Dutch air guard observation tower, one of the 138 built during the early cold war.
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r/brutalismu/clydethefrog (819)

Comments (9)

Found in a Dutch Brutalism top 10.

“In the 1950s and 1960s, the time of the Cold War, the Air Force Corps built 276 air watch posts. The radar equipment at the time could not detect low-flying Russian aircraft. Half were built on existing buildings, the other half consisted of freestanding towers. They were made of precast concrete honeycomb elements. Of the 138 freestanding towers, only nineteen remain. Some are in serious disrepair. Let's love those towers while we still can."

https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2021/09/29/39233487-a4058939

That's amazing. What an intersection of cool shit I'm interested in.

Wait, pre-cast honeycomb elements? So this would most likely be #3 rebar grid on 12" (300mm) centers which were then. . . lifted into place with a crane?

I'm curious about the details of the execution.

Also, the foundation must be fairly deep to support that cantilever.

BRB going to Home Depot for a metric shit-tonne of cinder blocks.

Spot the cat.

Wow, literally no one in the comments mentioned the zombie fortress meme that went viral on Reddit back in 2010.

I’ve been on Reddit for over a decade wtf is wrong with me.

I love these grid-like ones

I'd love to see what's inside, if only I trusted those stairs at all. Even if it's nothing, and every last bit of equipment and paper and whatnot is gone, just going inside and seeing what might have been cold war stuff in a creepy empty room excites me.