> I somehow think that if you could populate the Plaza with more gardens, and make it feel more part of everyday life — which they’ve tried to do with farmers’ markets and using the basin for ice skating — then it wouldn’t feel so hostile.
Seems eerily familiar to the sentiment surrounding the plaza by the city hall in Boston.
I would be highly surprised if even 10% of brutalist era buildings survive their first 50 years without being torn down.
They're almost universally poorly designed and built, feeling more like a parking garage or a public restroom, with interior floor layouts based on mental hospitals or mazes.
There are beautiful brutalist buildings. But I'd argue that even only a small percentage of those on the fuckyeahbrutalism blog would be considered so by the public. FYB even calls out City Hall in Boston as an example of great architecture, but it's pretty much reviled by anybody who's even come in cursory contact with it and the surrounding square. There's lots of terrible public spaces on that blog to be honest, clever photography is what makes most of them passable.