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Comment by r0naa | Hacker News Reader

I have a profound distaste for brutalism. To me, it is the antithesis of what architecture should be about: the design, and invention of timeless places where humans can blossom, and prosper.

I insist on the notion of timelessness. The Louvre for example, is almost 400 years old and yet; there are few monuments in the world that can rival with its beauty.

Here is the power of the classicism, and even the baroque movements: creating masterpieces that are not only useful for the people living in them but also inspire and please their eyes. They survive time.

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I can't agree with this. There's nothing about brutalism that means it prevents humans 'blossoming' or 'prospering', whatever that means. The focus of a lot of brutalist architecture was on functionality – that is, discarding the pomp and frivolity of some older architecture – and making them more focused around the actual functional needs of humans.

The problem is that the brutalist movement, at least in the UK, overlapped with the poor construction methods of the 50s and 60s and economic realignment that resulted in brutalist social housing projects. In the long term, extreme under-investment in maintenance of these projects means that they deteriorate into uninhabitable hellholes.

But there are exceptions - the Barbican estate in London, which is as brutalist as it gets, is a great example of how this sort of architecture can work when properly funded and maintained.

making them more focused around the actual functional needs of humans

This often failed really badly, much worse than other schools of architecture. The unpopular Brutalist buildings are not just aesthetically hostile but have poor "UX".

I'd say 'sometimes' rather than 'often'. But the underlying reason for this is still the same – cheap construction, poor maintenance. And of course those are the unpopular buildings. But there's nothing inherent to brutalism that means buildings have to be constructed like that.

My favourite examples of this kind of thing are the 'New Towns' in the UK. These were build in the late 40s through to the mid 60s to deal with overspill from cities. Towns like Cumbernauld and Livingston in Scotland were designed to be very human-focused – easy to walk through, segregated road systems, distinct districts with local services, central civic centres and so on. A genuinely utopian vision of the future, in some respects.

The problem is that shoddy construction and poor maintenance made living conditions unacceptable. Demographic changes and the mass overspill from cities made for less cohesive communities – segregated underpasses for example became sites of violent crime.

I think that in most cases the reasons for certain brutalist developments being unpopular is down to causes distinct from the architecture – and I think it's a mistake to conflate the issues. Though it does explain the unpopularity.

I think blaming this on cheap construction and poor maintenance (true as it may be) is missing the mark.

Blaming it on brutalism is also, IMO, missing the mark.

The core blame here lies in the fact that these complexes are built in the style of the Radiant City, which encouraged monolithic buildings surrounded by "parkland" and public spaces. It was imagined as a utopian balance between urban and rural - everyone living in a tower would have ready access to ample public space.

In reality of course these projects are largely defined by their emptiness, and these public spaces unused (and consequently, unsafe). The shoddy construction and maintenance surely didn't help, but IMO was not the root of the problem - we have seen more traditionally built communities fall into disrepair but never reach the level of isolation and segregation we see in these buildings.

It's just coincidence that brutalism reached its popular height along with Radiant City urban planning.

More importantly, even though brutalism has fallen out of vogue, Radiant Cities have not - most new American urban cores (particularly in the Midwest/West) are built around this philosophy still, and the net result has been the gutting of once tight-knit neighborhoods and replacing them with soaring towers and empty sidewalks (see: Belltown in Seattle). Brutalism may be gone, but 50 years from now someone will write another article about this exact phenomenon, with glass-clad apartment buildings in their place.

Consider why the term applied to the style is brutalism, and how people behave when in "brutal" surroundings. Contrast with, say, the arts and crafts architectural style (see Frank Lloyd Wright) which is comparable (stark, concrete) yet differs in a way which garners a broad enthusiastic following and is considered inspirational.

The reason the term is 'brutalism' is because it's derived from the French béton brut – i.e. raw concrete. I'm not a French speaker, but I understand that the implications in that language aren't quite the same as in English.

Wikipedia disagrees with that: "The term "brutalism" was originally coined by the Swedish architect Hans Asplund to describe Villa Göth in Uppsala, designed in 1949 by his contemporaries Bengt Edman and Lennart Holm.[citation needed] He originally used the Swedish-language term nybrutalism (new brutalism), which was picked up by a group of visiting English architects, including Michael Ventris. In England, the term was further adopted by architects Alison and Peter Smithson.[3][4] The term gained wide currency when the British architectural historian Reyner Banham used it in the title of his 1966 book, The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic?, to characterise a somewhat recently established cluster of architectural approaches, particularly in Europe.[4]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutalist_architecture#History

> There's nothing about brutalism that means it prevents humans 'blossoming' or 'prospering', whatever that means. The focus of a lot of brutalist architecture was on functionality – that is, discarding the pomp and frivolity of some older architecture – and making them more focused around the actual functional needs of humans.

That focus on functional needs is precisely why Brutalism prevents human prospering: man doesn't just have rational, functional needs, but also emotional ones. That 'pomp' and 'frivolity' is actually far from pompous or frivolous: it satisfies the emotions and exalts the spirit.

A Brutalist approach to food would be to redirect all agricultural output to producing Soylent; a Brutalist approach to clothing would be for everyone, male and female, to wear a Mao suit in identical colours and fabrics, in varying weights to account for temperature; a Brutalist approach to poetry would be a rhyming dictionary.

> But there are exceptions - the Barbican estate in London, which is as brutalist as it gets, is a great example of how this sort of architecture can work when properly funded and maintained.

From these pictures, it is absolutely hideous and should be scraped from the face of the Earth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbican_Estate

What's remarkable to me is that anyone ever thought that these eyesores were attractive. The only possible explanation is a kind of mental illness brought on by the catastrophic destruction and dehumanisation of the World Wars. Witness the post-WWI art scene, in which the beauty and form of Art Nouveau were replaced by the horror and ugliness of surrealism and expressionism (Art Deco, with its clean lines, purity and colour, can be seen as a striving to preserve or restore some small piece of beauty in a world gone mad).

>The focus of a lot of brutalist architecture was on functionality – that is, discarding the pomp and frivolity of some older architecture – and making them more focused around the actual functional needs of humans.

I disagree with this, based somewhat on personal experience. While modern architecture did away with ornament in the name of "functionality", but that is a misnomer. Whether a building is functional ought to be judged by it's layout, not by ornament; by ergonomics, not aesthetics.

I live in Brasilia, which I once saw described as "something out of a bad science fiction movie". And I can say there's nothing more annoying than trying to navigate through any public building, as they try to compensate their lack of ornament by being over-sized and obtuse. And though this particular experience is my own, I don't it would be hard to find similar examples of how hard navigating in any modernist design (building, neighborhood, town) can be - another poster mentioned Moscow. It's no wonder that the the period between the 1960s and 1970s is also the nadir of urban planning, with widespread use of single-use zoning and awkward car-centric planning.

The best one is the Bangladesh National Assembly Building: http://architectuul.com/architecture/national-assembly-build...

I think a lot of brutalist architecture gets a bad rap because it became so commonplace in the mid 20th century. Just like anything that's done "too-much", it became overdone as lesser and lesser architects created less inspirational designs.

PS. Also loved the old Best stores, with ACTUAL crumbling facades as a self-aware statement of consumerism: http://www.failedarchitecture.com/the-ironic-loss-of-the-pos...

So good.. you could say they were the Best.

Have you ever seen the documentary "My Architect?" It was made by the son of Louis Kahn, architect of the Bangladesh National Assembly Building, a building which plays a central role in the film. The film is excellent.

And I find a profound beauty in it. Having been born in the US where brutalism is not common, I see these things and immediately am gripped by them. The design speaks directly to me and inspires me to be part of it. I want to be close to it, to work in or near it. I want to blossom and prosper, but I am within a context and find these spaces to feel like natural spaces. In these spaces, I feel that I have nature as a platform. These things show an unbridled creativity and confirm human ability to mold our environment while not separating ourselves from it. And they don't just survive in time, they become better. The patina these structures take on adds a meaningful layer to their design.

These classic places you speak of survive time because they are attended to furiously. They are things which degrade exponentially without attention and they are ongoing sinks for human capacity in support of their own ostentatiousness. They may please some eyes because they are so out of character. They are rebels against nature and humanity. The inspire us to be other than what we are - godlike and beyond our natural limitations. They are feats of design, but they are more limited in what they express. The idea of working in them makes me feel like I am being conquered by other people's limitations and conformist ideas of beauty.

In disrepair, both will eventually crumble. In brutalism, I see my condition, but also my opportunity. In classicism, I feel distracted from my condition and oppressed by those who would put forth pomp while taking away individuality and opportunity.

Trophies of monarchies vs. triumphs of people.

What a wonderfully strong opinion. To each their own, I suppose -- I happen to find Brutalism one of the most beautiful architectural movements.

In some ways your example is timeless for the fact that it's an amalgamation of 400 years of architectural movements, from the remnants of Medieval fortress to modern offices and galleries. Who's to say how modern architecture will evolve over the coming years?

It's like saying "I only value the Dutch Masters" because the collection that's left has been honed down to concentrated beauty. Of course Rembrandt's corpus is wonderful. What of the other 99/100 that threw together derivative mediocrity?

What do you think about the "Palais Chaillot", on the Trocadéro, in front of the Eiffel Tower ? Maybe it's timeless, but it's also charmless ... It has no soul, it's a classic/greek/renaissance pastiche like a lot of fascist buildings from the same period. I prefer the brutalist buildings, because they are the witnesses of their times.

But I agree that sometimes, neo classicism is more suited to our way of life. A small city near Paris, Le Plessis Robinson, has switched in less than 15 years from the typical "banlieue", with hideous towers, to a fake typical old french city (fake old church, fake old market, fake old city hall, etc). http://www.plessis-robinson.com/uploads/media/DSC_8867.jpg

I think it's a beautiful pastiche. Quality of life is now very appreciated here.

Here are some pictures before/after : http://www.pss-archi.eu/forum/viewtopic.php?id=34108

I disagree. Many of these look great despite the 'post-apocalyptic crumbling architecture' framing, with large terraces, big windows, views on the water, good location, etc.

You can't live in the Louvre, and even if you could, you'd have to be rich.

I think you can love it. Brutalism is the clear representation of how a few people (mayors, architects, ...) brutally decide how people can blossom and prosper.

It's tragic and beautiful (in my opinion).

Those visual representations ask a lot of questions too! For example, if we choose that stuff to live in at a certain time, what did we clearly decide on others politicals levels way more abstracts?

Compared to the average high-rise I find these absolutely stunning.

I'm actually shocked by the number of people that like brutalism. from my observations they seem to have negative externalities to their neighbours. This could be because most of them were government projects.

I like it though. The Louvre may be a beautiful monument, but that doesn't mean we should still build in that style.

Many ugly, pointless buildings were constructed in the 17th century as well, but our ancestors have simply not felt a need to preserve those.

Most of these buildings you have a distaste for will reach the end of their useful life, be demolished and replaced with something new. I like to think that the nicest ones will be preserved, and will become the monuments to late 20th century architecture for our descendants to enjoy.

I do also hate the brutalist movement, a movement which seems to have been created for the pure purpose of throwing out thousands of years of learning on how spaces should work for humans and how buildings should look to be pleasing.

Yet, there are a few beautiful examples of the style, many of them are in the article here, there's others as well (see Saarinen's works for examples).

I know there's an unusual contingent of brutalist fans here on HN...I know they're unusual because by and large people don't travel to take pictures of brutalist buildings, but they'll take pictures of just about anything else.

Very few people pay brutalist architecture much attention other than how they're going to deal with these expensive, often poorly designed, crumbling buildings, very few of which last more than a few decades.

The nearest major city to me is full of brutalist buildings, and after just a handful of decades of use, it's being found cheaper to tear them down and start over than to try to fix them. People who work in them avoid them as much as they can, nobody likes walking near them or in their courtyards, they've proven to be terrible public spaces in general.

I wonder if what makes the examples in the OP look worth saving is that they're brutalist or that they're brutalist forms of other, previous, architecture movements?

Have you seem some of the villages in the French mega huge ski areas - some are amazingly ugly.

Les Menuires in the 3 valleys is particularly bad.

Actually I find them quite nice in the winter - but in the summertime ,devoid of all the fluffy white adornment, they reveal their true ugliness !

Don't all ski areas look horrible without snow?

Some such as Méribel were quite strict in enforcing classic alpine style - somewhat pastiche considering the size of the buildings but still relatively well integrated.

Yet I somehow think they were built with some of that intention. And I don't think that what came in later decades was that much better.

What are your thoughts on the humans prospering and blossoming in the London Barbican?

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