[coldtea]

>What is "ugly" or "beautiful" is really subjective. See brutalist architecture for example: opinions are (strongly) divided

Strongly divided, as to the strength of like or dislike, yes.

But as for the split, it's pretentious architects and a handful of laymen outliers on one side, and billions of people on the other. And whenever people vote with their wallets (as tourists, or picking where to live, etc) they shit all over brutalist monstrocities.

[arp242]

I've seen quite a few people defend brutalist architecture on HN, I'm not a fan of dismissing people's tastes as "pretentious". Plus some of those comments (which I can't be bothered to look up right now) have convinced me that the things people really hate is the worst of brutalism, rather than the concept as such (it's still not my favourite style, but overall less bad than I thought before).

But we can use other examples – I don't really want to talk about brutalism as such – like metal music, or paintings from Picasso or Mondriaan, or the discussion about whether or not Alien is a good film that still holds up in 2023 from earlier this week, or any number of things.

[msla]

Examples of Brutalism:

Hill of the Buddha, Sapporo:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_of_the_Buddha

Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption, San Francisco:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_Saint_Mary_of_the...

Spomenik Memorials, Former Yugoslavia:

https://www.spomenikdatabase.org/

None of those are ugly.

[coldtea]

My eyes, the goggles, they do nothing!

While those are not hideous, they're hardly anything to write home about, much less call beautiful either. Compare them with a traditional budhist shrine, national monument, or church, and they're seen as the regression to ideology and "architect as god" arbitrariness that they are.