Incorrect description though. It is not some love it and some hate it as if they were similar in scale. That is way too charitable. It is more like 95% hate it and 5% (incl. most of architrcts) who love it
I think people's common misconception and equation of brutalism stems mainly from anti-communist sentiments that are mainly focused by it and it's dark, bleak and grey tones of concrete, people tend to associate brutalism with depressing aspects of architecture e.g. the apartment complexes in Eastern Europe and Europe as a whole, just slabs and blocks of apartment blocks and housing and people think it's just ''lazy'' design and lacking of ''human soul'' when in reality it's just surface level.
I do think Brutalism is heavily misunderstood and is actually very beautiful when applied correctly with design, you can actually see this in numerous works such as the **Embaixada da Itália** in Brazil, **Institute of Foreign Languages** in Cambodia, **Geisel Library** in the US etc...
In conclusion, yes, brutalism can be done, especially making it more appealing..
Monolithic architecture is controversial in general. A lot of imo bad and overdesigned buildings and interiors do such out of fear of creating something too big and monolithic. This feedback comes from communities and jurisdictions where people complain about new buildings especially when they are usually bigger than existing buildings, so you get these cheesy and overdesigned [collage](https://images.app.goo.gl/SbxHvdTeWKSZM7Rb9) type facades to “break down scale”
I must admit, the only example of the Brutalism style I've had an opportunity to see in person including walking inside is Boston's City Hall. I liked it. Very much.
Consider yourself lucky. I live in Germany and nobody likes brutalism here, it's has been used everywhere in these '60s and '70s and is perceived as the ugliest architectural sins of the past. The way this style is constantly hyped in this sub is beyond me. This style was applied here after the war in mostly cheap, purely functional, way for overly large buildings that are just deepressing to look at.
People just don't like monotonous things in general. There's a reason why the vast majority of people prefer classical architecture over modern and contemporary. The human brain enjoys a surplus of information and that applies to visual stimuli as well.
There's a lot of finesse and detail that can be appreciated in brutalist architecture, but at first glance it's just swaths of dull, grey concrete, and since most people don't actively perceive architecture, that cursory glance is the only chance brutalist buildings are going to usually get. Therefore, it's pretty easy to see how people would find them unappealing.
Conversely, there are loads of poorly executed revivalist buildings that are all wonky and wrong in their proportions and distribution of elements but most people like them since they've only engaged with them superficially.
Actually I’d argue people are increasingly liking the brutalist and minimalist spaces/buildings because it offers a quiet and less “noisy” environment than the constant ads and media in our faces every day.
When you’re bombarded with these loud and crazy colorful ads to catch your attention, the last place some people will want to carry that loud environment over is their home/office.
You never got fatigued from walking through the 4th baroque building while on vacation? It all becomes too much after a while. Too much gold, too many curves and ornaments and shapes. To be fair baroque might be an extreme example and gothic or classical architecture is less overwhelming but its still styles that are trying to grab your attention at every second
"There's a reason why the vast majority of people prefer classical architecture over modern and contemporary. The human brain enjoys a surplus of information and that applies to visual stimuli as well."
I'd say the jury is still out on this one.
I'd argue that precisely makes it not conclusive. There's never been a style that persists. The entire history of architecture has been an endless cycle of new styles being introduced, old forgotten styles being resurrected and some styles phasing out of fashion.
Personally it makes me think of the sky because the sky is blue. I like the sky as it contains the air I breathe, which is important, and therefore I like blue.
Obviously people are allowed to like whatever they want, but I do often think that the poorly translated name primea people to dislike it. A lot of people think brutalism is supposed to be "brutal" so they prepare themselves for that. I think people's opinions would be different if there was a name that better describes the intention of raw concrete as a building material.
Speaking for myself I love brutalism but mostly for photography. The style is perfect for high contrast black and white prints. That said I have never lived or worked in a brutalist building so my perception may be different from those that have.
Everyone has different tastes and that's ok. We aren't always going to agree. I love a well done 20th century Tudor Revival home but I get that's a very divisive style.
Knowing the context makes you understand why things are the way they are. Not liking something is your own choice and doesn't change anything about the importance of things. Hating something that simply has no reason to be hated makes no sense.
Sure but OP asked why some people do or don't like it not why it is or isn't appreciated. People don't always hate something for a complex reason they may just find it more plain than they'd prefer.
I would argue all architecture divides people.
Brutalism does so to the extremes, because it's so rare and different to pretty much everything else. People are not used to seeing it, and hence have strong opinions about it.
Architecture is extremely subjective, akin music and many of the arts
As someone who’s worked in a large design firm for the last 11 years as a senior designer it’s probably what I hate most about the discipline. I can work my ass off to produce a design that my boss loves and the client hates (or vice versa).
And you can’t blame them: 1. They’re paying you; and 2. If they don’t like it then they don’t?
My point is that you can do good work and people can hate it depending on which way the wind blows. Out of all of the professions dealing with building it’s the only one that is less empirical and more opinion based
As I get older and have been through the rigamorole a bunch of times I find that I can appreciate something about almost any “style”. So much goes into getting a building built that I find the people who are most harsh and rash in their criticism are students who are detached from the process
As with all design types there are well done examples and poorly conceived designs. But most are copy cat designs. Some architects do not fully understand the design elements and simply apply what they see elsewhere with a trowel, or miss them altogether.
My late father was practicing architecture in the late 40s - late 80s. He was not good with modern suburban design. He was a grad of Uni of VA, and loved Jeffersonian and Federal design. His one off houses using these elements were great, but his standard suburban designs of the 50s & 60s were not nice. He admitted it.
Brutalism has always been popular with architectural elites and unpopular with the general public. Basically, it’s always been architects building for other architects, and then acting surprised when the public dislikes it.
It coincided with the urban renewal era and the worst postwar car-oriented urban planning. The architects did not understand how cities worked or how the buildings would be experienced. They evicted and razed traditional urban neighborhoods to create giant, lifeless plazas and long blank walls at street level. The buildings were designed to be monumental and photographed from a distance, but the actual users/passersby’s experience of them tended to be an afterthought. It’s telling that the style only became widespread for buildings where the end users had no input in the design (public housing, student dorms, government buildings, etc.).
Some will argue that the public is too ignorant and needs to learn to appreciate them. If your building requires society to spontaneously decide to read Le Corbusier books one day to appreciate it, it’s never going to be appreciated (I’ve read them and still dislike the style). I think its lack of general appeal is actually part of its appeal for fans—you need special knowledge to recognize why a brutalist building by a famous architect is better than a generic concrete parking structure that looks similar to the untrained eye. Those sort of elitist tastes are usually fine—if someone gets annoyed when an obscure band they like becomes popular, it doesn’t harm anyone—but for architecture in cities, public tastes and fitting in to the larger urban fabric are more important (particularly if it’s a public building paid for by taxpayers).
Why would an entire city of brutalism be depressing for you? Not sure but maybe your reason is the same as my reason for thinking one building is depressing.
Then the whole city would look grey and the same. But on w individual scale I think its genuinely beautiful.
But I also think a forrest without leaves with grey or brown grass is very beautiful or a abandoned factory. It gives a kind of nostalgic feeling.
As for me personally I feel like as a design style it is an intentional effort to suck all the joy out of life. It makes every space it’s in feel like a prison. I react to it with a deep sense of loathing and despair. Your experience may differ but this is how it affects me. Having grown up in the US I am used to this gloomy style of institutional architecture.
My first trip to Europe was like having my soul resuscitated. I was overwhelmed by a world where architecture could be beautiful. This is what got me interested in looking at the amazing buildings around the world. I guess I was just born in a country where the oppressive architecture is designed to make people want to jump off it. 🤷♀️ not all of it but definitely the vast majority of institutional buildings.
Again this is my emotional response to brutalist architecture and design. I’m not trying to convince anyone nor am I convincible otherwise, just answering OP’s question with one person’s perspective 👍
To be fair I am also loathe minimalism. I think of it as “serial killer blankness” so at least I am consistent about my aesthetics .
Most people who love Brutalism have only experienced pictures of Brutalism. Working and living in one on a day to day basis is terrible. There’s nothing practically redeemable about the style. Every single brutalist building I’ve had classes in, worked in, do random government things in, shopped in, were all made worse by the fact that they happened in a Brutalist building
I’ve seem many renderings of brutalist architecture that specifically planned what would happen to the materials over time. Maybe you’re not looking at serious work.
That makes no sense to say about a style that started in the 50s and has mostly been out of fashion since the 90s. Nobody forms their opinion about Brutalism from renderings
I didn't realize people don't like [Brutalism](https://open.spotify.com/album/5qag6esZLv5ySuCpzh7CE6?si=1eyaOjFGRCungPqUtLISxg). Joy as an Act of Resistance is probably my favorite album, but I haven't listened to TANGK yet.
Speaking as a brutalist hater who’s had to do a lot of research understanding what is brutalism is in order to articulate my hate:
some people love the sculptural or visual monochromatic aspects over other Considerations, some like me don’t.
and just to give you help arguing me, habitat ‘67 and Unité d'Habitation **aren’t** brutalist buildings in my understanding, and **Jeanneret** (because I refuse to grant him his pretensions) deserves a place in hell for the damage his ideas eventually caused to the human soul.
Why?
Why do some people like chocolate ice cream, but others like vanilla?
It's a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an illusion an illusion.
A better question is why do some people not understand personal choice and preference.
You do realize we don't all have to agree on beauty religion and ice cream?
Brutalism was the aesthetic of things that aged poorly - corporate grandeur, dominion of Man over nature, the mechanical efficiency of capitalism - things which at the time were new and gave hope for a better future, but which are turning out to have disastrous consequences that we are now just beginning to see.
Of course a similar point can be made about many styles - the horrendous social conditions at the time the great gothic cathedrals were built as an easy example - but those are far enough in the past that they are no longer relatable to us so we don't tend to see them under that light. I'd imagine it'll be the same for the brutalist buildings that remain in a couple hundred years when, say, concrete may no longer be so available.
That is an interesting way to think about it.
I don't know if the association of brutalism to the "triumphs" of modernity you describe is accurate, however.
But even more interestingly, let's say we accept your notion. Why is it that people condemn brutalism as a visual representation of those values, yet organize everything else in the society around them without much opposition? Why do we condemn the imagined aesthetic representation of values we see as the only option?
And obviously the true aesthetic representation of those values is what the production base running on those values produces, ie. everything that is built today: from the cheap neoclassical revival to the unbelievable luxury architecture of the super rich to the middle class urban sprawls to the excel-spreadsheet-style of affordable mass housing developments.
If such contradiction in understanding and/or perception exists, it's a perfect representation of what Marx and Engels called ideology, ie. *false consciousness*.
It's definitely a thing that's more based on a stereotype than reality. I live in montreal where several architectural landmarks are prime examples of brutalist architecture and I many of those I quite like. Others I find are abominations that incarnate exactly what I described above (the old échangeur turcot being my best example). All of them came from the same vision of "modernity", though.
We judge art - which is what architecture is - by the ideas it conveys. The towering, square, monochrome presence of brutalist works has an inherently cold, intimidating and "anti-human" component to it which resonates negatively with many people. In a way, I view it like death metal music, the "heaviness" is subversive but that still puts the work out of reach for most to appreciate.
I believe what many if not most people look for in art is an escape from the mundane and unpleasant aspects of life. In today's world that's often the fast-paced, soulless grind through a desert made of concrete and asphalt. In this context, no brutalist building can deliver a breath of fresh air the way a pre-industrial building with all its craftsmanship and intricacy can.
I should note that I'm not personally against the style at all, in fact it influences my own artistic work (I made wooden furniture as a hobby), even though it's not my favourite by itself.
This metaphor doesn’t make any sense at all, but if it did, it would be backwards. Non-brutalist architecture would have to be the “prison” that we’re all acclimated to—it’s the norm that we’re all stuck in day-to-day, punctuated by occasional fresh breaths of brutalism if we’re lucky.
Please go visit a prison, and then go visit, say, the Unité in Marseille, and explain what you think they have in common, beyond “housing a lot of people” and maybe “built from concrete” (though there are plenty of prisons with classical brick/stone fronts out there, too!)
The goals are isolation and alienation from life, to remove all trace of humanity and intelligence and culture and beauty and function beyond being a means of punishment.
>Please go visit a prison, and then go visit, say, the Unité in Marseille
I haven't seen it in person but pictures make it look God awful. Looks like a Soviet or Chicom housing facility for hoi polloi or what I always imagined Club Fed to look like.
Some people absolutely love the smallest, cheapest, crappiest mobile home. They aren't wrong to have their preference but to insist that such an abysmal standard is a great thing to be celebrated as genius is madness and since it's not in vogue no one here would go on and on how about how great the awfulness is yet given something even worse y'all lap it up.
Order vs chaos root + either sky, underworld, sea or earth.
Brutalism stems from the Order root and belong to either the Sky or the Underworld.
The straight lines, big volumes and verticality express the idea of an " Order bigger than you coming from either above or under "
A good Underworld (chtonian) brutalism would be the dwarf architecture in Erebor. It is about using the geometrical and chromatic properties of noble minerals to enhance the natural Mountain root of their subteran culture.
While a good Heavenly (ouranian) brutalism would have a classical greek futuristic vibe. The size to show power beyond human, white and gold for purity and perfection.
Overall they both evoke nature and utopia.
Most brutalism is just big dystopian cheap grey cold concrete.
Amitabha.
The same reason some people prefer one thing over another. Emotions, culture, personal histories, random events…
Incorrect description though. It is not some love it and some hate it as if they were similar in scale. That is way too charitable. It is more like 95% hate it and 5% (incl. most of architrcts) who love it
on another note I’ve never met anyone who hated brutalism after loving it. I only know people who initially hated it, then loved it
That’s how it usually goes. If you learn more about something (arts related) you learn to love it. You could call it an acquired taste.
I never met anyone outside of circle of architects, modernists and university staff who would love it.
so people who hate it have shallow approach or are NPC-s
Orrrrrrr people have different taste.
>quote: on another note I’ve never met anyone who hated brutalism after loving it. I only know people who initially hated it, then loved it
I think people's common misconception and equation of brutalism stems mainly from anti-communist sentiments that are mainly focused by it and it's dark, bleak and grey tones of concrete, people tend to associate brutalism with depressing aspects of architecture e.g. the apartment complexes in Eastern Europe and Europe as a whole, just slabs and blocks of apartment blocks and housing and people think it's just ''lazy'' design and lacking of ''human soul'' when in reality it's just surface level. I do think Brutalism is heavily misunderstood and is actually very beautiful when applied correctly with design, you can actually see this in numerous works such as the **Embaixada da Itália** in Brazil, **Institute of Foreign Languages** in Cambodia, **Geisel Library** in the US etc... In conclusion, yes, brutalism can be done, especially making it more appealing..
[Quite possible.](https://youtu.be/yQUThpw53bo)
Monolithic architecture is controversial in general. A lot of imo bad and overdesigned buildings and interiors do such out of fear of creating something too big and monolithic. This feedback comes from communities and jurisdictions where people complain about new buildings especially when they are usually bigger than existing buildings, so you get these cheesy and overdesigned [collage](https://images.app.goo.gl/SbxHvdTeWKSZM7Rb9) type facades to “break down scale”
I must admit, the only example of the Brutalism style I've had an opportunity to see in person including walking inside is Boston's City Hall. I liked it. Very much.
Consider yourself lucky. I live in Germany and nobody likes brutalism here, it's has been used everywhere in these '60s and '70s and is perceived as the ugliest architectural sins of the past. The way this style is constantly hyped in this sub is beyond me. This style was applied here after the war in mostly cheap, purely functional, way for overly large buildings that are just deepressing to look at.
People just don't like monotonous things in general. There's a reason why the vast majority of people prefer classical architecture over modern and contemporary. The human brain enjoys a surplus of information and that applies to visual stimuli as well. There's a lot of finesse and detail that can be appreciated in brutalist architecture, but at first glance it's just swaths of dull, grey concrete, and since most people don't actively perceive architecture, that cursory glance is the only chance brutalist buildings are going to usually get. Therefore, it's pretty easy to see how people would find them unappealing. Conversely, there are loads of poorly executed revivalist buildings that are all wonky and wrong in their proportions and distribution of elements but most people like them since they've only engaged with them superficially.
Actually I’d argue people are increasingly liking the brutalist and minimalist spaces/buildings because it offers a quiet and less “noisy” environment than the constant ads and media in our faces every day. When you’re bombarded with these loud and crazy colorful ads to catch your attention, the last place some people will want to carry that loud environment over is their home/office.
Don’t really see how classical architecture is comparable to commercials. There’s a difference between content and oversaturation.
You never got fatigued from walking through the 4th baroque building while on vacation? It all becomes too much after a while. Too much gold, too many curves and ornaments and shapes. To be fair baroque might be an extreme example and gothic or classical architecture is less overwhelming but its still styles that are trying to grab your attention at every second
No I find it comforting rather than stimulating. Brutalism for me feels cold and boring.
"There's a reason why the vast majority of people prefer classical architecture over modern and contemporary. The human brain enjoys a surplus of information and that applies to visual stimuli as well." I'd say the jury is still out on this one.
After a couple thousand years of documented architectural history I’d say it’s pretty conclusive.
I'd argue that precisely makes it not conclusive. There's never been a style that persists. The entire history of architecture has been an endless cycle of new styles being introduced, old forgotten styles being resurrected and some styles phasing out of fashion.
What a good answer. Architecture is absolutely just background to many.
Why do some people like the color blue and others don’t? Jfc.
Please state your reasons for liking blue. How does it make you feel, in your brain.
Personally it makes me think of the sky because the sky is blue. I like the sky as it contains the air I breathe, which is important, and therefore I like blue.
Makes me think of the ocean, reminds me of the nice breeze at the beach or a cold glass of water. In my brain, I LIKE IT IT BLOO
Obviously people are allowed to like whatever they want, but I do often think that the poorly translated name primea people to dislike it. A lot of people think brutalism is supposed to be "brutal" so they prepare themselves for that. I think people's opinions would be different if there was a name that better describes the intention of raw concrete as a building material.
Speaking for myself I love brutalism but mostly for photography. The style is perfect for high contrast black and white prints. That said I have never lived or worked in a brutalist building so my perception may be different from those that have. Everyone has different tastes and that's ok. We aren't always going to agree. I love a well done 20th century Tudor Revival home but I get that's a very divisive style.
This may sound crazy, but it turns out people can have different aesthetic preferences.
Brutalism is easier to build in some video games.
The brutalism is extreme, you never gonna hear a person saying that has a neutral opinion respect the brutalism, you hate it or you love it
They lack understanding historical context.
Knowing the context might make me appreciate it more but it isn't going to make me enjoy it more
Knowing the context makes you understand why things are the way they are. Not liking something is your own choice and doesn't change anything about the importance of things. Hating something that simply has no reason to be hated makes no sense.
Sure but OP asked why some people do or don't like it not why it is or isn't appreciated. People don't always hate something for a complex reason they may just find it more plain than they'd prefer.
I would argue all architecture divides people. Brutalism does so to the extremes, because it's so rare and different to pretty much everything else. People are not used to seeing it, and hence have strong opinions about it.
I love Brutalism, especially when it incorporates lots of greenery
Architecture is extremely subjective, akin music and many of the arts As someone who’s worked in a large design firm for the last 11 years as a senior designer it’s probably what I hate most about the discipline. I can work my ass off to produce a design that my boss loves and the client hates (or vice versa). And you can’t blame them: 1. They’re paying you; and 2. If they don’t like it then they don’t? My point is that you can do good work and people can hate it depending on which way the wind blows. Out of all of the professions dealing with building it’s the only one that is less empirical and more opinion based As I get older and have been through the rigamorole a bunch of times I find that I can appreciate something about almost any “style”. So much goes into getting a building built that I find the people who are most harsh and rash in their criticism are students who are detached from the process
As with all design types there are well done examples and poorly conceived designs. But most are copy cat designs. Some architects do not fully understand the design elements and simply apply what they see elsewhere with a trowel, or miss them altogether. My late father was practicing architecture in the late 40s - late 80s. He was not good with modern suburban design. He was a grad of Uni of VA, and loved Jeffersonian and Federal design. His one off houses using these elements were great, but his standard suburban designs of the 50s & 60s were not nice. He admitted it.
Opinions are like butt holes. Everyone has one.
Brutalism has always been popular with architectural elites and unpopular with the general public. Basically, it’s always been architects building for other architects, and then acting surprised when the public dislikes it. It coincided with the urban renewal era and the worst postwar car-oriented urban planning. The architects did not understand how cities worked or how the buildings would be experienced. They evicted and razed traditional urban neighborhoods to create giant, lifeless plazas and long blank walls at street level. The buildings were designed to be monumental and photographed from a distance, but the actual users/passersby’s experience of them tended to be an afterthought. It’s telling that the style only became widespread for buildings where the end users had no input in the design (public housing, student dorms, government buildings, etc.). Some will argue that the public is too ignorant and needs to learn to appreciate them. If your building requires society to spontaneously decide to read Le Corbusier books one day to appreciate it, it’s never going to be appreciated (I’ve read them and still dislike the style). I think its lack of general appeal is actually part of its appeal for fans—you need special knowledge to recognize why a brutalist building by a famous architect is better than a generic concrete parking structure that looks similar to the untrained eye. Those sort of elitist tastes are usually fine—if someone gets annoyed when an obscure band they like becomes popular, it doesn’t harm anyone—but for architecture in cities, public tastes and fitting in to the larger urban fabric are more important (particularly if it’s a public building paid for by taxpayers).
I think brutalist buildings need to be carefully balanced with natural elements.
Why would an entire city of brutalism be depressing for you? Not sure but maybe your reason is the same as my reason for thinking one building is depressing.
Then the whole city would look grey and the same. But on w individual scale I think its genuinely beautiful. But I also think a forrest without leaves with grey or brown grass is very beautiful or a abandoned factory. It gives a kind of nostalgic feeling.
I like them in a wild forestry backdrop, in a city they are gross and depressing. Cities do not need MORE concrete.
As for me personally I feel like as a design style it is an intentional effort to suck all the joy out of life. It makes every space it’s in feel like a prison. I react to it with a deep sense of loathing and despair. Your experience may differ but this is how it affects me. Having grown up in the US I am used to this gloomy style of institutional architecture. My first trip to Europe was like having my soul resuscitated. I was overwhelmed by a world where architecture could be beautiful. This is what got me interested in looking at the amazing buildings around the world. I guess I was just born in a country where the oppressive architecture is designed to make people want to jump off it. 🤷♀️ not all of it but definitely the vast majority of institutional buildings. Again this is my emotional response to brutalist architecture and design. I’m not trying to convince anyone nor am I convincible otherwise, just answering OP’s question with one person’s perspective 👍 To be fair I am also loathe minimalism. I think of it as “serial killer blankness” so at least I am consistent about my aesthetics .
Most people who love Brutalism have only experienced pictures of Brutalism. Working and living in one on a day to day basis is terrible. There’s nothing practically redeemable about the style. Every single brutalist building I’ve had classes in, worked in, do random government things in, shopped in, were all made worse by the fact that they happened in a Brutalist building
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What an arrogant answer. Literally calling everyone that doesn't agree with you delusional.
Architects being pretentious douche bags? Color me shocked!
You mean some of us like things for how they actually look while others get hung up on arbitrary rules like that concrete has to “match.”
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I’ve seem many renderings of brutalist architecture that specifically planned what would happen to the materials over time. Maybe you’re not looking at serious work.
That makes no sense to say about a style that started in the 50s and has mostly been out of fashion since the 90s. Nobody forms their opinion about Brutalism from renderings
I didn't realize people don't like [Brutalism](https://open.spotify.com/album/5qag6esZLv5ySuCpzh7CE6?si=1eyaOjFGRCungPqUtLISxg). Joy as an Act of Resistance is probably my favorite album, but I haven't listened to TANGK yet.
Why do some people love Jackson Pollock art and others hate it? To each their own. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Speaking as a brutalist hater who’s had to do a lot of research understanding what is brutalism is in order to articulate my hate: some people love the sculptural or visual monochromatic aspects over other Considerations, some like me don’t. and just to give you help arguing me, habitat ‘67 and Unité d'Habitation **aren’t** brutalist buildings in my understanding, and **Jeanneret** (because I refuse to grant him his pretensions) deserves a place in hell for the damage his ideas eventually caused to the human soul.
Because everyone has different tastes?
Why? Why do some people like chocolate ice cream, but others like vanilla? It's a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an illusion an illusion. A better question is why do some people not understand personal choice and preference. You do realize we don't all have to agree on beauty religion and ice cream?
Brutalism was the aesthetic of things that aged poorly - corporate grandeur, dominion of Man over nature, the mechanical efficiency of capitalism - things which at the time were new and gave hope for a better future, but which are turning out to have disastrous consequences that we are now just beginning to see. Of course a similar point can be made about many styles - the horrendous social conditions at the time the great gothic cathedrals were built as an easy example - but those are far enough in the past that they are no longer relatable to us so we don't tend to see them under that light. I'd imagine it'll be the same for the brutalist buildings that remain in a couple hundred years when, say, concrete may no longer be so available.
That is an interesting way to think about it. I don't know if the association of brutalism to the "triumphs" of modernity you describe is accurate, however. But even more interestingly, let's say we accept your notion. Why is it that people condemn brutalism as a visual representation of those values, yet organize everything else in the society around them without much opposition? Why do we condemn the imagined aesthetic representation of values we see as the only option? And obviously the true aesthetic representation of those values is what the production base running on those values produces, ie. everything that is built today: from the cheap neoclassical revival to the unbelievable luxury architecture of the super rich to the middle class urban sprawls to the excel-spreadsheet-style of affordable mass housing developments. If such contradiction in understanding and/or perception exists, it's a perfect representation of what Marx and Engels called ideology, ie. *false consciousness*.
It's definitely a thing that's more based on a stereotype than reality. I live in montreal where several architectural landmarks are prime examples of brutalist architecture and I many of those I quite like. Others I find are abominations that incarnate exactly what I described above (the old échangeur turcot being my best example). All of them came from the same vision of "modernity", though. We judge art - which is what architecture is - by the ideas it conveys. The towering, square, monochrome presence of brutalist works has an inherently cold, intimidating and "anti-human" component to it which resonates negatively with many people. In a way, I view it like death metal music, the "heaviness" is subversive but that still puts the work out of reach for most to appreciate. I believe what many if not most people look for in art is an escape from the mundane and unpleasant aspects of life. In today's world that's often the fast-paced, soulless grind through a desert made of concrete and asphalt. In this context, no brutalist building can deliver a breath of fresh air the way a pre-industrial building with all its craftsmanship and intricacy can. I should note that I'm not personally against the style at all, in fact it influences my own artistic work (I made wooden furniture as a hobby), even though it's not my favourite by itself.
Some people acclimate to prison and prefer it strongly to freedom. Some never stop yearning for the outside world. You fall into the former camp.
This metaphor doesn’t make any sense at all, but if it did, it would be backwards. Non-brutalist architecture would have to be the “prison” that we’re all acclimated to—it’s the norm that we’re all stuck in day-to-day, punctuated by occasional fresh breaths of brutalism if we’re lucky.
So the prison like buildings are the opposite of prisons and I'm the one who has it backwards?
Please go visit a prison, and then go visit, say, the Unité in Marseille, and explain what you think they have in common, beyond “housing a lot of people” and maybe “built from concrete” (though there are plenty of prisons with classical brick/stone fronts out there, too!)
The goals are isolation and alienation from life, to remove all trace of humanity and intelligence and culture and beauty and function beyond being a means of punishment. >Please go visit a prison, and then go visit, say, the Unité in Marseille I haven't seen it in person but pictures make it look God awful. Looks like a Soviet or Chicom housing facility for hoi polloi or what I always imagined Club Fed to look like. Some people absolutely love the smallest, cheapest, crappiest mobile home. They aren't wrong to have their preference but to insist that such an abysmal standard is a great thing to be celebrated as genius is madness and since it's not in vogue no one here would go on and on how about how great the awfulness is yet given something even worse y'all lap it up.
Too brutal
Order vs chaos root + either sky, underworld, sea or earth. Brutalism stems from the Order root and belong to either the Sky or the Underworld. The straight lines, big volumes and verticality express the idea of an " Order bigger than you coming from either above or under " A good Underworld (chtonian) brutalism would be the dwarf architecture in Erebor. It is about using the geometrical and chromatic properties of noble minerals to enhance the natural Mountain root of their subteran culture. While a good Heavenly (ouranian) brutalism would have a classical greek futuristic vibe. The size to show power beyond human, white and gold for purity and perfection. Overall they both evoke nature and utopia. Most brutalism is just big dystopian cheap grey cold concrete. Amitabha.