Dude, BRUTAL!
August 16, 2022 6:12 PM   Subscribe

The Case for Brutalist Architecture (SLYT). If you've never heard of brutalist architecture, this is an interesting, quick video to introduce you.
posted by MollyRealized (72 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- loup



 
I spent a lot of time in Geisel library as a UCSD undergrad and loved it to bits but it did seem like it required a fair bit of maintenance.
posted by potrzebie at 6:32 PM on August 16, 2022


My first high school was in a brutalist style that made me feel like an inmate. I was miserable and my grades reflected it. My second high school (I was fortunate enough to be able to make a change), was a cluster of cottages in the woods. I thrived there.
posted by ducky l'orange at 6:38 PM on August 16, 2022 [14 favorites]


I have lived, worked, and recreated in Brutalist buildings on and off all my life, and I love them unironically and unapologetically. Whatever problems I’ve seen with them have been from lack of proper maintenance and disinvestment in public infrastructure.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:53 PM on August 16, 2022 [18 favorites]


I also love them. Went to college in one that was bright and spacious, interesting and collaborative but also had cozy corners. I love them for many of the same reasons I enjoy colonial stone houses and traditional Japanese architecture, for those who think only a modernist monster could enjoy them.
posted by sepviva at 7:09 PM on August 16, 2022 [3 favorites]


I did have a thought on watching the video and reading some of the comments there (which, ugh, anyway): a lot of people who hate brutalism tend to associate it with things like public housing or oppressive bureaucracy. Whereas I love the architectural style but in my mind overwhelmingly associate it with colleges and orchestra halls and museums. In retrospect, that's all I ever saw of the style for the first many years of my life. I wonder if there isn't some aspect of circumstance in how people feel about these buildings!
posted by traveler_ at 7:24 PM on August 16, 2022 [4 favorites]


I ... accept brutalism. Can't say I actually like it. There's some in Washington DC, where I grew up, most famously the FBI Building and the Metro stations, with their brick-red hexagonal-tile floors and concrete waffle ceilings. It's functional, but over time all that concrete is going to degrade.
posted by Rash at 7:27 PM on August 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


It's functional, but over time all that concrete is going to degrade.

Just like the Pantheon.

I think like with every architectural style, there's good and bad examples of brutalism carried out by good and bad designers for good and bad purposes. But it should pretty much be abandoned as a style unless a building really, functionally, NEEDS to be concrete - poured concrete is the worst offender in terms of carbon output of any common building material. Even concrete block is better.
posted by LionIndex at 7:36 PM on August 16, 2022 [8 favorites]


Fine, but just over the grey. They should all be painted in bright pastel. Flowers, giant flowers all over.
posted by sammyo at 7:49 PM on August 16, 2022 [5 favorites]


I love brutalist architecture. My university was full of brutalist buildings, and they were fantastic places to be in.
posted by fimbulvetr at 7:49 PM on August 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


I love the brutalist style of architecture but, of course, there are good and bad in this style as in any other. I like the way the buildings weather and blend into their surroundings to a surprising extent over time, even though the style is purposefully dominating by design.

The biggest failing in a lot of these buildings is that the poured concrete construction usually carries through to internal walls, meaning that it's impractical or impossible to re-purpose them or change the layout at all. I know the pure style is to carry the outside appearance throughout the building, but that's exactly what leads to so many becoming impractical other than for the original intended use. Maybe that's what leads to so many being demolished.

With the much wider variety of materials available today, it should be much easier to design a brutalist structure that, while carrying the style through the interior, allows for layout and purpose changes over time. It's a shame this rarely seems to happen. Yes, there is also the environmental cost, but behind the shiny glass or aluminium facade of modern buildings is most often a concrete structure that still has the same carbon footprint hidden behind a sheath of reflections.
posted by dg at 7:50 PM on August 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


I went to art school in a wonderful brutalist building on the University of Utah campus. I still go by there when I get over to Utah, it still has the same cool floors and awesome views of the (now,) Salt Pond Valley. They have taken to coloring concrete sandstone red here and there, and buildings that match the sandstone of southern Utah please my eye.
posted by Oyéah at 8:01 PM on August 16, 2022 [3 favorites]


Trona California is a brutal environment .High school football is played on dirt gridiron no grass no grass can grow there.
Saint Madeline Catholic Church is triangular windowless wonder. image search.I am unable to link.
posted by hortense at 8:36 PM on August 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


I’m an unrepentant fan, I’ve spent the night at the Unite and La Tourette, love it. Totally get the very public failures as well - plenty of questionable detailing, poor programming, and a bad brutalist building is often worse than a bad steel framed building (or at least easier to correct). Want to make a few arguments against the standard complaints however:

- Concrete framed structures often perform better than steel framed structures in life cycle analysis, particularly in climates where thermal mass is useful.
- Concrete frames, with proper maintenance, have the longest design life of all structural types (which also helps with carbon.

Concrete has tremendous amounts of embodied carbon to be sure. But “normal” construction is often far worse, and much less interesting. You know what is flexible, easy to erect and efficient? Suburban office buildings. Virtues and vices are interchangeable in architecture and it’s hard to make universal rules.
posted by q*ben at 9:20 PM on August 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


the CBC building in Vancouver has since been re-imagined as something else, but back in the 1990s, when I worked a few contracts there, it was still suitably brutalist.

Did I care one way or another what it was? Not really. I was just happy to have some well paying work doing something I loved, with pretty much complete autonomy. But it was just one year so I never really had time to get acclimatized. But I do recall talking to a long term employee about it, a librarian.

"So what's it like working here for years?"

He shrugged. "The machines are happy."
posted by philip-random at 10:07 PM on August 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


I watched the video. It's not a very strong case.

I don't hate brutalism. I do get annoyed by the (often philosophical) defenses of regrettable examples that have fared poorly. The worst are when defenses are critical of people for not conforming to architect's vision.
posted by 2N2222 at 11:11 PM on August 16, 2022 [8 favorites]


There's a building in San Francisco that combines this style with the added feature of being able to withstand a nuclear blast...
posted by Chuffy at 12:27 AM on August 17, 2022


I too watched the video. I'm not convinced of the merits of brutalism. I don't like the monoculture nature of the structures. I find concrete to be an attractive material when used in conjunction with timber and glass and steel. But blocks of concrete with intermittent windows don't appeal to me from the exterior. Interiors can be furnished to soften the forms and textures and can thus be appealing. But from the outside, I don't think they offer the streetscape much unless designed and managed to be adorned with foliage.
posted by Thella at 2:14 AM on August 17, 2022 [5 favorites]


Brutalism has a complete absence of "cute," which I think has something to do with the vehemence of it's opposition. It's like it's self-evidently ugly in a cultural, common sense way. "How could something like that even get approved to be built?"

As part of this, I like the comment above about painting them. The force is so strong! "C'mon gang just paint it, just something inoffensive. It would be so easy." The gray concrete, it's so garish! I think I like that element of antagonism, it animates the style as more than a box for people, as something BEGGING to be acted upon.
posted by rhizome at 3:17 AM on August 17, 2022


A reminder that “Brutalism” does not refer to the architecture trampling roughshod over tender aesthetic sensibilities and mocking your salty, delicious tears, but comes from the French “béton brut”, or “raw concrete”. Brutalism was more about honesty to materials and construction methods rather than euphemistically trying to make a steel-reinforced concrete building look like it had been handcrafted by old-timey artisans.
posted by acb at 3:53 AM on August 17, 2022 [18 favorites]


OTOH, Gothic architecture was also a pretty bad name at the start; it was so named not because it had anything to do with the Goths, but because the pointy spires looked barbarous compared to the noble proportions of Greek and Roman classical architecture (i.e., “call that a cathedral? it looks like something some barbarian hordesmen put together!”).
posted by acb at 5:14 AM on August 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


I understand the theories and all that, but I hate all Brutalist buildings and I think they should all be torn down and replaced.
posted by freakazoid at 5:14 AM on August 17, 2022 [3 favorites]


A reminder that “Brutalism” does not refer to the architecture trampling roughshod over tender aesthetic sensibilities and mocking your salty, delicious tears, but comes from the French “béton brut”, or “raw concrete”.

Yet, brutalist structures are notorious for trampling roughshod over tender aesthetic sensibilities and mocking your salty, delicious tears. It's almost as if some architects themselves took to heart that brutalist structures must be brutal. There's a reason they're often well suited to particular dystopian depictions.

If being honest to raw concrete results in harsh eyesores and oppressive, impractical interiors, perhaps there's no shame in deciding that it should be shaped into emulating other materials. Unless you go back to the philosophical argument that concrete must always appear to be grey blocks, nothing more and nothing less.
posted by 2N2222 at 5:14 AM on August 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


If it were called, like, Bruhaus or something I think the public perception would be totally different.

I'll disagree, in part because I doubt that all that many people are even aware of the term in the first place.

Which doesn't mean they don't have an opinion on the style.
posted by BWA at 5:20 AM on August 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


If you can find a copy of This Brutal World, it's a positively fantastic compendium of terrific B&W shots of the world's most interesting Brutalist structures. It's the coffee table book of an architecture nerd's dreams.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:40 AM on August 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


If you'd like a not-so-quick look at Brutalism, Jonathan Meades is happy* to oblige

*"Happy" in the Meades sense.

Edit: Oops - that's part 2. Part 1 is here.
posted by YoungStencil at 5:54 AM on August 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


Truly the worst name for an aesthetic style. If it were called, like, Bruhaus or something I think the public perception would be totally different.

~ Rushes to draw-up plans for a brutalist craft ale pub ~
posted by Thorzdad at 6:05 AM on August 17, 2022 [4 favorites]


I used to hate Brutalism, until I saw the Lisbon Civil Courts building in person and thought "Yes, okay. Now I get it." Photographs just don't do it justice (no pun intended.) It's quite spectacular when it's right there in front of you.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 6:06 AM on August 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


I enjoyed the video. I am ambivalent about brutalism. I think there are many good examples of brutalism - Yugoslavian ones which I have seen pictures of tend to be pretty good. Probably a lot of styles are easy to do in an uncreative way but I think the problem with brutalism is that when the architect is uncreative, the result looks pretty bad. A bad Gothic Revival probably strikes most people as less offensive than a bad Brutalist building, unfairly or not.
posted by Whale Oil at 6:11 AM on August 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


I work in one. It's grown on me, since my days as a student in the same building. I think because the entrance I now use has a lot of greenery.

This particular building has a lot of interior rooms with no windows or natural light. It's also a weird mess of intersecting hexagons that make it tricky to navigate. So as a student it was a dark maze that kept you from the sun. Now I get to occasionally use a room with a window + work from home, it's all together less dystopian feeling.

The library on campus is also brutalist, but because it's more open there is more natural light. Way more pleasant to be in.
posted by ghost phoneme at 6:39 AM on August 17, 2022


One of the Youtube commenters, of all people, says something very important:
Maybe it's an artifact of growing up poor in the 90s, but I've always associated brutalist architecture with struggle and poverty. It never felt progressively inexpensive and sustainable, it felt aggressively cheap and low maintenance. In my home city, many brutalist buildings were in low income areas, and were moderately out of repair, but still functional in a sense that made me feel like "This is good enough for *you*". They were often the building I'd go to with my parents while they looked for work or unemployment, or public areas like libraries which never got decent funding. Visually their unfinished and raw aesthetics said "You haven't earned a coat of paint or windows" and "This building is unimportant because the people it serves are unimportant" as they slowly decayed for the 40+ years since their prime.
These days, brutalism has become fortunate with its enemies. Crypto-fascists decry it, along with the international style, and people who don't know better retweet agreeing with them. But what they are objecting to is "degenerate art," not the effect on people who come into contact with these buildings, most of whom they despise.

Brutalism maybe deserves a better reputation. I know it looks great in rain-free, sunny areas, or places where people invest in the public on principle, but that's not where a lot of us live, and certainly not in America. And a place that can't be modified for future use as easily as the vernacular, that won't even let you nail a painting to the wall ... well, most people just aren't going to warm up to it.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:00 AM on August 17, 2022 [15 favorites]


Hortense, that was a beautiful poem.
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 7:01 AM on August 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


I remember a World Science Fiction Convention at the Hynes in Boston. It was cold, it was gray, and the benches weren't designed for human beings.

For some reason, there was a ladies room which had a foyer that was warm, properly lit, and had pleasant wallpaper-- yellow and white stripes with bunches of flowers. A conversation which included both men and women wandered in there.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 8:00 AM on August 17, 2022


I'm a fan, because I was a child of futuristic optimism. I was especially impressed by The Ontario Science Centre in Don Mills (1969, Raymond Moriyama).

As far as architects go, Primo Levi pointed out that they can sometimes design something that looks nice, but still doesn't function all that well (I've seen some stuff). I think concrete as a medium has a lot of potential to do really interesting things, as long as it's thought out properly.
posted by ovvl at 8:06 AM on August 17, 2022 [3 favorites]


it looks great in rain-free, sunny areas, or places where people invest in the public on principle

Yeah, my building is definitely... oppressive looking in the winter. To a certain extent no matter how well taken care of a place is, brutalist architecture is going to reinforce the barrenness of winter.

Although now I'm wondering what the building would look like if they did holiday lights. If it'd warm it up or just emphasize the cold.
posted by ghost phoneme at 8:10 AM on August 17, 2022


Brutalism appears to be proof that you can talk yourself into anything.
posted by touchstone033 at 8:20 AM on August 17, 2022 [3 favorites]


A reminder that “Brutalism” does not refer to the architecture trampling roughshod over tender aesthetic sensibilities and mocking your salty, delicious tears, but comes from the French “béton brut”, or “raw concrete”.

pretty sure the video paints it as a combination of both, the term brutalism having been coined by those who were not exactly fans of the form.
posted by philip-random at 8:31 AM on August 17, 2022


I think one problem with "brutalism" is that a lot of people assume it's a synonym for "ugly, plain concrete with no windows." One notable failure was the Third Church of Christ, Scientist, which the congregation said didn't actually work as a church, but which preservationists tried to save as an important example of the style. Many examples in DC do, in fact, have windows, but one big knock on the Hirshhorn is that its exterior is just a featureless round that doesn't "fit" on the National Mall. It's been much more interesting from the outside when they've projected stuff on it or commissioned art for the scaffolding as they do some (much needed) maintenance and restoration on the exterior. The interior courtyard and the suspension of the mass over ground level are, in fact, interesting, but from the outside it's just not that great.

(Disclosure: I studied architecture in college before changing my major, and I do actually like concrete as a "plastic" medium, but brutalism in practice is a mixed bag at best).
posted by fedward at 8:33 AM on August 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


Yeah, my building is definitely... oppressive looking in the winter. To a certain extent no matter how well taken care of a place is, brutalist architecture is going to reinforce the barrenness of winter.

I started my undergrad at Simon Fraser University in suburban Vancouver. It looked stunning on sunny day, spectacular even, but Vancouver's not exactly known for those. At the time, I heard the campus had the highest suicide rate of anywhere in Canada. I didn't doubt it. That place was brutal when the winter rains were a-falling and the clouds settling in.
posted by philip-random at 8:43 AM on August 17, 2022 [4 favorites]


Glad to see quite a few fans of brutalism here. The idea that "they should all be torn down" is just nonsense. There are a lot of great, great buildings in this style. The problem is that it was easy to do it wrong, and a lot of bad brutalism was built. Case in point, all the concrete monstrosities on the UMass-Amherst campus.

It was nice to see Boston City Hall prominently featured. Back in the late 60s, I had a tour of it with Gerhard Kallman, one of the architects (a quote from him is in the film). The most memorable part was when he explained that the mayor's office and the offices of the city councilors were on the same floor — but there was no way to get from one to the other, you had to go back down to the lobby and up a different elevator or stair. He said this represented the lack of communication between them.

The volume of concrete in that building is astounding — Kallman said you could build a 50-story skyscraper with the concrete used in it. Examples: in the lowest level, there were service windows where you could go to pay your taxes, apply for licenses, etc. Next to each window was an enormous multi-ton block of concrete. For what purpose? "For the ladies to put down their pocketbook," said Kallman. In the upper office levels and elsewhere, there are huge precast concrete elements, kind of shaped like hashmarks, installed between the cast concrete ceiling beams. Their only purpose was to hold up a light fixture in the center between the crossed beams. See photos here — the last three photos there show both the service window blocks and the lighting elements. Overall, I think those photos do a nice job of showcasing the building's enduring merits.
posted by beagle at 9:30 AM on August 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


The only thing I hate worse than brutalism (because I live in the UK, where it is gloomy and damp a lot of the time) is Frank Gehry's swoopy titanium monstrosities. FITE ME IRL
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 9:50 AM on August 17, 2022


I hate brutalist architecture. It feels impersonal and overbearing, like it's trying to crush individuality.

I had conflated the term with Nazi architecture, which was weaponized to intimidate, but I feel the same way.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:58 AM on August 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


Case in point, all the concrete monstrosities on the UMass-Amherst campus.

UMass Dartmouth may not be the flagship campus, but it has way cooler brutalism on campus than Amherst. The library is amazing, especially when lit at night.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:37 AM on August 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


I'm going to guess that fans of brutalism are likely to also have interest in the related monument style of spomeniks.

Definitely check Jóhann Jóhannsson's film Last and First Men (FF Link). It's streaming in the US on Metrograph and it's well worth seeing. It's essentially Tilda Swinton narrating a grim warning from the last of mankind over moody B&W contemplative shots of spomenik in Croatia and Serbia, standing in as monuments from a lost future.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:44 AM on August 17, 2022


One notable failure was the Third Church of Christ, Scientist, which the congregation said didn't actually work as a church

One brutalist building I do like is the Catholic cathedral in Liverpool, its bottom half mixes light coloured concrete with stained glass for a ring of angled and sculpted walls then inside goes with a darker concrete for its upper section, a cone topped with a stained glass crown. The inside is then lit and decorated for a feeling of warmth. It's an odd shape from outside though.
posted by biffa at 10:47 AM on August 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


Brutalism is dystopic as fuck, and the argument that there are some good examples of it does not negate the real overall harm that it does to people's psyches.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 11:05 AM on August 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


I like a lot of modern architecture, but am not particularly a fan of Brutalism, which always feels defiantly modern to me. The example I see most often is the Hirshhorn Museum, sometimes called the “Brutalist donut”. New York Times architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable perhaps had the most persuasive critique, describing the building as a “born-dead, neo-penitentiary modern.” Check out Brutalist DC who are fans of the building, and also have posts on other Brutalist buildings in Washington, DC.
posted by gudrun at 11:28 AM on August 17, 2022


I had conflated the term with Nazi architecture, which was weaponized to intimidate, but I feel the same way.

The Nazis (along with Mussolini's Fascists and the USSR under Stalin) leaned heavily into classicism blown up to imposingly cyclopean proportions. Totalitarian regimes seem to prefer the authority of Tradition mixed in with their overwhelming, bludgeoning force.
posted by acb at 12:38 PM on August 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


The Nazis (along with Mussolini's Fascists and the USSR under Stalin) leaned heavily into classicism blown up to imposingly cyclopean proportions. Totalitarian regimes seem to prefer the authority of Tradition mixed in with their overwhelming, bludgeoning force.

Yep. Fascists usually go classical/ornate. TFG issued an EO originally called "Make Federal Buildings Beautiful Again," later retitled "Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture" demanding that new federal buildings adhere to classical styles.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:43 PM on August 17, 2022


I think there is definitely something to the association with run-down areas and poverty. Nice places have trees and flowers and pretty lightposts and color. Poor places have dull taupe concrete benches that you can scrape your knee on, maybe some prickly bushes inside enormous concrete planters. No color. Blazing hot in summer, damp and cold in winter. Comfortless.

And maybe it's also size: these buildings often feel like enormous holding pens when they don't feel like dark mazes. And while your average Classical building is also big and echoey, there's usually some gilding and wood finishing to look at. Maybe stained glass.

I thought the dismissal of Bauhaus/modern style (?) early on was interesting, because I do find at least some of those buildings appealing.
posted by emjaybee at 12:47 PM on August 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


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.

From Why You Hate Contemporary Architecture (And if you don’t, why you should…)
posted by one more day at 2:09 PM on August 17, 2022


My city just built a high school performing arts center that is brutalist. The majority of the buildings in the school district are windowless prison-like buildings so it fits in, but it has this tall office building-like protrusion that has no windows. It looks like a mistake. The parking garage is prettier than the actual building. At least the parking garage is just boring and not aggressively ugly. It's also set back so far from the road it encroaches on the creek behind it, so they had to do special engineering for the parking lot (yes, it has both) so it didn't fall into the creek and it disappears with the curvature of the earth. I don't get it. The public interface is bad, the building is ugly. What is wrong with architects?

And it's not cost, because the next cities over to both the north and south have high school performing arts centers that look fine.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:24 PM on August 17, 2022


This particular building has a lot of interior rooms with no windows or natural light. It's also a weird mess of intersecting hexagons that make it tricky to navigate.

Yeah, this sort of thing is brutalist at it's worst and I think why it gets such a bad rap. It doesn't have to be that way, obviously and the best examples can be every bit as warm and welcoming inside as any other building.
posted by dg at 5:21 PM on August 17, 2022


Hortense, hear is a link to an image of Saint Madeline Catholic Church in Trona, CA. WOW!!! Nasty!
posted by Jackson at 6:26 PM on August 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


Yeah looks like a Christian prison.

The Nazis (along with Mussolini's Fascists and the USSR under Stalin) leaned heavily into classicism blown up to imposingly cyclopean proportions. Totalitarian regimes seem to prefer the authority of Tradition mixed in with their overwhelming, bludgeoning force

I think we've got some apples and oranges here. Mussolini's Fascists did favor some interesting new architecture, but Hitler hated that stuff, too modern, too cosmopolitan, urban, therefore Jewish. Everything traditional and rural was to be celebrated -- that's what was Volkish. As for Stalin and the USSR, anything interesting that was developing there was eventually squashed under his watch.
posted by Rash at 6:45 PM on August 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


The thing that I always find amusing about the anti-brigade in this regard is that they're so deadly certain that they are absolutely righteous and justified in their belief that modernism, but mostly modernism of the béton brut variety, is objectively and universally dystopian and dehumanizing and…well, the litany always goes on and on.

We're meant to celebrate boxy architectures built like TV-baking-show cakes, all sawdusty sponge under a mantle of carved wedding cake ornamentation in the same way we're supposed to revel in the glories of empires and hereditary rule and the grand cathedrals built on guilt and shame and the pennies collected from the poor to vault impossible loftiness over our collective humility, because that, we're told, is inherently and objectively beautiful.

The notion of the objective in the context is so strange to me.

Brutalism for me is joyous in the way the ramp down to the downstairs sitting area in the community college where I took my first classes after being expelled from high school and getting myself a GED made me feel optimistic and inspired. The formwork was printed in the concrete like the echoes of timber, a tracery of grain and organic pattern that you could find repeated elsewhere if you looked hard enough, which seemed so ancient and modern at once, particularly where the impression of the wood ended and the wall swept into the floor in a gentle radius, merging into a river of carpet in the tones of warm summer sunsets, and the whole ramp swept languidly down to the floor below, where comfortable modern furniture gave you a place to curl with a book in hand, or to sit with your headphones on, listening to music.

It's joyous to me in the way the DC Metro felt to me when I was eight and we were among the first to enter those stations, which smelled like other people's basements in the most perfect way, and where the light came from below, accentuating the nearly religious frisson that came with your eyes' unfurling of the wonders of visual perspective in the coffered cathedral ceilings over a spare, restful platforms of red-brown hexagonal tiles and the bands of granite along each platform punctuated by round lights that pulsed to let you know when a futuristic train would whisk out from the tunnel to take you to the Hirshhorn or the Air & Space Museum.

It's joyous to me the way the libraries in which I'd stroll, seeking out new ideas to discover, obscured and revealed daylight through bands of clerestory windows that gave you the blue of sky and forms of clouds without the oppressive views of passing cars lumbering by, where the bookshelves on the outer wall were rimmed with glass, the narrow verticals on either side of a section of shelf rising from the floor to merge with the clerestories' delicate revelation both of the outdoors and the illusion of weightlessness in the structures holding the roof over our heads.

It was joyous to me to walk past the increasingly-vandalized Morris Mechanic theater in Baltimore, a breathtaking assemblage of cubes and angles, all gloriously situated to catch the golden light at the end of a workday as I'd pass on my way to the train, the subtle changes of setting sun and pattern and form raising the fine hairs on my neck when my eyes would linger on the place as I passed, rendering each glance as a cubist painting backed by sky, as the architect, John Johansen, had envisioned. The geometry of it was origami on a monumental scale, folding and unfolding in front of you as you moved through the plaza. The Mechanic was often rated as one of the ugliest building in the world by the selfsame people who trot out one wedding cake nothing of repetitive applied decoration after another as the examplars of a more successful society in the same way that grotesque real estate moguls pose in apartments of gold-plated atrocity as a sign of their tremendous importance; it did little but give me a fairly reasonable metric for if I'd have much in common with a person after a brief discussion.

They tore down the Mechanic, first through neglect, lies, and intentional vandalism, then with bulldozers. They obliterated the fantastic angles and spaces and play of real, honest materials and flowing water in Baltimore's McKeldin fountain, which was always a place a kid could roam and revel in the abstract spaces, around the same time. All around the world, a lot of people managed to convince the bulldozer brigades that their notions of objective truth in concerns of honest materials were righteous and absolute, and buildings fell, often because the fact that lazy and budget-minded directors would film 1970s dystopian sci-fi melodrama in modern spaces that meant they didn't need to actually construct the sets for their dystopian futures.

I can't really see how the FBI building in DC is any more oppressive than the ridiculous pile of embroidered hoop skirts that is the Old Executive Office Building or the strutting fake Greco-Roman classicism of the rest of the city that looms over pedestrians in a promise of humanist democracy that seems destined to always be more puff and stuffing than substance.

I visited the Hirshhorn multiple times this year, traveling on the older, but still dignified Metro system to go and see, again, the Laurie Anderson exhibit, and even cloaked in scaffolding and wrapped up in construction with its water features drained, the museum was still as beautiful to me as it's always been, combining a sense of mass and lightness in a way that's just always been magical for me, even after decades. It's all supposed to be objectively horrible and oppressive and sad, which is why I find it amusing that I can so clearly step back to my first encounters with brutalist architecture and find the memories shockingly visceral, as if I could reach out, all these years later, and feel the echoes of timber in the formwork pressed into liquid stone and remember how it made me feel like the future was coming, and that it could be warm and real and full of possibilities that lie outside the realm of ponderous pomp and circumstance as stiff and starchy as a too-tight Elizabethan ruff, or the too-small suit you're wearing to a funeral.

Obviously, according to the anti-brutalists, I'm oppressed, overwhelmed, and rendered impotent in my humanity by simple materials formed into shapes that need no stuck-on decorations, but fortunately, I'm just too dumb and uninformed to grasp how much I should hate the places that bring me joy.
posted by sonascope at 8:40 PM on August 17, 2022 [8 favorites]


Wow, sonascope, that gives me goosebumps! Obviously being opressed and impotent hasn't harmed your ability to bring words to life ;-)
posted by dg at 9:14 PM on August 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


Government Center [song] was once Ol' sleazy Scollay Square [WGBH documentary from 1995]

I and many a skateboarder preferred "DING GUMMIN CENNAH DOAHS OPEN ON THE LEFT DONG" because of the terraced pit, the angles and stairwells—so many surfaces to practice on. And going into the building where you pick up birth certificates, it's just the most completely imposing and majestic building, like with the weight I feel like some Lord of the RIngs book scenery felt like, except it was like waiting in line at the post office, like how I picture Terry Pratchett's stuff. Or "Brazil". I still like it better because it looks fucking BRUTAL

I also love Toronto's turkey library.
posted by not_on_display at 9:17 PM on August 17, 2022


Also as an afterthought, UMass Dartmouth's campus has a "You're In A Maze Of Twisty Little Passages, All Alike" quality to it which I find thrilling—concrete passages with an orange theme in the library. [See also this iconic picture.] They also have a disc golf course on their campus.

Whereas the São Paulo Museum of Art was the easiest museum I've ever had the enjoyment of navigating. I don't remember what kinda controversy happened after I'd visited it, but I could read the damn article I just linked to. It was just a fucking GOOD MUSEUM
posted by not_on_display at 9:32 PM on August 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


This church in Iceland predates the brutalist movement but it's certainly striking and beautiful IMO.
posted by the duck by the oboe at 9:58 PM on August 17, 2022 [3 favorites]


As for Stalin and the USSR, anything interesting that was developing there was eventually squashed under his watch.

And replaced with a classicism that bespeaks unquestioning obedience as a virtue in itself (in socialist-realist painting and in architecture).

The socialist regime that went the most into Brutalism was Yugoslavia, with its sci-fi-style spomeniki (memorials) and other weirdly futuristic edifices.
posted by acb at 2:24 AM on August 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


I can think that many Brutalist buildings are ugly without having been brainwashed or misunderstanding their intent, thanks.
posted by kyrademon at 6:54 AM on August 18, 2022 [5 favorites]


(Good video, though.)
posted by kyrademon at 6:58 AM on August 18, 2022


Yeah, this sort of thing is brutalist at it's worst and I think why it gets such a bad rap. It doesn't have to be that way,

I can't find it now, but I remember reading an article about how the layout was implementing some architectural theory that was supposed to facilitate... something.

Apocryphally, the department heads at the time of the building hated each other, so the confusing layout was supposed to silo them off and keep them from accidentally bumping into each other.

So maybe it wasn't the architect's fault, this once.
posted by ghost phoneme at 8:15 AM on August 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


Apocryphally, the department heads at the time of the building hated each other, so the confusing layout was supposed to silo them off and keep them from accidentally bumping into each other.

So maybe it wasn't the architect's fault, this once.


Isn't that the architect's fault though? I mean, did he build his building only with the expectation it would last as long as two idiots' tenures? Could he not conceive of a time when maybe the department heads loved each other?
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:41 AM on August 18, 2022


I think that there have been gorgeous buildings that technically qualify as Brutalist. A couple even show up in this video! Those were paired with five times as many buildings that look like a world drained of color, form, or care—and I feel like it's unnecessary to equate the former to the latter.

It's possible for any style of architecture to yield atrocities. But because Brutalism is so relatively devoid of variation and ornament, because concrete is used to create things which are crude and blocky and big, my experience with bad Brutalism is that it feels like a chunk of the world has had all of its life snuffed out of it. It feels apathetic and oppressive and weary. Architecture existing in a space out of the sheer necessity to have that space filled, without any care paid attention to what it feels like to exist within or near that space.

That's not exclusive to Brutalism! The video compares it to the modern "glass box" style, which can seem classy and smart in isolation but which I similarly find to be frequently colorless, uncaring, and absolutely context-shattering. Generally speaking, I feel like architectural eras which favor rapidly erecting as-cheap-as-possible buildings, or creating giant mammoth ornaments whose visual function is symbolic without any functional consideration, will yield things that make the world feel smaller and shittier and meaner. Conversely, architecture which is known for its layers of rich detail is generally created a lot more carefully, which means less of it is out there just deadening chunks of the world. So there's some bias inherent, not to the architectural styles themselves, but to the circumstances in which they're reached for.

Personally, while I have fallen in love with Brutalist buildings before, I can't help but notice that the thing which most draws me in about them is a certain emptiness—an emphasis on expanse. I think of vast spaces through which I've moved, shaped artfully by yawning concrete forms. Sometimes, those lend themselves nicely to social spaces, like pools into which people comfortably flow; other times, the bigness of their forms seems to eliminate room for people to congregate, creating space that looks nice but precludes a human component. I've never seen Brutalist architecture achieve the same kind of human density that I've seen in the architecture of good parks, whereas other kinds of architecture achieve rich multilayered social spaces: some of that "ornament" is really an understanding of how scale and variance allows for segregated units of space that blend organically into one another.

Similarly, while I find plenty of Brutalism visually striking, I've never been inside one of its buildings that made me feel nearly as awed or as joyful as most eras of church do. And if you throw in classical Islamic architecture or, hell, the works of Gaudi, I feel like you start to touch upon a kind of building that Brutalism by its nature could never touch. Concrete as a medium has advantages and limits, and when you deal with the limits far more than you deal with the advantages, it's easy to see why people weary of the style as frequently as they do.

Hopefully this is a fair critique to make of the style. I am not at all a fan of Brutalism philosophically speaking, and am unconvinced that its pragmatic advantages really have more benefit than drawback, but I'm trying to set aside my personal bias enough to state my feelings halfway fairly.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 1:54 PM on August 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


Isn't that the architect's fault though? I mean, did he build his building only with the expectation it would last as long as two idiots' tenures?

I was mostly kidding (and there were 3 idiots in charge! Plus untold underlings who fed into it. It was a 15 year effort to detoxify the department, per some of the current older faculty). But one good thing about the building is the hexagons create pods, within which the layout is quite flexible.

Which is great for making the space work as needed, not great as far as navigating. That's then compounded by the fact that signage doesn't get updated and they only have 1 map that's also not quite right. It's located by the main entrance, but I think if they had one big map centrally located on each floor per floor and mini-maps for each pod, then even if it was a bit mazey people wouldn't be nearly as confused. But then again, they'd have to update those maps.

If the lack of updated signage was an artifact of Covid weirdness, that'd be forgivable. But we have signs for the clinics, which haven't been in that building since...2016ish?

Weirdness from remodeling is definitely a common thing at universities and not relegated to their brutalist buildings.
posted by ghost phoneme at 6:46 AM on August 19, 2022


Having designed academic buildings, let me start off by saying that architects have no ability to correct faculty dysfunction in a program layout if the administration is unwilling to step in and override. For better or worse (mostly better) for most non-starchitect projects occupants have a relatively strong hand in the design process, and being an architect focused on civic and community buildings (as I am) involves as much skill in navigating user and design committees as it does actually designing the building itself. The bad performing arts center mentioned above? There are bad architects as much as there are bad lawyers and doctors, and “bad” in this case is probably related to being unwilling or unable to override a project brief that includes an ill-considered site plan, which is extremely common in public RFPs. The first decision is always “how risky is it to throw out this requirement or suggestion to produce a better project.”

Some of the nostalgia for mid-century projects comes from the idea of the “heroic architect” who had auteur- level control over the building. I think this oversimplifies the truth - many of my favorite brutalist structures (say, the Salk) came out of collaborative work with the owners and occupants - but when I’m in the third committee meeting to determine the color of a door, one can dream, right?
posted by q*ben at 10:20 AM on August 19, 2022 [3 favorites]


UMass Dartmouth may not be the flagship campus, but it has way cooler brutalism on campus than Amherst

Agreed. Actually I went through that when it was under construction as well.
posted by beagle at 8:36 AM on August 22, 2022 [1 favorite]


The best part of the UMass Dartmouth campus is how much it makes you feel like you're merely occupying something far older and and more mysterious than the university. The buildings are a weird alien castle they found abandoned in the woods and even though no one knows it's original purpose we're using it as classroom space because cheap. There are some places where they've carpeted the floors and put panels over the walls to make it look familiar and reassuring, but you don't have to go too far before you wander into a disused corridor or nook that's completely alien and devoid of any Earthly comforts.

The place has strong Stargate Atlantis vibes.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 9:22 AM on August 22, 2022 [2 favorites]


Brutalism is just the worst in hot climates. I have hated every moldy brutalist building with constantly breaking HVACs I have ever been subjected to. Something about the way poured concrete absorbs moisture and heat just makes them absolutely miserable.
posted by EinAtlanta at 11:57 AM on August 22, 2022


The buildings are a weird alien castle they found abandoned in the woods... you don't have to go too far before you wander into a disused corridor or nook that's completely alien and devoid of any Earthly comforts.

There's definitely an intersection between Brutalism and futurism that I think is really worth exploring, and I wish I had the mental energy to do that right now. I'm thinking particularly of some of the pavilions at the 1939-40 and 1964-65 New York World's Fairs, Montreal's Expo 67, and the original EPCOT Center.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:53 PM on August 22, 2022 [1 favorite]


Agreed. Actually I went through that when it was under construction as well.

Yeah. This may seem weird, but there's a huge amount of optimism and potential baked into the concrete. Southeastern Massachusetts Technical Institute was a 1960s union of a bunch of area textile mill trade schools that were brought together under one banner to give the region access to higher education. And to show how serious the state was about making college accessible to the masses, they got world famous Paul Rudolph to design an entirely new campus to be built from scratch using modern materials and techniques! And they didn't even include any dorms at first because this was a school for the people who lived around it.

I don't know if it counts as brutalism because of all the bricks, but UMass Boston's campus also gives off that same kind of "fuck yeah, we invested real money and opened a new school" aesthetic. Ditto Bunker Hill Community College and to a lesser extent Massasoit Community College. Probably not a coincidence that all of these institutions achieved their modern incarnations during the 1960s.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:03 PM on August 23, 2022 [2 favorites]


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