[pjc50]

Unfortunately without careful continuous maintenance the plants destroy the concrete. Whenever I see plants on one of these buildings that's usually a sign it's been abandoned. It has a post-apocalyptic HZD feel. Like the RBS Dundas Street "ziggurat". https://x.com/sallymiranda/status/1400883551751610381

> Perhaps because flat gray concrete is aesthetically ambiguous. When paired with greenery, it looks like stone. In it's absence, it looks like industrial mechanism.

Yes, this is the fundamental error of modernism/brutalism - the belief that flatness and the lack of ornamentation is beautiful. It can be .. but only under optimal conditions, like the concept art. "Material design" for buildings. As soon as it gets a bit weathered and dirty it becomes merely drab. Plants provide some organic variation over the surface, breaking up the now-dirty "clean" lines.