier machine they were building and were like "fuck it, theres our floor plan"
I think Crimea is where Gorbachev has a home (which was were he was also held in captivity during the attempted coup.
The Black Sea was where most of the really good Soviet resorts were.
round floorplans for sanatoriums where actually a popular idea at the time. some architects in the 1960s had dabbled with taking a look at sanatoriums while on LSD to better understand what it's like to inhabit such a structure in altered states of consciousness. they found that circular floor plans meant that a) you could avoid the frightening sight of endlessly stretching corridors where you're feeling constantly exposed and that b) confused patients wandering around where given the opportunity to "get lost" in a way that was comforting to them while making it easy for staff to find them if need be. so this was put in pracitce and soon caught on internationally.
ofc what they did with the balconies is a really nice twist on the idea.
Why'd they make the balconies stick out so much? You'd get more balcony and floor space if there was less non-balcony exterior.
![Druzhba Sanatorium (1978) in Crimea was designed so each room had a balcony view of the sea but privacy from the other balconies. [A short thread]](https://i.imgur.com/lf6I8OA.png){kind=link}