Brutalist Architecture Debate

Some people like the brutalist aesthetic.

I think there's also a difference between buildings that architecturally aren't aligned with today's aesthetic, versus those that are truly ugly due to poor design or lack of consideration for any aesthetic.A brutalist or Bauhaus building today could look old, ugly, etc. but one can still appreciate its aesthetic in context... A glass condo copy and pasted in CAD software and then rotated to fit a plot of land without consideration for anything... That's ugly.

Many brutalist buildings are beautiful

The problem with brutalism or glass buildings isn’t that it all looks the same or lacks local character. The problem is that they are ugly. It’s only when we are asking the second “why”—“why are they ugly?”—that we find out that, at least in part, these styles are specifically designed to avoid any sort of local or cultural flavor. Neoclassical architecture doesn’t have this problem because it intentionally calls back to Greece and Rome, reflecting a cultural heritage that is, in fact, shared al

Why are you finding brutalist architecture oppressive?

Compared to what followed, I think I'd pick brutalism. Downtown buildings in cities that mostly grew up in the 80s and 90s are just boring. When I google brutalist building images, I'm struck by how wildly they vary. I don't love them all. But, they've got real personality and originality. Sure, sometimes it is overblown...big shapes in weird places just for the sake of showing off.I find architecture that slaps old forms onto new buildings to be...gross. There's a co

I think "brutalist architecture" would be a better description.

I'm reminded of that ever-poignant SMBC comic [0] on architects' love of brutalism. Sure you may like it, but we (the poors) have to live/work in it.[0] https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3545

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

You know that brutalism is long dead, don't you? At this point it's just a scapegoat, if you cannot see beaty in at least some parts of modern architecture, you clearly haven't been paying attention. Just look at some of the alternative designs for the restoration of Notre Dam and tell me that they're ugly and not interesting