The British government has issued a visual design system for their government websites that embraces this philosophy (in their case, for accessibility and speed more than aesthetics).
I always post this when open.gov comes up.
Might not be appropriate to other kinds of site.
The GDS design guides are not rooted in aesthetics, they're truly rooted in practicality. Their goal is for the site to be navigable and understandable by as close to 100% of the UK population as they can get. That has to include people with old or unusual devices, people with disabilities, people on slow connections, and so on. It's all about the user.
Actually-existing brutalist buildings are not like this. The architects put aesthetic sensibilities first, usability second, while fraudulently claiming they were doing the opposite[1]. When people complained about how unpleasant it was to live in them, they did the "you're holding it wrong" dodge, and said the users (i.e. inhabitants) were to blame.
[1] For example, they would put in industrial-looking concrete greebles on the sides of buildings, making them look like they served a structural purpose, but actually they didn't. It was purely decorative, but ugly decoration that only appealed to other brutalist architects, meant to trick people into thinking it was some "raw" construction element sticking out.
EDIT lol the stained concrete appreciation society have arrived; but no amount of downvotes will make anyone want to live in coventry
That's really funny, because I've seen websites that tries to appeal to "hacker"/"minimalist" aesthetics doing the same thing.
An example: the file-hosting service https://0x0.st. When you try to visit a link to a non-existing file, it will crash with a trace message that exposes the offending code block from fhost.c.
Wow, so RAW and BRUTAL. It's even written in C, so hacker-ish! Until you find out that the error message is fake: https://git.0x0.st/mia/0x0/src/branch/master/templates/404.h...
The server is actually written in Python and it generates a randomized, fake C-looking trace message for its 404 page.
Both demolished. Replaced with the usual speculative tat. Many empty properties (high rents from new build).
Brutalism was never about stripping buildings of all aesthetics, a common misconception or often heard derogatory argument against many forms of minimalism. Minimalism does not eliminate design. It is more about rejecting purely decorative elements and working directly with the structural elements and building material. Recognising aesthetic choices is therefore not fraudulent or dishonest, but your lack of understanding what brutalism is about.
No, that's what they claimed they were doing. The reality was different.
Brutalism looks simple, but horrible and anti-human, especially in Britain's climate, where it tends to get stained by damp and moss.
I actually like that - nature easily integrates it back into itself. That can't happen with glass towers.
As for the anti-human, I always read it as a reminder that there are things bigger than human, which may be why brutalism is so popular with governments.
Moss and vines look great on Britain's Georgian and Gothic architecture. On Brutalist flat surfaces, it just looks dirty.
Brutalism is an academic justification of the brutalisation of the working class, who invariably were the ones who ended up living in cheaply constructed Brutalist architecture. The middle and upper classes (and the architects) keep to their pretty Georgian Neo-classical houses.
Only seeing it from the outside I dismissed it for many years, but once I went in I realised both how huge it is and how it shows the ideas of brutalist and modernist architecture do exist independently of the depressing concrete boxes that have often been built in their name.
It was like prison cells in a panopticon.
> aspirational development for "middle and upper middle class professionals" [1] and remains highly sought after to this day.
In spite of its brutalist architecture, not because. London has a severe shortage of housing/the UK is too centralised.
Yep, and they'll pull out the "umm well akshually 'brutalism' comes from the french betón brut, it doesn't mean 'brutal'", but they're wrong; the word "brutalism" itself wasn't coined by the French, it was coined by a bunch of too-clever-by-half Anglophone students. They knew exactly what double meaning it would have; it was always a mean-spirited pun.
Etymology helps people understand the mindset at a given time.
That's just like your opinion, man.
> Brutalism is an academic justification of the brutalisation of the working class, who invariably were the ones who ended up living in cheaply constructed Brutalist architecture. The middle and upper classes (and the architects) keep to their pretty Georgian Neo-classical houses.
That is a projection. Most brutalist buildings are not living spaces but things like bridges, university buildings, libraries, airports, museums, etc. Who do those oppress?
If you don't like the concrete because the Soviets used a lot of it, say that without the pseudo-intelecualization.
- ugly
- dirty
- dark
- felt impersonal, not designed for people
- usually smelled of piss
- often associated with petty crime
Most brutalist buildings should be wiped from the earth. People report liking living in the Barbican, perhaps we can keep that one. Most of the rest are nothing more than an eyesore.
E.g. a brutalist blog is certainly usable (see for example: http://blog.fefe.de/ which uses the browsers default css and allows you to apply custom css "themes"). If you look neutral at it, it is just text and text is front and center. With clean markup it is more accessible than most sites and people are free to style their default browser template any way they like. This is not anti-human.
Brutalism can be anti-human, but so can be a friendly cushy design language that hides the truth behind fluffy words. It always depends on the execution.
Water infiltration causes mould and other nasty problems for the people inside, and it makes the exterior physically crumble apart. It's not a thing to be celebrated.
"It looks good when it's fucked up" is the last refuge of indefensible monumentalism; reminiscent of Albert Speer's "Ruin Value", likely devised because he was smart enough to realize his buildings wouldn't survive the decade.
It shouldn't have to be said, but the main function of a building is to keep nature out.
>As for the anti-human, I always read it as a reminder that there are things bigger than human, which may be why brutalism is so popular with governments.
You can make big things to provoke feelings of awe and wonder, or feelings of intimidation and powerlessness. It's a choice. And art is only a welcome "reminder" when it's occasional. People put a skull on their shelf, so that when their eye lands on it some drowsy evening, they are reminded: memento mori. But nobody would like it if every advert on the tube said "you're going to die someday lol". You can't get away from architecture; a brutalist city is one where people cannot go about their day without being reminded that they are tiny and insignificant, and powerful people can do what they like to them.
Then build it accordingly - use water management techniques such as impermeabilization, double walls, drainage, and so many others that ensure the building is safe and sound because rain tends to fall on them anyway and it's not like things like green roofs are a universally bad thing - they even help with heat management. And suspended gardens were even a thing in Babylon.
> It shouldn't have to be said, but the main function of a building is to keep nature out.
No. It's to keep people comfortable, to foster human relationships and social activities within and around it, gently guiding people towards a goal without them realizing it. Architecture was never about buildings - it's about the people who use them.
I grew up with a lot of that: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/t-magazine/tropical-bruta...