Comment by DrewADesign | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DrewADesign | Hacker News Reader

Actual Brutalism embraces the idea that beautiful forms can come from purely functional design not obfuscated by baroque, purely decorative structures to embellish or superimpose skeuomorphic references to building structures from bygone eras. (e.g. decorative columns.) The buildings should be designed to accommodate many people, but the small, modular elements should focus on the human scale. All of this stems from a utopian idea that scaling production can provide functional, beautifully designed buildings for use by all people, rather than just the privileged few.

While the style is polarizing, and there are obviously examples of shitty brutalism out there, I'd say it often accomplished its goals. In my experience, well-designed brutalist buildings are easy to navigate, have large open spaces, have lots of little nooks and crannies to foster human interaction, and have really beautiful forms.

Old images of the Umass Dartmouth (then Southeastern Massachusetts University) library:

https://sdg-migration-met.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/upload...

https://sdg-migration-met.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/upload...

https://scontent-bos5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/58602929_10...

In its modern form:

https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/fs/7913213...

(though the architect really should have done more to accommodate laptops in that space!)

This quine is rather the opposite of brutalism. Every single page element adds purely decorative :before and :after elements and monospace font not optimal for paragraph text that hinder its function just to reference an aesthetic from a bygone era. Adding decoration to a functional object to make it "brutalist" is conceptually kind of ridiculous. HN is far more brutalist than that page. Its structure is clear, functional, and largely unembellished.

Examples of brutalist websites: Craigslist, Skimfeed, Reddit.

Early Google, Twitter, Facebook also, use archive to take a look at how simple and purely functional they were vs. the bloated mess they are now. In fact, the whole web was that way in those days. Made by engineers for engineers.

Right. The wheels of commerce keep on turning (and often, running things over.)

You mean early Reddit. I don't know who new Reddit is made for but it's the opposite of functional.

old.Reddit.com

I think you mean. Current Reddit, IMHO, is a UI dumpster fire.

Where are you seeing "an aesthetic from a bygone era" in the linked page? Are you really grokking what's going on with the content, or ? Undergirding the brutalist claim is its quine-ness. Like buildings in the brutalist tradition that "showcase the bare building materials and structural elements"[1], the content of the page reveals its structure. In fact, no part comprising its structure or building materials (such as they are) is left unexposed. It displays everything that is essential and displays nothing that is inessential.

It would be one thing to say that this sort of thing—i.e., taking it to its (brutal) extreme—is overkill and that that's what you find unappealing about it. To call it "the opposite of brutalism", on the other hand, is silly.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brutalist_archite...

I love the images of the old design. Honestly I feel like the modern form is less friendly. As humans we relax better when having something protecting our back, and the modern layout leave you feeling exposed.

When done right brutalist building are in my mind the most relaxing and comfortable. Sadly it's not something we really build anymore, and certainly not as regular homes.

Definitely agree. I keep seeing sites like this called Brutalist, but they’re more akin to high tech postmodernism. With the closest architectural equivalent probably being the Centre Pompidou. Which is all about exposure of underlying structural and functional elements for purely aesthetic purposes.

Apt comparison!

I contend that the appeal of Brutalism lies entirely in its name, people are just mesmerized by that word, you hear it dropped much more than any other school of architecture. I don't know how to look at stats on wikipedia, but I'll bet that page gets more attention than its cohort.

Brutalist buildings are generally very unpleasant to visit.

May I recommend a tour of the very pleasant, very brutalist Barbican Centre.

https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/series/barbican-tours

I'm an art school guy from a very Bauhaus influenced design program. I spent more hours learning about visual aesthetic and communication than computer science majors spend learning related math disciplines. As a toddler-aged child of college students, I spent many hours in the pictured library and loved every minute of it. I loved the big open spaces, pops of color against the gray, the coversation pits, balconies, and the shapes... the core structure wasn't all right angle boxes. It spurned my interest in design.

Your contention is an artifact of superimposing your taste onto everyone else. Good brutalist buildings are captivating forms based on the altruistic, if often problematic and shortsighted ideologies of modernism. They're striking, unusual, and completely unique. I completely understand why some people consider them hideous, but asserting people only like them because of the cool name is complete garbage.

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