[lkm0]

I'm startled by people who say they love brutalism as an architecture. I'm able to enjoy the aesthetic, but _actually_ being for it as a viable way of housing human activity seems irresponsible. It's similar to saying "I love Beksinski paintings and wish people lived in them". What's even worse with brutalism is that the lack of form usually follows the lack of function: dark water streaks and humidity issues because gutters are for the weak, car-centric design, etc. People associate brutalism with urban decay because it's pretty much purpose built for that.

[ErroneousBosh]

> dark water streaks and humidity issues because gutters are for the weak

One of the things that really drove it home was when around 20ish years ago I worked on a project to fit microwave links to provide broadband around Glasgow (ADSL2 was a ways off and only 8Mbps, and we could do 155Mbps with microwave).

Many of the Brutalist tower blocks had - at some considerable expense, in the 1990s or so - had been retrofitted with a steel-framed pitched roof over the existing flat roof. The space in between was lovely and dry, and we often fitted open network racks right there on the roof, where previously it would have been exposed to the elements.

Evidently no matter how hard you try, that squared-off flat roof aesthetic is just incompatible with West Coast Weather.

[MLR]

It's an odd thing, brutalism is almost universally hated by the general public but there's a seemingly endless stream of people who are willing to wax lyrical about why stained concrete blocks are actually the pinnacle of architecture.

[eigenspace]

It sometimes feels like a psy-op to read through all these gushingly positive comments, when you know how the average person feels about it.

I get that it's not actually something nefarious, but it really does suck that the people who like this garbage are so loud about it that it gets shoved down the rest of the public's throats.

I think the extremely public, visible, every-dat nature of architecture gives it certainly responsibilities that are different from other visual art forms.

The modern trend of trying to make art that's repulsive to people with "common", "uneducated" sensibilities is one thing when it's constrained to the inside of a museum, but it's awful when it takes up this much space in public.

[cbeach]

> It sometimes feels like a psy-op to read through all these gushingly positive comments, when you know how the average person feels about it.

Yes, exactly!

A common theme among these weird ideological group-thinks is political undertones.

> "Today, criticism on brutalism and modernism is mostly voiced by those on the far-right side of the political spectrum, precisely because of the association between modernism and the post-war welfare state"

https://www.dezeen.com/2021/10/21/brutalist-buildings-right-...

Yup - if you don't like Soviet-style dense urban monoliths, you're "far right" apparently.