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Comment by harimau777 | Hacker News Reader

It frustrates me that so many people hate brutalist architecture. I definitely wouldn't want every building to be brutalist but I'm glad that some are.

I also much prefer brutalism to soulless glass and concrete skyscrapers or nondescript office buildings. At least brutalist buildings look like something.

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Some brutalist architecture is just a can of spray paint and pair of googley eyes away from beauty.

http://seriss.com/people/erco/fovicks/roll1/pic00026-mod.jpg

I've noticed, in London at least, that there is a new appreciation of the style among hipster millennial types. You can buy maps of 'Brutal London' with all the great examples marked (Goldfinger's tower blocks, Guys hospital, etc). The Barbican Centre has made that part of its cachet.

I can remember the exact moment I fell in love with the style - I was traveling north on a streetcar on Spadina avenue in Toronto, back in 2005, and I caught a glimpse of the John P Robarts library, and it really did change my outlook. I grew up in Plymouth, which was blighted with poor examples of the style imposed on the town after heavy war damage. Much of the hatred of brutalism stems from the contemptuous attitude these planners and architects displayed to the pre-existing urban fabric.

I felt like the only one until about 5 years ago however, then suddenly there was this revival.

Now I'm more into medieval cathedrals, but it's worth noting that 'sophisticated' tastes were against them for centuries (hence the pejorative term Gothic). I don't think anything can be beautiful without irritating somebody ...

> I've noticed, in London at least, that there is a new appreciation of the style among hipster millennial types.

I don't think it's all that recent. The Barbican has been widely admired for a long time, say.

I would agree with you: there are interesting and appropriate uses of brutalist design. The issue I have is that many brutalist structures are "soulless glass and concrete," with inverse proportions!

33 Thomas Street is a good example.

Why are you glad some are?

Signed,

A Brutalist Hater

Human beings are physical creatures and our physical environment can communicate messages that are more powerful than if you just read them in a book. I find that brutalist buildings often communicate a visceral sense of power, profundity, inhuman scale, etc.

A Brutalist library can give one the sense that it houses the knowledge of hundreds of generations. From a time when the gigantic heroes of myth necessitated the building's inhuman size.

Entering a Brutalist courthouse might feel like walking into a fortress where the forces of law and order make their stand to protect society from the forces of chaos.

In short, I agree, at least in part, with the critics of Brutalism who say that it creates in the viewer a feeling of insignificance and the sense that the environment was not fully built for you. Where I disagree is when they say that we should never feel that way. At a time when the comforts of modern technology allow people to live divorced from nature and where social media allows everyone to be at the center of their own world, I think its valuable to occasionally be reminded that we are each a very small part of a world that is very large.

> A Brutalist library can give one the sense that it houses the knowledge of hundreds of generations.

Or it can resemble a turkey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robarts_Library

Brutalist structures are hideously ugly and oppressive to the human spirit. Why anyone thinks architects and advocates for the dehumanizingly ugly should be allowed to use public spaces for these projects is a mystery to me. We have to share these spaces, and for people to say things like "sometimes you should feel insignificant" and then impose it on the rest of us in building form is objectionable.

I honestly don’t think I will ever recover from Boston City Hall and not see it in every brutalist building I see. It was that traumatizing to even stand near it. If the Empire from Star Wars and Camazotz from A Wrinkle in Time had a baby it would be that building.

Less poetically, I like the fact that there are different types of architecture which communicate different messages.

Right? It's architectural prosody and super interesting to see how design can effect the very mood of the environment. I love cyberpunk and find brutalist architecture to be one of the primary styles in the genre that really helps to build the setting. There's a sense of impressive oppression that emanates from well executed brutalist buildings and sometimes mystery like in the case of 33 Thomas Street [0].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Thomas_Street

I also disliked brutalist from spending too much time in Ontario University campuses which just did a boring job of brutalist. Then i visited the barbican in London and fell in love. There are very good examples of brutalist out there

Some people enjoy the emotions Brutalism evokes in the same way that others enjoy watching horror movies even though horror/fear aren't usually considered positive emotions.

The size and striking appearance give a sense of safety, nobility, and a feeling that the structure's purpose exists beyond what people think of it. There isn't the delusion that such a large structure can do anything but permanently change the landscape around it, and no appeal to some lost Great Tradition of Architecture. Brutalist architecture has dignity in its old age; rust streaks, plant growth, and other signs of aging feel like a graceful admission that nothing lasts forever, instead of an inevitable abandonment of the structure.

The LA river drainway lets you appreciate the power of the river even when its not completely flooded. Towards the end, where the bed must become dirt, you see the far future of the entire drainway, where it's not a decrepit building, but just rock that has returned to nature.

I've yet to see an old concrete building that's aged with dignity, rather than aging with 'what's with those big drippy stains, doesn't anybody wash around here?'.

People hate brutalism because it is aesthetic violence. It assaults you with its ugliness. It accosts innocent passers by with the architect’s ideology. Nondescript is far preferable.

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