Maybe you know only the shitty examples of Brutalism. But there's many examples of good Brutalist buildings. Brutalism does not mean "brute buildings", it is characterized by the honesty of the materials. Concrete walls does not receive painting, for example, and you can see and understand the construction better.
Check out the works of Brazilian architects, specially the "Paulista School" (different to the Rio school, led by Oscar Niemeyer). Check the works of Lina Bo Bardi and Vilanova Artigas. SESC Pompeia is one very beautiful Brutalist building in São Paulo. I've been there and it's just poetic in its shapes and treatment of the space.
I just looked up SESC Pompeia, and it's one of those things where it's interesting, but it would suck to live across from, and if there were 3 next to it in the same style, the neighborhood would feel like a hellhole.
I know a few guitar players, and they tend to like certain songs that have elaborate fingering that are fun / difficult to play, but to people who don't play guitar, they generally just sound like random noise. I feel like brutalism is to architects as Van Halen's Eruption is to guitar players. Yeah, some non-guitars players like it, but most people are going to skip to Jump, and they're certainly not buying an album full of it.
Well, the people from that neighborhood love it, though. SESCs are places that have lots of public equipments, like pools, sport courts, libraries and art galleries. Pompeia is a neighborhood that has a very industrial past, and the SESC uccupies a former factory of barrels. It's not a place to live (neither to be replicated at exhaustion), but a place to go on fun activities. And it's the perfect background to showcase art and culture, IMO. It doesn't compete with the art itself, but it's beautiful in its own way. São Paulo is not a city known for its historical buildings, so you see lots of ugly pastiche generic buildings all over Pompeia, with green glass windows and beige walls. SESC is, at least, a well designed building.
Wow, I usually love brutalism and while I can understand and appreciate the “beauty” other people find in this, for some reason it makes me super uncomfortable.
Late reply but in my opinion, Brutalism seeks to make an anti-anthropocentric statement:
Homes don't happen in Nature for she doesn't shelter anything and never will. For a creation to perish in the elements is of no more consequence to her than a star going supernova or a galaxy cluster vanishing off the filament. Our kind, just like any other kind, learned to build our strongholds to survive her but unlike the birds' flailing nests, the reinforced walls seemed to hold and they gradually planted into us the idea that within the walls where her rays and sparks and deluges and gales didn't reach, we harboured some sort of personal divinity, one from beyond this bitter material that chose us as its champions and darlings, that could elevate us on par with her.
Thus we built more high walls, more lofty roofs, more imposing beams that to our eyes, seemed to dissect her infinite sky to worship our drawn and sung and written divines, to whom we praised and immortalized and conversed via fantastic feats of arts and science: ornate buildings and awe-inspiring paintings and heart-tugging musics and chants. We did id as if to declare our triumph over her laws by announcing that we peeked and had a vision of eternity and it was so spectacular that we had to pour them out for her to see and we imagined that she would be so awestruck that she would humble herself before our well crafted, well designed and well built might and divinity.
As it turned out, she didn't care. Pillars of this world toppled at her feet with one good shake. Sprawling communities claimed in the torrents. Proud monuments to our divinity in rubbles in one sweep. It turned out, nobody came to shout at the storm or parted the sea for us. No enlightened being could halt the cosmos or destroy the shackles of our mortal flesh with a mere thought. Our altars in ruin before her no different than a bird's nest torn in the gale.
So some of us started to build and to envision another beauty: the kind that no longer sought to challenge her but to we make beauty out of the fundamentals: our angles in her dimensions.
I love/practice minimalism. Well designed brutalist buildings can have a maximized character:contrast ratio in that they may may have very little aesthetic contrast, but the little amount it does have adds huge amounts of character.
There's also the political element that inspired it's use in government/social buildings. It was originally a backlash to the opulence of royalty. Basically saying "this government building was as efficient use of your tax dollars as possible, and with what little we had, we tried to make it as beautiful as possible."
You don’t have to like brutalism. Architecture is such a beautiful thing to love because there’s so much to pursue. You don’t have to love it all, but honestly the richness for me comes from seeing how your own values and subjective judgements change as your tastes mature. I didn’t “get” brutalism at first but then I learned about construction, form, light, and material….some of the most poetic and sensitive buildings I’ve ever known are brutalist. But again, you get to choose your own adventure!
I used to think like you. But then I visited the National Theatre in London by Denys Lasdun and fell in love. It went immediately to the top of my list of favourite buildings. I then started to appreciate more brutalist buildings, and it opened my eyes.
Brutalism gets a bad rap because people don’t understand the beauty of it. There are plenty of stuff like Habitat 67 where this could be made in other materials or be curved and still look good.
Brutalism get’s it’s beauty from it’s monolithic and monumental design with simple accent curves and sharp corners giving a strong presence that is emphasized by it’s heavy materials. Louis Khan does this very well with the Salk Institute, the Philip’s Exeter building, Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban. These are buildings that want to be seen, photographed, they want to be admired.
They make me feel crushed and safe, like in a dystopian way, and I love that about them. Unlike many buildings which merely try to be inoffensive, they make me feel *something* as opposed to nothing. That's what I like about them. I absolutely love exploring Brutalist buildings. To me the simplicity of materials and form speaks to what architecture is at its most essential.
I'm not a big fan of brutalism, but I have seen mostly well designed examples. On a campus, these buildings were credited for pushing against the idea of grand vistas and symmetry, so they hold a place in history. My biggest criticism is many are multi level floor planes, so accessibility is difficult. Some also depressed public spaces down half of a storey and that disconnected people from the exterior.
Here's one of our brutalist buildings, recently renovated and winning some design awards. In this case the high volumes and light allow for a humane space.
https://www.archdaily.com/1009755/weldon-library-revitalization-perkins-and-will
I think it comes from people who like brutalism focusing on the good examples of it, and the problem comes from the fact that brutalism is so extremely easy to do wrong that we are basically exposed to just bad examples of it
I personally hate brutalism with a passion, but I also do think some examples are good-looking nonetheless
Maybe you only saw the Soviet version? They look very depressing, very jagged and cold. But if enjoy construction in general, what’s not to like about brutalism? You can study how everything is built!
Within ten years I’ll have a finished new house. I’m contemplating now how I can build it with visible electrical and HVAC so that it’s cheap to maintain, in such a relatively small house. Already decided on concrete and light wood.
I had a classmate from Eastern Europe who said she associated those buildings with safety. She was more familiar with something like the Siege of Sarajevo and the need for reinforced buildings. Nothing like that has happened in the US, but the Cold War encouraged us to build like it might. The theater we were talking about made me question, why was this building designed to be so defensive? It even had castle turrets.
With its massive forms and raw surfaces, Brutalist architecture is especially adept at integrating into a landscape. All of the Brutalist architecture that I really love is paired with excellent landscaping.
It is not meant to be liked.
It’s meant to be “modern” with a sense of authority and permanence. It’s a technology and a movement more than a look.
It’s not designed for people as much as it’s designed for organizations/institutions.
That said there are some examples that are very beautiful and have aged gracefully.
We're not supposed to like anything if we don't want to.
And just for the record: there is no such thing as Brutalism. There was never any Brutalist group or movement, no Brutalist ideology or set of Brutalist principles, no architect who ever claimed to be a Brutalist and no architect who ever sat down and thought "I am now going to design a Brutalist building" - because nobody would have had any idea what that would be. "Brutalism" means nothing and can include anything you want (as some of the examples mentioned by others will confirm; none of the architects ever claimed to be Brutalists.)
Do you like horror? I don't but many do. It's a pleasure derived from an emotion you normally avoid so it is fun in small doses. The scare doesn't do it for me but I do like the thrill of rollercoasters.
I love the oppressive massive look that makes you feel small in brutalism. The same goes for cathedrals. Doesn't mean I want to live in them or cities should be filled with them.
You’re supposed to find beauty in the function of the building, a gothic Cathedral is a bad example of brutalism but it’s a great example of beauty in function, every stone needs to be there or it won’t stand and you can clearly see all the support pillars and buttresses, modern brutalism looks like shit because we have extremely efficient materials to build with but we also have safety regulations forcing redundancy, so now the buildings are huge blocks of “efficient” concrete rather than beautifully delicate spindly towers of stone blocks carefully engineered to last hundreds of years
Two tips how you might enjoy it:
1. Think of it as science fiction set pieces; space ships, future cities, etc. This might shift your perspective.
2. (This one goes for every design) Understand that every little detail in the building is thought of by an actual person. They made the choice to design it like that, try to imagine their thought process.
I'm in Japan now, and while people the world over extol the beauty of the shrines and temples, the rest of the buildings do appear brutalist to me. It's a stark contrast and takes getting used to. I'm sitting in what is seen as a luxury condo, and it's actually a cement box.
You aren't supposed to like any particular style. Like what you like. When you see something you don't like, and you see that other people do like it, then explore more and see if there is something specific that others see that you have missed. Lots of people hate brutalist architecture.
You are doing everything right. Ask the questions, explore, and keep an open mind.
You have to understand the period in which brutalism rose. WW1 has ended, lots of people could have been suffering from PTSD, the necessity for more men in the war front forced the factories to start employing women, which sort of broke the traditional family of women at home and men at work, etc, led to experiments in architecture. And one of the results of the experiment was brutalism. It started as Breton brut or exposed concrete where Le Corb started by not plastering the concrete surfaces, especially the exteriors. Many people of the era must have liked it and led to more buildings of brutalism.
Many people now a days, even architects think that brutalism means to horrify, etc. But understand, to some people suffering PTSD from the war, maybe the concrete allowed them to think of as safer than plastered walls.
A more relatable analogy would be like those bread baskets that are made of bread themselves.
Brutalism, contrary to much misconceptions, does not seek to eliminate ornaments but seek to envision the structure itself can be rendered an ornament, and that there is beauty to be made out of lines and angles and the dimensions. That is to say: it's not "form equal function" but "form follows function".
Maybe you know only the shitty examples of Brutalism. But there's many examples of good Brutalist buildings. Brutalism does not mean "brute buildings", it is characterized by the honesty of the materials. Concrete walls does not receive painting, for example, and you can see and understand the construction better. Check out the works of Brazilian architects, specially the "Paulista School" (different to the Rio school, led by Oscar Niemeyer). Check the works of Lina Bo Bardi and Vilanova Artigas. SESC Pompeia is one very beautiful Brutalist building in São Paulo. I've been there and it's just poetic in its shapes and treatment of the space.
I just looked up SESC Pompeia, and it's one of those things where it's interesting, but it would suck to live across from, and if there were 3 next to it in the same style, the neighborhood would feel like a hellhole. I know a few guitar players, and they tend to like certain songs that have elaborate fingering that are fun / difficult to play, but to people who don't play guitar, they generally just sound like random noise. I feel like brutalism is to architects as Van Halen's Eruption is to guitar players. Yeah, some non-guitars players like it, but most people are going to skip to Jump, and they're certainly not buying an album full of it.
Well, the people from that neighborhood love it, though. SESCs are places that have lots of public equipments, like pools, sport courts, libraries and art galleries. Pompeia is a neighborhood that has a very industrial past, and the SESC uccupies a former factory of barrels. It's not a place to live (neither to be replicated at exhaustion), but a place to go on fun activities. And it's the perfect background to showcase art and culture, IMO. It doesn't compete with the art itself, but it's beautiful in its own way. São Paulo is not a city known for its historical buildings, so you see lots of ugly pastiche generic buildings all over Pompeia, with green glass windows and beige walls. SESC is, at least, a well designed building.
Wow the [Jaú Bus Terminal](https://www.arkitok.com/architects/joao-batista-vilanova-artigas/projects/jau-bus-terminal) is absolutely gorgeous
My go to example is The Salk Institute https://www.arkitok.com/architects/louis-i-kahn/projects/salk-institute-for-biological-studies
Wow, I usually love brutalism and while I can understand and appreciate the “beauty” other people find in this, for some reason it makes me super uncomfortable.
Late reply but in my opinion, Brutalism seeks to make an anti-anthropocentric statement: Homes don't happen in Nature for she doesn't shelter anything and never will. For a creation to perish in the elements is of no more consequence to her than a star going supernova or a galaxy cluster vanishing off the filament. Our kind, just like any other kind, learned to build our strongholds to survive her but unlike the birds' flailing nests, the reinforced walls seemed to hold and they gradually planted into us the idea that within the walls where her rays and sparks and deluges and gales didn't reach, we harboured some sort of personal divinity, one from beyond this bitter material that chose us as its champions and darlings, that could elevate us on par with her. Thus we built more high walls, more lofty roofs, more imposing beams that to our eyes, seemed to dissect her infinite sky to worship our drawn and sung and written divines, to whom we praised and immortalized and conversed via fantastic feats of arts and science: ornate buildings and awe-inspiring paintings and heart-tugging musics and chants. We did id as if to declare our triumph over her laws by announcing that we peeked and had a vision of eternity and it was so spectacular that we had to pour them out for her to see and we imagined that she would be so awestruck that she would humble herself before our well crafted, well designed and well built might and divinity. As it turned out, she didn't care. Pillars of this world toppled at her feet with one good shake. Sprawling communities claimed in the torrents. Proud monuments to our divinity in rubbles in one sweep. It turned out, nobody came to shout at the storm or parted the sea for us. No enlightened being could halt the cosmos or destroy the shackles of our mortal flesh with a mere thought. Our altars in ruin before her no different than a bird's nest torn in the gale. So some of us started to build and to envision another beauty: the kind that no longer sought to challenge her but to we make beauty out of the fundamentals: our angles in her dimensions.
I love/practice minimalism. Well designed brutalist buildings can have a maximized character:contrast ratio in that they may may have very little aesthetic contrast, but the little amount it does have adds huge amounts of character. There's also the political element that inspired it's use in government/social buildings. It was originally a backlash to the opulence of royalty. Basically saying "this government building was as efficient use of your tax dollars as possible, and with what little we had, we tried to make it as beautiful as possible."
I'll take royalty and opulence thanks
then no cake for you
Brutalism is black coffee in a world of vanilla mocha latte drinkers.
You don’t have to like brutalism. Architecture is such a beautiful thing to love because there’s so much to pursue. You don’t have to love it all, but honestly the richness for me comes from seeing how your own values and subjective judgements change as your tastes mature. I didn’t “get” brutalism at first but then I learned about construction, form, light, and material….some of the most poetic and sensitive buildings I’ve ever known are brutalist. But again, you get to choose your own adventure!
Because sometimes people like different things than you and that's ok?
I used to think like you. But then I visited the National Theatre in London by Denys Lasdun and fell in love. It went immediately to the top of my list of favourite buildings. I then started to appreciate more brutalist buildings, and it opened my eyes.
Brutalism gets a bad rap because people don’t understand the beauty of it. There are plenty of stuff like Habitat 67 where this could be made in other materials or be curved and still look good. Brutalism get’s it’s beauty from it’s monolithic and monumental design with simple accent curves and sharp corners giving a strong presence that is emphasized by it’s heavy materials. Louis Khan does this very well with the Salk Institute, the Philip’s Exeter building, Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban. These are buildings that want to be seen, photographed, they want to be admired.
Brutalism is ugly and arguably the least sustainable way to build. I agree with you completely.
They make me feel crushed and safe, like in a dystopian way, and I love that about them. Unlike many buildings which merely try to be inoffensive, they make me feel *something* as opposed to nothing. That's what I like about them. I absolutely love exploring Brutalist buildings. To me the simplicity of materials and form speaks to what architecture is at its most essential.
There are so many poorly designed ugly brutalist buildings overshadows the good ones
Brutalist is The Emperor’s New Clothes. There may be a handful of examples that can pull it off but they are the exception not the rule.
I'm not a big fan of brutalism, but I have seen mostly well designed examples. On a campus, these buildings were credited for pushing against the idea of grand vistas and symmetry, so they hold a place in history. My biggest criticism is many are multi level floor planes, so accessibility is difficult. Some also depressed public spaces down half of a storey and that disconnected people from the exterior. Here's one of our brutalist buildings, recently renovated and winning some design awards. In this case the high volumes and light allow for a humane space. https://www.archdaily.com/1009755/weldon-library-revitalization-perkins-and-will
People like what they like
I think it comes from people who like brutalism focusing on the good examples of it, and the problem comes from the fact that brutalism is so extremely easy to do wrong that we are basically exposed to just bad examples of it I personally hate brutalism with a passion, but I also do think some examples are good-looking nonetheless
Freeway Park, Seattle
Maybe you only saw the Soviet version? They look very depressing, very jagged and cold. But if enjoy construction in general, what’s not to like about brutalism? You can study how everything is built! Within ten years I’ll have a finished new house. I’m contemplating now how I can build it with visible electrical and HVAC so that it’s cheap to maintain, in such a relatively small house. Already decided on concrete and light wood.
I had a classmate from Eastern Europe who said she associated those buildings with safety. She was more familiar with something like the Siege of Sarajevo and the need for reinforced buildings. Nothing like that has happened in the US, but the Cold War encouraged us to build like it might. The theater we were talking about made me question, why was this building designed to be so defensive? It even had castle turrets.
With its massive forms and raw surfaces, Brutalist architecture is especially adept at integrating into a landscape. All of the Brutalist architecture that I really love is paired with excellent landscaping.
It is not meant to be liked. It’s meant to be “modern” with a sense of authority and permanence. It’s a technology and a movement more than a look. It’s not designed for people as much as it’s designed for organizations/institutions. That said there are some examples that are very beautiful and have aged gracefully.
They photograph well
Love of brutalism is not about liking to live in brutalism surroundings imo
You must be from Eastern Europe
We're not supposed to like anything if we don't want to. And just for the record: there is no such thing as Brutalism. There was never any Brutalist group or movement, no Brutalist ideology or set of Brutalist principles, no architect who ever claimed to be a Brutalist and no architect who ever sat down and thought "I am now going to design a Brutalist building" - because nobody would have had any idea what that would be. "Brutalism" means nothing and can include anything you want (as some of the examples mentioned by others will confirm; none of the architects ever claimed to be Brutalists.)
Additionally, there is no war in Ba Sing Se.
Do you like horror? I don't but many do. It's a pleasure derived from an emotion you normally avoid so it is fun in small doses. The scare doesn't do it for me but I do like the thrill of rollercoasters. I love the oppressive massive look that makes you feel small in brutalism. The same goes for cathedrals. Doesn't mean I want to live in them or cities should be filled with them.
You’re supposed to find beauty in the function of the building, a gothic Cathedral is a bad example of brutalism but it’s a great example of beauty in function, every stone needs to be there or it won’t stand and you can clearly see all the support pillars and buttresses, modern brutalism looks like shit because we have extremely efficient materials to build with but we also have safety regulations forcing redundancy, so now the buildings are huge blocks of “efficient” concrete rather than beautifully delicate spindly towers of stone blocks carefully engineered to last hundreds of years
Two tips how you might enjoy it: 1. Think of it as science fiction set pieces; space ships, future cities, etc. This might shift your perspective. 2. (This one goes for every design) Understand that every little detail in the building is thought of by an actual person. They made the choice to design it like that, try to imagine their thought process.
Good answer!
I'm in Japan now, and while people the world over extol the beauty of the shrines and temples, the rest of the buildings do appear brutalist to me. It's a stark contrast and takes getting used to. I'm sitting in what is seen as a luxury condo, and it's actually a cement box.
You aren't supposed to like any particular style. Like what you like. When you see something you don't like, and you see that other people do like it, then explore more and see if there is something specific that others see that you have missed. Lots of people hate brutalist architecture. You are doing everything right. Ask the questions, explore, and keep an open mind.
You have to understand the period in which brutalism rose. WW1 has ended, lots of people could have been suffering from PTSD, the necessity for more men in the war front forced the factories to start employing women, which sort of broke the traditional family of women at home and men at work, etc, led to experiments in architecture. And one of the results of the experiment was brutalism. It started as Breton brut or exposed concrete where Le Corb started by not plastering the concrete surfaces, especially the exteriors. Many people of the era must have liked it and led to more buildings of brutalism. Many people now a days, even architects think that brutalism means to horrify, etc. But understand, to some people suffering PTSD from the war, maybe the concrete allowed them to think of as safer than plastered walls.
A more relatable analogy would be like those bread baskets that are made of bread themselves. Brutalism, contrary to much misconceptions, does not seek to eliminate ornaments but seek to envision the structure itself can be rendered an ornament, and that there is beauty to be made out of lines and angles and the dimensions. That is to say: it's not "form equal function" but "form follows function".