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Comment by Negitivefrags | Hacker News Reader

“The truck is consumerist, whereas brutalism’s monumentality is civic. The truck’s boldness serves the bravado of an individual, whereas brutalism’s visual power was meant to project the shared dignity of the public realm.”

Literally no product you can buy would meet this definition.

I guess you could make a brutalist city bus?

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I definitely think it could be argued that there are many examples of brutalistic public transport - a great comparison would be New York City’s aluminium cans (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d4/MT...) versus London’s tube trains with their curves and glass (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Shiny_an...)

> "the shared dignity of the public realm"

That is a peculiar way to describe what Brutalism projects. I've always thought that it projected the sinister power of bureaucracy, and that was why government officials fell for it as hard as they did.

(I know you're just quoting the author.)

> That is a peculiar way to describe what Brutalism projects

By the express wording of the quote, it doesn't describe what Brutalism projects but what Brutalism was meant to project.

Not to mention a major motivation for electric vehicles is the public good and preservation of the public realm.

its better to think of it more as public harm reduction than public "good"

Same thing really

If people didn't see vehicles as a net positive compared to the alternative they wouldn't own them.

Not really. I see them as a necessary evil. Everyone else has one and expects me to be able to get around, so I have one too. If public transit were decent, I wouldn’t own a car.

necessary evil == net positive compared to the alternative

People own them because of a net positive for themselves, not for the society.

The word brutalist ultimately means whatever it is that it communicates.

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