But why do the students of architecture prefer brutalism? I don't believe they factor the financials in when they choose which picture they like better.
it refers to "béton brut" - french for 'raw concrete'. in this case, brutalism could be more readily understood as 'rawism'. it also emerged during (and is a descendant of) the modernist architectural period, which is well known for those boring, non-descript office towers.
there's nothing wrong with the simplicity of raw concrete. but just like other architecture, it can be done well and it can be done poorly. it can be done for utility, and it can be done for extravagance.
I think many people think of non-descript office towers when they think of brutalism, rather than all of the interesting things that can be done with a single material (shapes, textures, designs, etc. it's a very versatile + strong medium!).
Now, as a contrast, another masterpiece from the city where I grew up: https://www.scribd.com/document/955270807/g10-Cultural-Cente...
It's probably some combination of the subculture effect (i.e., subcultures tend to develop their own in-group aesthetics) and as a functional shibboleth (i.e., being able to "appreciate" things average people don't has an in-group signalling function).
Because they study architecture. The article is profoundly anti-intellectual. This discourse, that colleges indoctrinate people and, thus, cause them to disagree with some form of "truth" that the uneducated masses know.
If the architecture they're studying is divorced from the preferences and needs of the uneducated masses then who cares? They may as well be studying their own butts.
Preferences, perhaps, but needs, I'm sure not. On this, I much prefer being divorced from preferences, than designing soul-less buildings designed solely to cater to preferences, without leveraging the knowledge gained through years of study.
For example, we know now that pedestrian skyways only work in limited contexts and have plenty of downsides; or that a large, concrete windswept plaza is pretty to look at but pretty antisocial and unusable space, and yet you still see this kind of thing in the latest from say Zaha Hadid et al.
It’s why a next wave of architects and planners have coined terms like “bird-shit architecture” that only looks good completely devoid of context and landed from the sky.
Classic butt-guy response.
Often we go out exploring the solution space for new things that were never done before and nobody ever asked for them because nobody had imagined them until they saw the first one. Remember how blown away everyone was with the Jeff Han's multitouch demo? It became immediately obvious it was the future of direct manipulation interfaces.
If you go back further, do you remember how sci-fi pictured the computers we would be using "in the future"? In 2001 there were no alphanumeric keyboards. Neither on the Enterprise. We are finally catching up with the vision of Tron, of the computer as an environment for intelligent agents (it took decades for most people to even formulate this understanding of the movie). We get a lot of things wrong, but our job is to try the things nobody is asking for, because they don't know they can be.
One great example from the city where I grew up: https://hicarquitectura.com/2024/09/lina-bo-bardi-sesc-pompe...
As for the building you showed me. I think it looks awful. It actually looks worse than the architecture in movie Equilibrium.
https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/rtf-architectural-revie...
Taste is extremely subjective. I am an engineer and I've spent a whole career training my tastes (for system design, hardware architecture) to be less subjective and help guide my work towards what's good. Some of that seems to have leaked to building and city planning, because my taste seems to align well with the experts in those fields.
This is true
> and recommends that said experts should try to take that into account
They should, but it’s up to the experts to make the decision. You need an informed group to make decisions.
> People almost always prefer traditional architecture
People usually prefer the familiar.
> Is it really subjective when a vast majority of people agree? I suppose technically it is
It is, unless the people can show data justifying their choice. Subjective preference is not data and does not offer a justification.
I've seen experts in my own field completely misunderstand what customers have wanted and/or completely missed the point. There are numerous examples where experts have made things worse or got things very wrong, especially in large construction projects.
There are many reasons why this happens, sometimes it is personal ego, adherence to ideas that are out of data, their paycheck might be dependant on a certain decision being made.
Experts should not get the say in everything. Pretending that people who aren't experts aren't capable of making reasonable decisions and ever is IMO asinine.
> Subjective preference is not data and does not offer a justification.
The point is that it isn't as subjective as you claim. It isn't simply people prefer the familiar. The article itself explores this. There are whole branch of philosophy behind aesthetics. I find it very frustrating when people believe that aesthetics is simply personal preference.
Also, I'd be surprised if ALL "people who study [this] subject and dedicate their lives to studying and perfecting their understanding" would share the same preference.
No, but I'll trust their opinion on building design and urban planning over yours the same way I wouldn't trust you to do brain surgery or landing an airliner. I am a skilled pilot in simulators, but I still wouldn't trust myself to land a real plane.
Fashion. Taste. Informed by functional and economical requirements, materials, surroundings, urban planning, yes, but in the end, there's also an element of taste and subjective preference that can clump together in periods or zeitgeist forms or whatever you like to call it.
As taste and preference go, you are free to delegate yours to others without question, as you seem to be doing here so passionately. I don't find empty appeals to authority very convincing. But maybe I misunderstand what you're saying.
I'm willing to hold two concepts in my head: my own impression of the appearance of different examples of a certain architectural style (which, like all others, has better and worse ones); and the question why some people who know a lot more than me might see it differently than me. Their reasons and my reasons might both be valid, but mine would be far less interesting. Hence, my question.
Finally: You seem to think that I asked you to trust my opinion, or even to change yours. You might want to look into why you think that, because that's not at all what I did. I asked something entirely different.