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Comment by rgoldfinger | Hacker News Reader

Here's an explanation I found persuasive for why the 60's and 70's buildings don't appeal to many of us: https://commonedge.org/the-mental-disorders-that-gave-us-mod...

In short, the designers of these buildings experienced trauma during the wars that changed their brains, in a way that makes human features upsetting. Most buildings reference human features in some way (mouth, eyes), and this modernism avoids that and calms their brains.

It aligns nicely with the astute observation about the windows, in that they humanize these large buildings.

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Or maybe it’s a form of abstract ‘high art’ like jazz and you don’t understand it. I studied architecture and I understand how to interpret what these designers were trying to do with the opportunities provided by the new technology of reinforced concrete. There was a lot of hubris in the post war period and a lot of experimental stuff was built. Some examples are poor designs, some are incredible.

Here’s an example: In the 80’s, in London and elsewhere in the UK, plenty of brutalist towers were demolished and replaced with more traditional brick two story houses, only for the residents to realise that they had taken a big downgrade to smaller darker houses, and were still living in a community with the same social problems as before that people said would be fixed by changing the style of architecture.

Brutalist architecture is a branch of modernism, like jazz and abstract paintings. Most of it is experimental, some of it is shit design and sticking plastic ionic columns on it wouldn’t fix it. I don’t think you can seriously dismiss the whole genre as the product of mental illness.

You're implicitly denying that there are options other than aping the past or large blank/monotonous facades.

New materials could be used for designs with a mix of scales of features.

That doesn't answer the question of "why did anyone let them build this crap". Why didn't the non-brain-damaged architects get to put up buildings?

There theory is that pretty much everyone in Europe and USA had PTSD from the Great War.

World War II more so than the Great War. The former basically destroyed most of Europe, displaced millions and resulted in the massive collective traumas from deportations, mass murder, carpet bombing, etc.

Brutalism really only emerged in the 1940/1950 after WWII.

That question has an obvious answer : those architects are better at architecture than normal brain architects. Architecture is mainly functional, not esthetical

Citation needed? Architecture is ofcourse esthetical.

Aesthetics take the backseat when a two-digit share of your population has no roof. People these days tend to forget that these buildings replaced shanty towns.

And also the conclusion that modern architecture is literally the result of brain disorders seems a bit too much.

It's a ridiculous premise but as to why let an architect build how they want? And why do they all look so similar?

Just fads. Same way web site designs follow trends.

You can revert a website with some difficulty, good luck reverting a 5-10 building project!

Brutality architecture is cheap and easy. It uses minimal materials: typically concrete and steel, and is simple to construct for poor people.

In Paris suburbs, they replaced this:

https://www.gettyimages.fr/detail/photo-d%27actualit%C3%A9/j...

Hope that helps you understanding.

Brutalism might be better than shanty towns, but it's still ugly af.

It was also cheap af to build in series, something that can't exactly be said of Vegas casinos.

I assume that, once time has made its effect and most of these buildings have been replaced, people will have good opinions about the remaining ones.

> In short, the designers of these buildings experienced trauma during the wars that changed their brains, in a way that makes human features upsetting. Most buildings reference human features in some way (mouth, eyes), and this modernism avoids that and calms their brains.

How could anyone make a statement about "human features upsetting" someone like Le Corbusier. This is entirely ignoring 1/2 of his career. And the OP throwing in the Unite Habitat system with the rest of the specimens was a bit galling.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Cit%C3%A...

https://www.themodernhouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/le...

That's actually pretty progressive work for 60s and none of your local area housing projects look remotely like Corbusier's buildings, I assure you. (I did some delivery for a charity in NYC and I've seen the inside of those horrid places.) 2 entirely different mindsets and intellectually sloppy to throw in developer driven copycat crap with the works of architects like Corbusier or Mies.

How do most buildings reference human features? I don't think most buildings reference human features at all. Buckingham palace doesn't have a mouth or eyes.

You'd have to stretch the meaning of "eye" or "mouth" out so thin it becomes "opening"...

I don't buy this theory, otherwise it would've been much more prominent in the late 40s and 50s, not decades later.

Also it would've shown in other forms of art whereas the post war artistic trauma lasted to the early 50s in movies and no longer.

War babies needed to grow up, study, and gain work experience before being in a senior enough position to approve construction of a brutalist tower. 70s seems about right to me. Once there were consumers for this type of architecture, suitable producers would gain seniority as their tenders got accepted.

But I also don't buy the theory that it was the war, as I think you see similar brutal design in Nazi and Facist architecture.

> 70s seems about right to me.

That's post Woodstock and so many cultural and artistic changes.

To be fair, Nazi were formed by previous war too. But the theory is unconvincing to me too. It is not like WWI - WWII was the only period and place in producing atrocities.

If there was something on the theory, you would have similar styles every after every genocide/war worldwide. Art and architecture history is way more complex then that.

Got to love the articles description of the Autistic Spectrum as "not processing visual information as normal."

Yeah, it's a great example of begging the question. It might explain why their designs are different from neurotypical architects (although I didn't notice any kind of control group), but according to the author it makes them bad.

Animals also have eyes and hands, and people of the past were also traumatized, but did not decide to have buildings without something expressing features such as eyes and hands (how would you even)

Does the Treasure Island Hotel have more human features than the “monster building” in the article ?

I saw that one in the comments section, and I pretty much only agree with the last sentence. We should probably make more human-friendly architecture. However, the rest of the article reeks of eugenics. "Giving input to people who deviate from the norm harms our society". Ironically, that's actually what was bad about Le Corbusier, he was an architectural fascist. It wasn't that his mind processed visual stimuli differently, it's that he hated the way other people saw things. Here's some quotes from "The City of Tomorrow":

"There is only one right angle; but there is an infinityde of other angles. The right angle, therefore, has superior rights over other angles; it is unique and it is constant"

s/right/white/ and s/angle/race/ and you probably have a direct quote from Hitler.

"things which come into close contact with the body, are of a less pure geometry"

You don't have to go around trying to give fake diagnoses to Le Corbusier to find where things went wrong. You just have to listen!

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