Reuters: Eastern European panel buildings urgently need renovation

Budapest - Polish hip-hop stars sing about them, Hungarians paint them, Germans display them in museums, Russians try to ignore their discomfort. Millions of people still live in dilapidated panel houses built during the communist era, writes Reuters.
East Europeans, crammed into crumbling, featureless, unattractive towers built on a whim by former dictators, are now seeking imaginative ways to improve life in small apartments. Architects and developers say it's time to reconstruct the panel houses.
"Take a trip to Jasenево just outside Moscow, with all its old Soviet buildings, and the only question that crosses your mind is: What on earth were those architects smoking?," says Denis Sokolov, head of research at the Moscow office of global real estate consultancy Cushman & Wakefield.
During several five-year plans in the 1960s and 1970s, factories churned out millions of panels, and entire villages abandoned brick construction in favor of ten-story panel monoliths.
Approximately two decades after the fall of communism, panel houses urgently need reconstruction, which some say could turn them into more attractive homes that are more pleasant to live in.
Like many other products of the communist industry, panel houses are massive structures that can last 80 to 100 years.
"The problem is that such a large number of apartments were built in a short time: in Hungary alone, half a million were constructed within one or two decades, so now half a million of them have the same problems," says architect Sara Horváth from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, who received praise for her renovation project that produced a pleasant, colorful appearance.
Andreas Hermelink from the University of Kassel in Germany also worked on the renovation project of one of many such residential blocks in Hungary, funded by the European Union. According to him, it is indeed time to do something substantial with such buildings.
The project, called SOLANOVA, focused on a residential complex in Dunaújváros, a city built by prisoners in the 1950s during the country’s industrialization, which was nicknamed Stalin's city. Instead of rusty pipes and energy wastage, the house now has solar panels, low utility bills for electricity, gas, and water, and vegetation growing on its roof. While the reconstruction could not provide its 110 residents everything they wished for - including larger kitchens, bathrooms, or balconies - people can enjoy a "recreational" roof that they use for sunbathing, hosting parties, and watching fireworks.
Modernizing millions of homes in this region remains a significant challenge, and few places will be able to afford such radical transformation.
Most of the 140 million Russians live in Soviet-era houses. Many affectionately refer to them as "Khrushchyovkas" after the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, during whose administration they were built in the 1960s.
Khrushchyovkas have tiny kitchens - but at least they have some - unlike apartments known as "kommunalkas", where until the 1980s, kitchens, bathrooms, and often bedrooms were shared by several families, making privacy virtually non-existent.
"From a real estate consultant's perspective, the only sensible thing to do is to demolish these buildings and replace them with new, modern ones," states Denis Sokolov. "But from the perspective of ordinary Muscovites, it's not possible because a large majority of them live in such houses."
Germany, which inherited two million panel houses in the eastern part of the country after reunification in 1990, is seeking a "middle ground between their demolition and the construction of new ones," says engineer Claus Asam from the German Institute for Construction and Modernization. In Dresden, there is a museum of panel houses, which also features new designs made from modern materials.