4 ms·

Part of the problem is that concrete doesn't age well. The building might start as looking ok, but quickly becomes discolored. It's worsened by the fact that

by mdasen 10y ago

Part of the problem is that concrete doesn't age well. The building might start as looking ok, but quickly becomes discolored. It's worsened by the fact that many of the buildings made no accommodation for how they wouldn't allow water to just drip and discolor them even worse. The article talks about them belonging to "an era of muscular, public-minded development". Later, it says, "Brutalism wasn’t fully popular with a broad public, whose members were never convinced that awe-inspiring concrete dourness was what society was truly missing, and it ultimately depended on the good will of sympathetic planners". So, actually, it harkens back to an era when politicians and planners felt that they didn't need to be accountable. The worst part of the article is when it argues, "THERE’S NO QUESTION that Brutalism looks exceedingly cool. [author's emphasis]". I think most of the broad public would disagree - and the article basically says that. Brutalism is just gross and dirty to me. There's nothing interesting or cool about it for me. Brutalism means putting a lot of money into something that's crappy. As rayiner points out (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12688217 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12688217), it isn't honest like the article portrays it as. The buildings are often needlessly complicated or purposely ugly.

pimeys 10y ago
> Part of the problem is that concrete doesn't age well. The building might start as looking ok, but quickly becomes discolored. It's worsened by the fact that many of the buildings made no accommodation for how they wouldn't allow water to just drip and discolor them even worse. Funny how people see things differently. For my eye the discolored old concrete buildings look very inspiring and I guess it was the original idea that the buildings show their age...
- mike_ivanov 10y ago
  > old concrete buildings look very inspiring especially those with a touch of moss, mold and climbing vegetation here and there.
- rtpg 10y ago
  Definitely sounds intended. Brutalism is about enforcing the artificial nature of things. Trying to keep it nice and clean goes against the core idea. Though I think brutalism is a blight on our cities....
WillPostForFood 10y ago
Part of the problem is that concrete doesn't age well. The building might start as looking ok, but quickly becomes discolored. I think that's one reason the article author chose to show black and white photos of the buildings. It masks the discoloration of the concrete. I'm not a fan of brutalism either, but I don't mind an occasional brutalist building as contrast in a skyline.
- frenchy 10y ago
  > I don't mind an occasional brutalist building as contrast in a skyline. Sort of how it's nice to have an ugly friend around to make your own attractiveness more palatable?
  - WillPostForFood 10y ago
    Yeah, kinda, but also like how you might appreciate the unique features of your ugly friend when they are surrounded by a bunch of attractive people.
honkhonkpants 10y ago
Obviously the success of concrete with age varies by climate. In coastal California it ages well enough, as long as it isn't festooned with bits of galvanically antagonistic metals. One of my favorite spaces is the Oakland Museum of California and its concrete faces are in fine shape, 50 years later.
- jonathonadler 10y ago
  Likewise the QPAC building in Brisbane, Queensland has aged well on a similar climate.
gadders 10y ago
Agreed. Have a look at the Barbican or the South Bank Centre in London. They should be flattened.
dublinclontarf 10y ago
Most examples of "brutalism" are just excuses for local governments to quickly build cheap housing, it looked terrible and was mostly a failure. The UK is a prime example of it's wrongful use, but there have been some great examples. Barbican in London is one of those examples, it's the only one I know which I actually really like. http://mllongworth.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/barbican-london-photos-ext.jpg http://mllongworth.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/barbi...
usrusr 10y ago
Done right, aging concrete can be very beautiful. It blends with nature, slowly taking up color and texture of natural rock. Unfortunately, the "doing it right" has to happen at the drawing board, where people tend to picture pristine surfaces of perfectly even coloring. There, they are easily tempted to go for those minimalist shapes that exaggerate shinyness when new (that's why people go for that look) as much as raggedness when not. The difference between patina and grit happens before building even starts. If I had a few man-decades of developer time to burn, without any chance of ever seeing adequate return, my dream software project would be a tool that analyzes architectural model data, simulates aging and creates an "aging forecast" version ready for rendering. This could help architects and clients to avoid badly aging designs if they choose to factor that into their decisions. Or at least it could generally promote the idea that sustainable is not just about day to day energy use but also about long term attractivity .
- ebalit 10y ago
  This seems like a really cool and useful idea. Are you sure it would be that long to develop a prototype?
  - usrusr 10y ago
    I'm sure that it would take me very long, not being an expert in any of the required skill areas and all that. Seen from afar i identify several key components of a high quality architectural aging simulation: water/geometry interaction (most stains seem to be related to differences in water exposure), some rough thermal simulation (different drying speed, often you see "shadows" of internal structure on the outside, because the internals influence heat dissipation and thus drying speed), gathering and refining actual aging examples for all kinds of surface materials and finally extracting not only geometry but also surface material information from the input formats you would want to support. Putting it all together to generate output models or images would be the smallest part. A less sophisticated effort might just try to use image based rendering techniques to normalize before/after photos into flat textures ready to be used as a learning set for some ML magic. Unfortunately, this would completely fail at respecting different aging properties of surfaces that look similar when new. Cleverly alternating between initially similar surfaces could for example be harnessed to get a clean, minimalistic look when new and expose some ornaments that distract from unintended unevenness later. This isn't a completely theoretical idea by the way: a ca 2005 subway station here that used to get heavily criticised for its bland white walls is slowly starting to expose fascinating watermark-like images embedded in the texture of the walls, consisting of cleverly modulated ribs that seemed perfectly uniform when new.

by mdasen 10y ago

pimeys 10y ago

> Part of the problem is that concrete doesn't age well. The building might start as looking ok, but quickly becomes discolored. It's worsened by the fact that many of the buildings made no accommodation for how they wouldn't allow water to just drip and discolor them even worse. Funny how people see things differently. For my eye the discolored old concrete buildings look very inspiring and I guess it was the original idea that the buildings show their age...

mike_ivanov 10y ago
> old concrete buildings look very inspiring especially those with a touch of moss, mold and climbing vegetation here and there.
rtpg 10y ago
Definitely sounds intended. Brutalism is about enforcing the artificial nature of things. Trying to keep it nice and clean goes against the core idea. Though I think brutalism is a blight on our cities....

WillPostForFood 10y ago

Part of the problem is that concrete doesn't age well. The building might start as looking ok, but quickly becomes discolored. I think that's one reason the article author chose to show black and white photos of the buildings. It masks the discoloration of the concrete. I'm not a fan of brutalism either, but I don't mind an occasional brutalist building as contrast in a skyline.

frenchy 10y ago
> I don't mind an occasional brutalist building as contrast in a skyline. Sort of how it's nice to have an ugly friend around to make your own attractiveness more palatable?
- WillPostForFood 10y ago
  Yeah, kinda, but also like how you might appreciate the unique features of your ugly friend when they are surrounded by a bunch of attractive people.

honkhonkpants 10y ago

Obviously the success of concrete with age varies by climate. In coastal California it ages well enough, as long as it isn't festooned with bits of galvanically antagonistic metals. One of my favorite spaces is the Oakland Museum of California and its concrete faces are in fine shape, 50 years later.

jonathonadler 10y ago
Likewise the QPAC building in Brisbane, Queensland has aged well on a similar climate.

gadders 10y ago

Agreed. Have a look at the Barbican or the South Bank Centre in London. They should be flattened.

dublinclontarf 10y ago

Most examples of "brutalism" are just excuses for local governments to quickly build cheap housing, it looked terrible and was mostly a failure. The UK is a prime example of it's wrongful use, but there have been some great examples. Barbican in London is one of those examples, it's the only one I know which I actually really like. http://mllongworth.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/barbican-london-photos-ext.jpg http://mllongworth.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/barbi...

usrusr 10y ago

Done right, aging concrete can be very beautiful. It blends with nature, slowly taking up color and texture of natural rock. Unfortunately, the "doing it right" has to happen at the drawing board, where people tend to picture pristine surfaces of perfectly even coloring. There, they are easily tempted to go for those minimalist shapes that exaggerate shinyness when new (that's why people go for that look) as much as raggedness when not. The difference between patina and grit happens before building even starts. If I had a few man-decades of developer time to burn, without any chance of ever seeing adequate return, my dream software project would be a tool that analyzes architectural model data, simulates aging and creates an "aging forecast" version ready for rendering. This could help architects and clients to avoid badly aging designs if they choose to factor that into their decisions. Or at least it could generally promote the idea that sustainable is not just about day to day energy use but also about long term attractivity .

ebalit 10y ago
This seems like a really cool and useful idea. Are you sure it would be that long to develop a prototype?
- usrusr 10y ago
  I'm sure that it would take me very long, not being an expert in any of the required skill areas and all that. Seen from afar i identify several key components of a high quality architectural aging simulation: water/geometry interaction (most stains seem to be related to differences in water exposure), some rough thermal simulation (different drying speed, often you see "shadows" of internal structure on the outside, because the internals influence heat dissipation and thus drying speed), gathering and refining actual aging examples for all kinds of surface materials and finally extracting not only geometry but also surface material information from the input formats you would want to support. Putting it all together to generate output models or images would be the smallest part. A less sophisticated effort might just try to use image based rendering techniques to normalize before/after photos into flat textures ready to be used as a learning set for some ML magic. Unfortunately, this would completely fail at respecting different aging properties of surfaces that look similar when new. Cleverly alternating between initially similar surfaces could for example be harnessed to get a clean, minimalistic look when new and expose some ornaments that distract from unintended unevenness later. This isn't a completely theoretical idea by the way: a ca 2005 subway station here that used to get heavily criticised for its bland white walls is slowly starting to expose fascinating watermark-like images embedded in the texture of the walls, consisting of cleverly modulated ribs that seemed perfectly uniform when new.