What's Your Opinion of Brutalist Architecture?

[Duvniask]

Bad opinions like not wanting to live in the most dreary, totalitarian-esque structures imaginable?

And sure, lump everyone who dislikes it in with anti-Semites while you're at it.

I mean, if you're going to associate brutalist architecture with totalitarianism then you can't really object to neoclassicism being associated with the fascist weirdos who jack off to marble statues.

Missing the point.

Neoclassicism may or may not be something fascists like, but I don't give a fuck. I'm not 'associating' brutalism with totalitarianism because of any one society or because people who advocate for it may be totalitarians. What I think is that by it's very nature it projects an atmosphere of totalitarianism, and that is because it's dreary and soulless and serves to remind one constantly that the society one lives in is a fucking hellhole.

Whatever else he may have written, I agree with with Nathan J. Robinson's assessment of these forms of architecture in general.

[Theodores Tomfooleries]

Lived in a commie brutalist apartment building for 13 years. Worst decision of my life. But brutalism isn't bad when it's put in the right place.

And where are you from?

[Hurdergaryp]

Startling the line between beautiful, and radically ugly. It is the Pug of Architecture.

Brutalism can even be playful, as Habitat 67 proves.

[-Astoria-]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_City_Hall
Here is a prime example of why I hate this style of Architecture.

Boston city hall is one of the ugliest buildings i've ever seen and definitely the ugliest government building.

I have to see it almost daily. Don't remind me.

Proposition to trade places.

[Theodores Tomfooleries]

Startling the line between beautiful, and radically ugly. It is the Pug of Architecture.

Brutalism can even be playful, as Habitat 67 proves.

Habit 67 is the absolute worst example out of any of these.

[Hurdergaryp]

Brutalism can even be playful, as Habitat 67 proves.

Habit 67 is the absolute worst example out of any of these.

Oh, you are no fun.

[Theodores Tomfooleries]

Habit 67 is the absolute worst example out of any of these.

Oh, you are no fun.

I can see what's playful about Habitat 67... but it's so ugly. Takes "functionality" to the extreme, even for brutalism

[Hurdergaryp]

Oh, you are no fun.

I can see what's playful about Habitat 67... but it's so ugly. Takes "functionality" to the extreme, even for brutalism

It's practical, yes. Also it has a rather futuristic feel.

[Theodores Tomfooleries]

I can see what's playful about Habitat 67... but it's so ugly. Takes "functionality" to the extreme, even for brutalism

It's practical, yes. Also it has a rather futuristic feel.

No. No it does not. Futurism does not even look close to this.

[Hurdergaryp]

It's practical, yes. Also it has a rather futuristic feel.

No. No it does not. Futurism does not even look close to this.

You would prefer the Geisel Library or the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption instead when it comes to futurism in architecture?

[Theodores Tomfooleries]

No. No it does not. Futurism does not even look close to this.

You would prefer the Geisel Library or the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption instead when it comes to futurism in architecture?

Geisel more brutalist than futurist, same with Saint Mary. Geisel has potential and could look pretty good with an actual coat of paint, Cathedral looks pretty cool.

[Theodores Tomfooleries]

No. No it does not. Futurism does not even look close to this.

You would prefer the Geisel Library or the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption instead when it comes to futurism in architecture?

Geisel more brutalist than futurist, same with Saint Mary. Geisel has potential and could look pretty good with an actual coat of paint, Cathedral looks pretty cool but is more modernist/structural expressionist than futurist

[Forsher]

I mean, if you're going to associate brutalist architecture with totalitarianism then you can't really object to neoclassicism being associated with the fascist weirdos who jack off to marble statues.

I do not object but neoclassicism still hits hard.

You should object. Fascist architecture is like a halfway stage between neoclassical and brutalist architecture. You should be able to tell the difference between fascist architecture and neoclassical architecture.

[Pangurstan]

I hate this type. It reminds me of some dictatornship. It is just plain and looks... dead. It feels unnatural, having a giant one-color square or rectangle. Nature isnt like that, and since what we consider beautiful was set when most of people lived close to nature, It makes no sense too.
1,5/10, There is one worse type and that is modernism ( All Black or gray with lots of glass )

yeah, not a fan of modernism architecture either, it's as lifeless as brutalism but without the actual usefulness.

ugly building made of concrete > ugly building made of class that tries to cook people alive

[Ifreann]

I mean, if you're going to associate brutalist architecture with totalitarianism then you can't really object to neoclassicism being associated with the fascist weirdos who jack off to marble statues.

Missing the point.

Neoclassicism may or may not be something fascists like, but I don't give a fuck. I'm not 'associating' brutalism with totalitarianism because of any one society or because people who advocate for it may be totalitarians. What I think is that by it's very nature it projects an atmosphere of totalitarianism, and that is because it's dreary and soulless and serves to remind one constantly that the society one lives in is a fucking hellhole.

Well I don't think that makes very much sense. What is the link between the dreariness and soullessness of this architectural style and totalitarianism, absent any reference to any particular society? What is totalitarian about bare concrete, if we exclude the possibility of an association with some kind of Soviet dystopia?

Whatever else he may have written, I agree with with Nathan J. Robinson's assessment of these forms of architecture in general.

Seems like rather a lot of silly wank to me. My ass, every building was beautiful before the 20th century. How could anyone think about that statement for even the moment it takes to type and still believe it? Are we to imagine that peasants lived in smaller versions of Versailles or the Taj Mahal? That the cowshed and the tannery were sights of architectural wonder? Pointing to the surviving works commissioned by the king or some spice merchant billionaire and imagining that to be how everyone has lived for all of history is ridiculous.

[Ifreann]

yeah, not a fan of modernism architecture either, it's as lifeless as brutalism but without the actual usefulness.

ugly building made of concrete > ugly building made of class that tries to cook people alive

To be fair, the skyscraper that was also a heat ray that melted expensive cars was very funny.

[Duvniask]

Missing the point.

Neoclassicism may or may not be something fascists like, but I don't give a fuck. I'm not 'associating' brutalism with totalitarianism because of any one society or because people who advocate for it may be totalitarians. What I think is that by it's very nature it projects an atmosphere of totalitarianism, and that is because it's dreary and soulless and serves to remind one constantly that the society one lives in is a fucking hellhole.

Well I don't think that makes very much sense. What is the link between the dreariness and soullessness of this architectural style and totalitarianism, absent any reference to any particular society? What is totalitarian about bare concrete, if we exclude the possibility of an association with some kind of Soviet dystopia?

Whatever else he may have written, I agree with with Nathan J. Robinson's assessment of these forms of architecture in general.

Seems like rather a lot of silly wank to me. My ass, every building was beautiful before the 20th century. How could anyone think about that statement for even the moment it takes to type and still believe it? Are we to imagine that peasants lived in smaller versions of Versailles or the Taj Mahal? That the cowshed and the tannery were sights of architectural wonder? Pointing to the surviving works commissioned by the king or some spice merchant billionaire and imagining that to be how everyone has lived for all of history is ridiculous.

It's very obvious when someone only superficially reads an article and decides to nitpick on some minor comment, rather than craft an actual argument with weight behind it. As the article notes:

For many socialists in the 20th century, the abdication of decorative elements and traditional forms seemed to be a natural outgrowth of a revolutionary spirit of simplicity, solidarity, and sacrifice. But the joke was on the socialists, really, because as it turned out, this obsession with minimalism was also uniquely compatible with capitalism’s miserable cult of efficiency. After all, every dollar expended on fanciful balusters or stained glass rose windows needed to produce some sort of return on investment. And since such things can be guaranteed to produce almost no return on investment, they had to go. There was a good reason why, historically, religious architecture has been the most concerned with beauty for beauty’s sake; the more time is spent elegantly decorating a cathedral, the more it serves its intended function of celebrating God’s glory, whereas the more time is spent decorating an office building, the less money will be left over for the developer.

But let’s leave aside God’s glory—what about ordinary human happiness? One of the most infuriating aspects of contemporary architecture is its willful disdain for democracy. When people are polled, they tend to prefer older buildings to postwar buildings; very few postwar buildings make it onto lists of most treasured places. Yet architects are reluctant to build in the styles that people find more beautiful. Why? Well, Peter Eisenman has spoken for a lot of architects in being generally dismissive of democracy, saying that the role of the architect is not to give people what they want, but what they should want if they were intelligent enough to have good taste. Eisenman says he prefers to work for right-wing clients, because “liberal views have never built anything of value,” due to their incessant concern with public process and public needs. (On a side note, it’s no accident that Howard Roark, protagonist of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and the arch-hero of the American conservative literary canon, is an architect who intentionally dynamites a public housing project because somebody had the gall to add balconies to his original design without his consent.)

To sum up the point advanced above and in other places of the text, it invokes totalitarianism by virtue of that very imposing dreariness and soullessness that is integral to the style. Its "raw honesty" belies the sort of contempt for human life one sees most clearly reflected in a totalitarian dictatorship that, rather than build things that accord with human well-being, joy and spirituality, imposes ruthless "efficiency" alongside reminders that you are a slave - minimal ornamentation and minimal cost with the exception of making the edifice as domineering and alienating as possible. Its association with both totalitarianism and the Soviet Union comes not from circumstance, but because it embodied the reality of that society to a T.

[Nilokeras]

Bad opinions like not wanting to live in the most dreary, totalitarian-esque structures imaginable?

Bad, incoherent critiques driven by passively absorbed reactionary politics, yes.

And sure, lump everyone who dislikes it in with anti-Semites while you're at it.

if the trad 'this is what they took from you' neoclassical wedding cake fits

[Duvniask]

Bad opinions like not wanting to live in the most dreary, totalitarian-esque structures imaginable?

Bad, incoherent critiques driven by passively absorbed reactionary politics, yes.

And sure, lump everyone who dislikes it in with anti-Semites while you're at it.

if the trad 'this is what they took from you' neoclassical wedding cake fits

"passively absorbed reactionary politics", lol.

Put some stilts on that high horse, will you?

[Nilokeras]

"passively absorbed reactionary politics", lol.

Put some stilts on that high horse, will you?

This isn't some attempt at an own. We all absorb reactionary politics passively. We live in a reactionary aesthetic and political culture. The important thing is to understand when it is happening and critique ourselves when it happens, and not let Nathan 'I'm going to union bust my own magazine' J. Robinson lead us into some hand-wringing incoherent attempt to reconcile being progressive with having reactionary aesthetics.

[Forsher]

Are we to imagine that peasants lived in smaller versions of Versailles or the Taj Mahal? That the cowshed and the tannery were sights of architectural wonder?

Yeah, actually, kinda.

As Duvniask has pointed out, your post betrays an extremely superficial reading of the article. Frankly, while it tends to cite overly busy designs as paragons of beauty, the relevant point being made is that prior to the mid-twentieth century, ornamentation was the norm and functional tyranny didn't exist... modest structures for modest people were consciously designed with superfluous ornament.

Here's an old style property. I don't actually know how old it is but it looks the same as authentically antique buildings:



Now, the left chimney could broaden at the top for a functional purpose but I'm sceptical. The little spire thing may have been built for genuinely superstitious purposes but, again, I doubt it. But there's definitely no functional purpose to the... would you call that lattice work? I dunno, the swirling patterns to the left and right of the big window facing us.

You don't have to find this aesthetically appealing! You don't even have to find it more appealing than our next, similarly tiny, house built just a few years ago:



Do you notice the difference? There's no ornamentation at all. That's half of what the article is about. The other half is that the right wing of this house seems to lack a right angle... you'd hope this wouldn't be reflected in the interior but the article notes several examples where these design elements create hostile living environments on the inside of the building:

This idea, that architecture should try to be “honest” rather than “beautiful,” is well expressed in an infamously heated 1982 debate at the Harvard School of Design between two architects, Peter Eisenman and Christopher Alexander. Eisenman is a well-known “starchitect” whose projects are inspired by the deconstructive philosophy of Jacques Derrida, and whose forms are intentionally chaotic and grating. Eisenman took his duty to create “disharmony” seriously: one Eisenman-designed house so departed from the normal concept of a house that its owners actually wrote an entire book about the difficulties they experienced trying to live in it. For example, Eisenman split the master bedroom in two so the couple could not sleep together, installed a precarious staircase without a handrail, and initially refused to include bathrooms.

As reading seems a problem, you may prefer to watch a movie instead. I've been meaning to rewatch that, actually.

[Forsher]

"passively absorbed reactionary politics", lol.

Put some stilts on that high horse, will you?

This isn't some attempt at an own. We all absorb reactionary politics passively. We live in a reactionary aesthetic and political culture. The important thing is to understand when it is happening and critique ourselves when it happens, and not let Nathan 'I'm going to union bust my own magazine' J. Robinson lead us into some hand-wringing incoherent attempt to reconcile being progressive with having reactionary aesthetics.

Ah, a genetic fallacy.

If you accept the following principles, you agree with the article:

• people must be able to live in living spaces
• surviving is not the same as living

But as I alluded to before, Brutalism is very much no longer consistent with progressive design principles and, in fact, almost everything urbanist has swung back to about 1885. Brutalism was, it seems, when it was conceived (a quote from the Wikipedia article ran to the effect of "it's an ethic, not an aesthetic"), but the thinking has changed.

[Duvniask]

"passively absorbed reactionary politics", lol.

Put some stilts on that high horse, will you?

This isn't some attempt at an own. We all absorb reactionary politics passively. We live in a reactionary aesthetic and political culture.

It's not so much whether you're attempting to own or not, which, alright, good. I respect that.

The problem is that you seem to think it's "reactionary" that I don't want to live in a lifeless slab of concrete and that I actually like old-style architecture with ornamentation, a sense of comfort or even spiritual splendor that isn't all cubes and austere, rough-cut surfaces made from cement.

The important thing is to understand when it is happening and critique ourselves when it happens, and not let Nathan 'I'm going to union bust my own magazine' J. Robinson lead us into some hand-wringing incoherent attempt to reconcile being progressive with having reactionary aesthetics.

I would call this an unwillingness to engage with the argument. A petty bourgeois or simply straight up bourgeois feels compelled to union-bust, how surprising - now what about what he's saying about this particular subject?

[Nilokeras]

Are we to imagine that peasants lived in smaller versions of Versailles or the Taj Mahal? That the cowshed and the tannery were sights of architectural wonder?

Yeah, actually, kinda.

As Duvniask has pointed out, your post betrays an extremely superficial reading of the article. Frankly, while it tends to cite overly busy designs as paragons of beauty, the relevant point being made is that prior to the mid-twentieth century, ornamentation was the norm and functional tyranny didn't exist... modest structures for modest people were consciously designed with superfluous ornament.

Here's an old style property. I don't actually know how old it is but it looks the same as authentically antique buildings:



Now, the left chimney could broaden at the top for a functional purpose but I'm sceptical. The little spire thing may have been built for genuinely superstitious purposes but, again, I doubt it. But there's definitely no functional purpose to the... would you call that lattice work? I dunno, the swirling patterns to the left and right of the big window facing us.

You don't have to find this aesthetically appealing! You don't even have to find it more appealing than our next, similarly tiny, house built just a few years ago:



Do you notice the difference? There's no ornamentation at all. That's half of what the article is about. The other half is that the right wing of this house seems to lack a right angle... you'd hope this wouldn't be reflected in the interior but the article notes several examples where these design elements create hostile living environments on the inside of the building:

This idea, that architecture should try to be “honest” rather than “beautiful,” is well expressed in an infamously heated 1982 debate at the Harvard School of Design between two architects, Peter Eisenman and Christopher Alexander. Eisenman is a well-known “starchitect” whose projects are inspired by the deconstructive philosophy of Jacques Derrida, and whose forms are intentionally chaotic and grating. Eisenman took his duty to create “disharmony” seriously: one Eisenman-designed house so departed from the normal concept of a house that its owners actually wrote an entire book about the difficulties they experienced trying to live in it. For example, Eisenman split the master bedroom in two so the couple could not sleep together, installed a precarious staircase without a handrail, and initially refused to include bathrooms.

As reading seems a problem, you may prefer to watch a movie instead. I've been meaning to rewatch that, actually.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Robinson's analysis is very light on actual material analysis. There is a particular reason why vernacular architecture like housing had so much ornamentation at the beginning of the 20th century - the construction industry was saturated with craft workshops that specialized in ornamentation. The Wood and Perot Ironworks is a great example of this - between the 1840s and 1880s it operated in the city of Philadelphia, and if you were building a house you could order ironwork fittings for fences, gates, etc from their catalogue and get them shipped to you. We have copies of their catalogue online here - there are literally thousands of different templates to choose from.

A large percentage of the beautiful row houses you see in places like New York, New Orleans, etc have ironwork fittings that can be traced to the Wood and Perot foundry. When it went bankrupt in one of the economic crashes of the late 19th century, the level of detail and complexity that the foundry was able to produce was not maintained - other foundries that were less specialized took up the slack for production, and none of them approached the same level of specialization as Wood and Perot.

To that extent, if you were building a house in 1950's America and wanted to find this type of ornamentation you would probably have great difficulty. And that's if you were able to afford it. It's doubly true now, when the available materials you can construct a new house of are less diverse than ever. There's a thriving aftermarket for iron fittings scavenged from 19th century rowhouses in blighted areas of Philadelphia for a reason. Which of course has major implications for the sorts of public buildings that brutalism is famous for building - would it have even been feasible, economically or politically, to build social housing developments with wrought iron ornamentation in the 1960's? Probably not.

Which is why I find paens like Robinson's so unsatisfying - they rail at the various tyrannies and totalitarianisms seemingly generated by modernism, where in reality they are reflections of scarcities and constraints imposed by very concrete (geddit) material forces.

[Ifreann]

Well I don't think that makes very much sense. What is the link between the dreariness and soullessness of this architectural style and totalitarianism, absent any reference to any particular society? What is totalitarian about bare concrete, if we exclude the possibility of an association with some kind of Soviet dystopia?


Seems like rather a lot of silly wank to me. My ass, every building was beautiful before the 20th century. How could anyone think about that statement for even the moment it takes to type and still believe it? Are we to imagine that peasants lived in smaller versions of Versailles or the Taj Mahal? That the cowshed and the tannery were sights of architectural wonder? Pointing to the surviving works commissioned by the king or some spice merchant billionaire and imagining that to be how everyone has lived for all of history is ridiculous.

It's very obvious when someone only superficially reads an article and decides to nitpick on some minor comment, rather than craft an actual argument with weight behind it.

If I was talking to Nathan J. Robinson five years ago then I might put some effort into actually responding to his article, but I'm talking to you now so I didn't bother myself too much.

As the article notes:

For many socialists in the 20th century, the abdication of decorative elements and traditional forms seemed to be a natural outgrowth of a revolutionary spirit of simplicity, solidarity, and sacrifice. But the joke was on the socialists, really, because as it turned out, this obsession with minimalism was also uniquely compatible with capitalism’s miserable cult of efficiency. After all, every dollar expended on fanciful balusters or stained glass rose windows needed to produce some sort of return on investment. And since such things can be guaranteed to produce almost no return on investment, they had to go. There was a good reason why, historically, religious architecture has been the most concerned with beauty for beauty’s sake; the more time is spent elegantly decorating a cathedral, the more it serves its intended function of celebrating God’s glory, whereas the more time is spent decorating an office building, the less money will be left over for the developer.

But let’s leave aside God’s glory—what about ordinary human happiness? One of the most infuriating aspects of contemporary architecture is its willful disdain for democracy. When people are polled, they tend to prefer older buildings to postwar buildings; very few postwar buildings make it onto lists of most treasured places. Yet architects are reluctant to build in the styles that people find more beautiful. Why? Well, Peter Eisenman has spoken for a lot of architects in being generally dismissive of democracy, saying that the role of the architect is not to give people what they want, but what they should want if they were intelligent enough to have good taste. Eisenman says he prefers to work for right-wing clients, because “liberal views have never built anything of value,” due to their incessant concern with public process and public needs. (On a side note, it’s no accident that Howard Roark, protagonist of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and the arch-hero of the American conservative literary canon, is an architect who intentionally dynamites a public housing project because somebody had the gall to add balconies to his original design without his consent.)

A strange point for him to raise in opposition to modern architecture, because what democracy was there in architecture before hated modernity invented ugliness? Cathedrals weren't approved by referendum of the local parishioners. The beauty he praises was dictated by designers, as far as their patrons would allow them discretion in design. An entirely top-down process with two decision-makers. But now when the government or a corporation commissions an architect this same process reveals arrogance and disdain.

To sum up the point advanced above and in other places of the text, it invokes totalitarianism by virtue of that very imposing dreariness and soullessness that is integral to the style. Its "raw honesty" belies the sort of contempt for human life one sees most clearly reflected in a totalitarian dictatorship that, rather than build things that accord with human well-being, joy and spirituality, imposes ruthless "efficiency" alongside reminders that you are a slave - minimal ornamentation and minimal cost with the exception of making the edifice as domineering and alienating as possible. Its association with both totalitarianism and the Soviet Union comes not from circumstance, but because it embodied the reality of that society to a T.

See, I don't think that association of totalitarianism with ruthless "efficiency" and imposed misery is actually a sensible one, in and of itself. Of course a dictator is hardly going to care for the aesthetic preferences of their people, but dictators have their own aesthetic preferences. Is it not perfectly reasonable to believe that a dictator would want the nation they command to be adorned with symbols of national pride, of righteous faith, of monuments to their own power? When I imagine totalitarianism it's not unadorned and aggressively functional blocks of concrete and steel, it's art and beauty meant to please only one person in the whole nation, a misappropriation of the styles of a bygone age, applied so as to create a pleasant view from the dictator's balcony or motorcade, an imposed vision that harkens back to whatever false glorious history they believe they're restoring. I think of Saddam Hussein living in a gilded palace, not British council housing. Or of Qatari stadia that may as well be built on foundations of bones.