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> My first association is "fake"

Better fake than the the latest fad in architecture.

At least fake gothic could never have resulted in brutalist buildings.

Gothic Revival (aka Victorian Gothic) was the original "fake gothic" (gothic-style building built with "modern" Victorian tech) and tbh it's absolutely delightful. The same can't be said for Brutalism, which originated much later (1950-1960s) but generated frankly ugly and non-maintenable buildings.

Not sure if it counts as Victorian Gothic, but The Natural History Museum in London is one of the most delightful building I've seen.

Not only the general architecture, but all the natural history theme that applies to all the Gothic design elements. Animals replacing Gargoyles, etc.

A beautiful building.

Just down the road was the Imperial Institute [1], built in the 1880s. It was demolished in 1957 and now it looks like this [2] and this [3].

[1]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Imperial_Institute.j...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sherfield_Building_over_Q...

[3]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Imperial_College_Bus...

You sometime have to wonder what they hell they were thinking. Who in their right mind would replace [1] by [2] and [3]?

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