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Comment by smitherfield | Hacker News Reader

I'm in Boston, pretty much the epicenter. I can't think of many redeeming qualities.

My sense of the genre is that it was an attempt to copy Eastern Bloc architecture by architects who were warmly disposed to the Eastern Bloc, and had either disabused themselves or wanted to disabuse us of bourgeois notions of aesthetics and good taste.

IMO, although it has definitely improved over the last 40-50 years, architecture peaked aesthetically circa the turn of the 20th century (Art Nouveau[0], Gaudí).

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=art+nouveau+architecture&tbm...

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Also Bostonian here. I think the other problem with Brutalism in urban contexts is that is very non-contextual and very imposing structurally. It really announces itself much to the detriment of everything around it.

On the other hand I find Brutalism architecture that sits in contrast to wide open fields or a hillside to work very well.

15th century baroque is a good contender

https://www.google.it/search?q=bramante+architecture&rlz=1CD...

And have you seen the late baroque of juvarra?

https://www.google.it/search?q=juvarra+architettura&rlz=1CDG...

Now they dis loads of churches that has to follow a pattern for obvious reason, but their works on provate villas are truly amazing especially seen live.

Baroque is beautiful but high-maintenance. And I find it can be "noisy" - it's good for something that's supposed to be a focal point in its own right, but in e.g. a concert hall it can end up distracting from the "content".

> I can't think of many redeeming qualities.

I find it clean, non-distracting, 'sterile'- I end up focusing more on the people around me than the buildings towering over me.

Our upside-down city hall and the plaza wasteland around it are described as brutalist, and yet I would not call City Hall "non-distracting" or the plaza "clean".

I think a lot of people ITT may be confusing Brutalism and modernist architecture in general. "Clean," "unobtrusive" and so on are not adjectives I'd use to describe it (Brutalist architecture).

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