Brutalism was really a WTF moment in design history wasn’t it

I absolutely hate that style aesthetic. It's so ominous. A kids playground, really?

It really is one of those marmite things where both sides have a strong reaction to it. Personally, I can't stand it. Looks alien and completely uninviting, I don't understand why you'd have a church in that style, of all places.

I really hate it as well. Things already feel dystopian enough.

Gorgeous photo OP.

It looks like a community college auditorium.

I like the idea of trying to create something new out of almost nothing and showing the raw materials used throughout. These will be the last remnants of humanity left on a future decimated Earth.

R6 What a lovely perspective, so nice.

Those all look like something from depressed old communist countries. As pj o'rourke wrote, "commies love concrete".

I love Brutalism and think it's absolutely gorgeous to look at. But I'll admit the college campus I lived on for a couple of years which was mostly Brutalism was incredibly depressing, especially in the long winters.

Brutalism: the State Board of Education's choice.

Here’s my favorite, also built by the Catholic Church (though no longer owned by it).

The Tower of History, in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan. A necessary stop if visiting one of our Marvelous Midwestern Towns!

R2 put me in the "cant stand it" camp too. Its bad enough a church in that style, but some people have homes in that style, and variations on that theme are still being built today - just watch Grand Designs to see some of the carbuncles being built

It looks like the hold on the freighter NOSTROMO.

R11 looks like a Tower of Water.

I love a lot of it. The best of it has an ancient/modern lost civilization look.

It must be Spring, the perennial DL Brutalism bashing thread has appeared.

I think it's popularity owes to the overexposure of things Bauhaus.

I came to like some Brutalist architecture spending a long time in London There the scars of war had been patched over with some really dreadful lightweight stuff, the ugliest possible interpretation of International Style, the only virtue of which was that it surely would not be "for the ages."

Some of my those flimsy elementary school and council estate looking stuff came up for replacement and the Brutalist style was an obvious counterpoint: concrete as construction, concrete as texture, concrete as style and ornament replaced the buildings that looked as though they had been assembled from decks of playing cards.

It took a long time to love them, even a little bit: Paul Rudolph's buildings at Yale which do have a sexiness, the Barbican in London, Habitat '67 in Montreal...there was some beauty to these, and a beauty that did grow on me. Reno Goldfinger's Trellick Tower apartments, Boston City Hall, Breuer's Whitney Museum though, I'll never love them. I think the Whitney had one wall in a setting where it had some appeal to it, but only from the perfect angle.

It's popular to like Brutalist architecture, or to say that you do, but most of it is a hard, heavy fail for me. The few examples that soar a bit, that have a sculptural quality, that you want to run the back of your hand against a bit dangerously perhaps, they really do stand out against the rest.

its popularity

Yikes: Erno Goldfinger, and various other typos.

I'm enamored by the cold, desolate, geometric, temple-like aesthetic of it all. If I had the money, I would have my home like it. Tadao Ando pulls it off well.

The Salk Institute by Louis Kahn.

Gallery of house in Switzerland or something.

[quote] don't understand why you'd have a church in that style, of all places.

OP's example is imposing and conveys authority, if not majesty. It can easily be seen why a church would pursue this effect, especially if it was preaching an Old Testament image of God.

That church looks depressing as hell

The Unsolved Mysteries episode of the overachiever gay college student was great for introducing this Breuer church to us.

The look is one thing but when looking at all the interior pictures, all I can think about is the sound coldly echoing throughout and around every corner, endlessly, like an aural attack coming from all directions.

Problem is, later architects all thought they could be Corbusier. But they couldn't.

For everyone bashing the style, whatever. You'd still have sex in Brutalist buildings.

When the zombies come, you'll all be wishing you lived in a concrete cave with barely any windows!!

Not in love with the church, but not in love with The Church, so I'll manage. My college dorm was brutalist, not that I knew that nomenclature at the time, and I loved it. I'd grown up in a 1919 colonial-style house in which my bedroom was ugly brown and dark olive and early American, which I hated, loathed, and detested. So living in a modern dorm with no unnecessary design elements was a wonderful thing.

Over time, however, I've lived mostly in prewar apartment buildings. They're so much better constructed than newer buildings. My furnishings have always been more modern, though.

R1 confusedly sees a child's playground after calling the work ominous.

It is antithetical to both pre- and post-Vatican-II aesthetics, and stands alone. Why? Because, despite offering a sense of mystery and even awe, it does not refer, embody or point to the Resurrection, which is the non plus ultra of Catholicism. The church is an opera set, not a site for liturgical celebration.

I like it, but more for "Murder in the Cathedral" than a 6 am low mass on a nondescript ferial day.

Although I'm Catholic.

[quote]Although I'm Catholic.

The Datalounge condoles you.

Time for DL's annual thread on Brutalism.

nightmarish

The Breuer church pictured at OP is not nearly as dismal as that photo suggests. It's stark, sure.

This Portman interior is okay

But its more postmodernist Brutalism than classical Brutalism

R34 live in my nightmare!

I realise my suggestion is anathema and contradicts the purpose of brutalism, but I think in the 21st century, some of these very handsome brutalist building would look smashing with pristine coats of paint.

For example, churches and campus buildings, where people have a right to feel calm and perhaps spiritually lifted.

Sur I like the dystopian masterpieces as well, but they needed be forced on the public who must use them.

In the 60s my city and state went through a period of Brutalism. Older (beautiful) high schools were knocked down to build bigger high schools in this homely architecture. Community colleges were built while other colleges expanded their campuses with this awful look. Office buildings were built in downtown, surrounded by beautiful buildings built in the 1800s. Just about every government building was built in this design, sticking out like a sore thumb. Such unwelcoming architecture among jewels in the state.

Brutalism is great for movie making. Great atmosphere and all. But that's about it.

I've stayed a few times at the Corbusier masterpiece La Tourette. (Weekend contemplation retreats.) Before and after restoration. In fact a few spaces are painted and they are beautiful. And the concrete doesn't need to be stained and mouldy to remain faithful to the gesture of brutalism.

Music to cower by:

Haunting

The Brutalist library is a ghastly scar on the Northwestern campus.

[quote] Gorgeous photo OP.

No humans, no life, no soul.

This Brutalist stuff needs good well-lit photos and photoshop to make it marginally attractive.

[quote]The Brutalist library is a ghastly scar on the Northwestern campus.

I think it is beautiful r45.

I’m glad this stunning building got a new life and I would love to stay there.

r9 UMass Amherst?

Good lighting and a concrete palm tree help a lot.

I grew up with a school with a Brutalist church hall and attended a university with a Brutalist library.

So that inured me to urban blight early in life.

Evans Hall, the most despised building in the Berkeley campus, is a comin’ down. That’s brutal!

Evans Hall isn't brutalist, or if it was meant to be, it was a failure.

I like it.

Goldfinger's Trellick Tower looks like Bob and Emily Hartley's luxury Chicago apt bldg mated with the Evans's Chicago slum project bldg.

Weird.

Of course Evans Hall is a failure, that’s why it will be demolished.

Here’s some brutal Berkeley: Wurster, home of the Dept. of Architecture, etc.

I love it.

University of Pittsburgh, Pitt, loves it double whammy of academic Brutalism and Library Brutalism. This is the School for Library and Information Studies.

And this is Pitt’s main library on campus, which ironically sits across from the big neoclassical main Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Apparently Hillman is going through extensive reinvention this year of its space.

Off the top of my head I just aware of New York and Pennsylvania, but I’m interested in knowing how many other capitals have State Museums that were built in a Brutalist style? I’m assuming it was a nationwide idea that emerged simultaneously and that was the style that was predominant at the time as was the belief that they were cheaper to make which all state budgets would have embraced.

Pennsylvania’s State Museum

I thought I would start my looking at the place between them, so here’s NJ’s State Museum. My first glance makes reminds me of The Kennedy Center, which I think more of as Neofacist then Brutalist. There are pictures where the clad stone looks less white and more grey streaked.

I'm not expert. I think much of the 70s architecture in Albany is International style. "neoclassical". I can see brutalist influences but I wouldn't say it's brutalist.

R64 Thanks, I was making my opinion just based on that link which randomly appeared on my Google page and the picture shot is made to look as unflattering and Brutalistic as can be. I think many of these state museums are influenced by Brasília’s architecture. Would that be International or Brutalism? Or is there something that lies in between?

I've grown to appreciate Brutalist buildings. You do feel safe inside and the sound-proofing is excellent.

I wonder, though, about long-term. How do these buildings hold up? What happens in a bad earthquake?

Brutalist buildings remind me of the Gothic cathedrals.

One of my many work-study jobs (i.e., financial aid) was gallery attendant in this building. 15 hours/week @ $8/hr paid for a good amount of weed & shrooms 🤠

Many such buildings at my old school

R68 That’s where the Dr. Seuss archives are located. It would fit right into the Lorax landscape.

The New York State museum has giant warehouses crammed full of donated items. When I lived in Albany back in the mid 90s there was a news report about how so much of the donated items were being stored improperly and being damaged,but they simply didnt have the money to keep it all up. I remember they talked about they had whole mansions full that had been donated from old families that had died out,they even had an entire victorian ice cream parlor dismantled and stored. Ive often wondered why they could just sell off the lesser shit to maintain the better stuff. One segment showed racks upon racks of art work,god only knows what was forgotten in there. Im with many others,I loathe Brutalism .

[quote] I loathe Brutalism

Most people do.

Only the pseudo-intellectual self-perceived elite love it.

If ever there was a style that screamed, "go ahead, it's ok, smear your feces on my walls" this would be it.

Some of the Brutalist structures I like very much. One is the Verdun Metro station in Montreal. It is monumental somehow. Perhaps I was awed because I wasn't expecting such a vast space in a station that in a nothing special neighborhood.

R72 I don’t know about that, for me the classic wattle and daub construction looks like that akready.

I like the tiniest fraction of Brutalist architecture. But that's the extent of it.

I think it’s warm and inviting. Until something FAT stepped in.

Crosley Tower at the University of Cincinnati was routinely voted the ugliest building in the city.

If I lived in Canada, would love to live there.

I don't like buildings that look like they're made to stagger into for purposes of urination.

Safdie considered Habitat to be "anti-brutalism".

That's true R80 I should have mentioned that but funny how he used all exposed concrete.

I think it is derivative of one of the most amazing wonders of the world the ancient city in Ethiopia Lalibela. Photo below is of one of their brutalist churches.

R64 Wallace K. Harrison -- Rockefeller's favorite architect -- produced buildings that were hard, ugly and brutal indeed. But not in the Brutalism genre as the term is generally used.

i love brutalism,

it comm strength & stability

which is something 2 b desired in this age of chinese wayfair gingerbread home

in the face weird climate change F-U, like flood, earthquakes, sinkhole, tornadoes, or worm rain

r78 oh my, your ability to scope out shitholes to squat in is uncanny r78

R78 I wouldnt call those apts Brutalist.

Brasília's architecture is neither Brutalist nor international, R65. It's modernist.

Northwestern’s University Library was a wonderful place to study and do research - the conceptual ideas that went into the how the building was organized and functioned really worked quite well. The exterior grew on me There were other, lesser brutalist structures on the lake-fill campus, but Norris had an intriguing duality of a simplistic massive exterior that was surprisingly complex inside - it contained an enormous amount of activity and a variety of functions very well.

It's funny how the architecture profession has never really been about beauty.

Just like Haute Couture has never been about beauty either.

[quote] These will be the last remnants of humanity left on a future decimated Earth.

R6 What do you mean? Are you being sarcastic?

Raw concrete may be less destructible than other materials but are you saying these brutal buildings are humane?

Don't be a pedant, R91. He obviously means they were created by humans.

Ironically, they just discoverered why Roman concrete lasts thousands of years and modern concrete only about 50.

As far as the "marmite" (sic) comparison, Marmite is not brutalist for anything except the tongues of babies and people on the autism scale.

Aesthetic "taste," however, IS in the mouth for some, as in R2.

[quote] "The Tower of History, in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan. A necessary stop if visiting one of our Marvelous Midwestern Towns!"

"Tower of History" absolutely sounds like a landmark in North Korea, R11. And I'd tour a Brutalist struchture if given the opportunity, but I'm going to actively seek Frank Lloyd Wright's work, if I'm in the Midwest.

Frank Lloyd Wright's stuff was NOT Brutalist!

FLW fucked me on the big rock in the middle of the stream and his stuff looked quite brutal to me!

[quote] FLW fucked me

He annoyed lots of people but his buildings were romantic and 'organic' but not brutal.

All of them had garden beds and big flower pots.

Béton brut = raw concrete.

R95 Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City, 1935

R100 - What's very interesting about Wright's 1935 sketch is that it vaguely predicts what he would design for his 1936 commission for SC Johnson's headquarters, and it really presages his 1949 Research Tower addition at SCJ.

It can be beautiful. Jatiyo Sangsad Bhaban.

That building may be raw concrete but I wouldn't call it beautiful.

I'd call it 'Very rich, old American using childlike shapes appropriate for a third world country'.

For your viewing pleasure a brutalist vase:

^ I'd call that primitive and misshapen.

Alison (and her husband) coined this new word from the French in the 60s because they were upper-middle-class intellectuals.

Alison (and her husband)

If you see a truly beautiful Brutalist building by Louis Kahn, like the Kimball Art Museum or the Salk Institute, your view of Brutalism will forever change.

There genuinely was at least one of the greatest architects working in that idiom. Unfortunately, most of the other architects who also were were not great.

R107 Are you saying Kahn was one of the greatest architects working in the Brutalist idiom?

How do you rate Corbusier?

My teacher who was a worshipper of the 'functionalist esthetic' was Kahn fan.

But I notice that the word 'Brutalism' doesn't appear on the Wiki pages for Kahn or the Kimball Museum.

The Salk Institute

^ These concrete blocks NEED to be photographed on lovely sunny days with blue skies.

Human beings MUST be banished from the photograph.

Have any of you had your image of an architectural masterpiece framed by those classic photos, then found it a let down when you see it in person?

Buildings age, additions and changes are made, neighboring structures crowd in etc, and of course architectural photographers, like portait artists, have their special ways of making subjects look better than they really do.

Oh Please, must every pic Americas take of "good architecture" be filled with Murder She Wrote old ladies to warm of the photo?

R113 Can you rephrase that question?

[quote] Buildings age

Look at the last picture of this Early Corbusier—

Discussions about Brutalism usually include people singing its praises and showing exceptional, monumental structures that are impressive in some imposing way even if they are still horrendously ugly to me.

These discussions always overlook the reality that most Brutalist buildings are like the HHS building pictured here: they are entirely unremarkable except that they are extraordinarily foreboding, gloomy architectural allegories for clinical depression that look like they belong in the communist Eastern Bloc.

I work in one of these buildings. My office faces one of these buildings. Looking out of the window feels like part of my soul is being sucked out through the window by the featureless gray cement with water stains and blakened square windows.

I really detest this architectural movement.

I do think the DC Metro tunnels, which are Brutalist design, are interesting to look at. The architectural appeal is still kind of futuristic looking. But at the same time, European Metro stations tend to be so vibrant and colorful, and by comparison, descending into a DC Metro station feels like a post-apocalyptic event.

And I didn't realize until I saw this thread that Catholics seem to have or to have had a fixation on this style, which seems really bizarre given that the Vatican is the most ostentatiously opulent place on Planet Earth. The Lauinger Library at the Jesuit Georgetown University looks like it was inspired by Sauron's tower of evil from Lord of the Rings. What kind of allegedly God-worshiping institution would build these monuments to dark forces?

Georgetown University/Mordor

I think the Catholic Church in general, and a place like Georgetown in particular, embraced Brutalism because, at the time, it had sophisticated cultural cachet at a high intellectual level - and the Catholic hierarchy, and Jesuits in particular, tend to be, or see themselves as sophisticated intellectuals.

It was also the preeminent contemporary high architectural style of the Post Vatican II era when the Church was very deliberately trying to “modernize.” For an instruction that always placed a high value on aesthetics, and often commissioned major works in the contemporary style of a given era, Brutalism, at that moment, was actually a very natural fit.

I love Louis Kahn, and he is so good. And any human who does not like him can just go and get fucked.

^ you don't sound very humane.

R118 Brutalism's natural fault can be found within its name: it's brutal.

It is a *really interesting* phenomenon that the Catholic institution would adopt a brutal, soulless, cold concrete style for its monuments and churches and learning institutions. By which I mean to say, from the vantage point of someone like me who perceives the global Catholic church institution to be a locus of unholy horrors, it's appropriate. It's just shocking that the Vatican, known for the most indulgent, gaudy, ornate style of architectural and bodily decoration in history, would choose to build places of worship and learning that look like shopping mall parking garages. The bishops and popes adorn their worlds with shining golden threads and gold-leafed walls and ceilings and furniture, precious gemstones and paintings and sculptures and obelisks stolen from the world's oldest civilizations, and they skim money off their worshiping customers and serve up religion to them in Brutal concrete slabs.

[quote] Brutalism's natural fault can be found within its name: it's brutal.

I have never been able to understand why the Smithsons chose this French word as their label.

It is self-defeating.

R122 It's fitting. It's a visual assault. Brutalist buildings look like complicated futuristic prisons where nothing good could possibly happen, and where people are only dragged out of small concrete cells on occasion to be beaten and otherwise tormented.

I imagine if one is ever 'disappeared' by the Russian government, they disappear into a building that looks like this one.

Brutalism is the perfect example of a style responding entirely to its period; materially, functionally, conceptually. But dahum, some of it is UGLY!

i love brutalism,

it comm strength & stability

which is something 2 b desired in this age of chinese wayfair gingerbread home **************** Wtf? "It comm"? Are you a machine?

[quote] chinese wayfair

I haven't heard of that. Is it the name of a shop?

I don't even understand how someone chooses to write mumbo jumbo like R125, much less how someone else tries to make sense of what it is supposed to mean.

Is everyone's brain rotting?

Apparently R84's brain is rotting, R127.

All this Brutalist crap looks very Nazi-ish.

Would anything be a bigger mind fuck than a Brutalist exterior with a Memphis Group interior!

Here’s a good example of Brutalism.

The Charterhouse of the Transfiguration in Vermont—the only Charterhouse of the Carthusians in the United States.

I cannot imagine being enclosed in such an unattractive environment.

I think with Europe you have to remember that they needed to rebuild as quickly and cheaply as possible after the war, and brutalism fulfilled the remit. I think without that necessity, it would never have caught on.

R131 That doesn't explain its pervasiveness in the US, and especially in DC.

I have read that when federal buildings here in Washington were converted into Brutalist structures, the idea was to communicate an idea of no-frills, no wasted money on impractical things like non-terrifying architectural design.

It's really jarring to me that HHS, the Department of Education, the FBI building all look like Soviet prisons, and meanwhile, the Supreme Court, Congressional office buildings and the Capital and the White House all are neoclassical, and then the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House, where the VP's office is, is Parisian-style ornate Baroque palace. It's such aesthetic whiplash, and all are federal buildings. I can understand evolving styles over time, but the Brutalist ones all look to me like the ruins of an unearthed ancient septic system. Fucking bizarre and scary.

R132 That is such a cool building. I wish we had more like it down under. Unfortunately we mostly have this sort of thing - fucking hideous

Nelson, I condole you.

It may be demolished in 30 years.

All the 1980s Brutalist buildings near me have been painted or have had tizzy ornamentation bolted the facades to lessen the brutish, brusque appearance of the architect's Brutalism-worshipping intentions.

i kinda like the mouse bunker in berlin. it looks like a beached ironclad armed to the teefs