> The first thought that struck me when I saw it was "that is a visual expression of Orwellian thought". Yup, exactly. There is little more care for the inhab

> The first thought that struck me when I saw it was "that is a visual expression of Orwellian thought". Yup, exactly. There is little more care for the inhabitants inside than there is for the ants, the ivy, the birds, the earthworms which could live on & around a homier structure. A Brutalist building spares no more thought for its inhabitants than does an abbatoir for those who enter its confines: they are a necessary nuisance, but mustn't be permitted to intrude upon the happiness of the architect anymore than absolutely required. The Brutalist Le Corbusier famously said that a house is a machine for living in, but what he really meant is that he thought a home is a machine for performing intellectual labour, consuming calories, excreting waste and engaging in other animal activities as required. In other words, he didn't really know what it means to live; if he did, then he would have known that a house is not a machine, but rather a fractally intricate ecosystem, itself contained within even more intricate interlocking ecosystems. I don't actually blame him: he lived through the collapse of civilisation that was the Great War, and then the complete nightmare of the Second World War. He had seen so much that was great and good ground up in destruction, so much that had seemed so permanent turned to ash, that I can understand why he didn't think permanence could be found in an organic, human scale of building (it's much the same sentiment which fuelled Hitlerism & Stalinism: the old order had fallen, and the only thing many people thought they could turn to for strength was raw totalitarianism). Brutalism is a kind of totalitarianism of architecture, a demand that those who build, those who inhabit and those who maintain must constantly bend their wills to the will of the Great Man (the architect), bend without love, without understanding, without hope, without fear, without joy, just mute, abject obedience to a cold and uncaring plan. No thanks. Give me ivy, give me bricks, give me marble, give me dirt and grass and trees; give me men and women and children; give me sheep and dogs and horses; give me colours and light and ornament; give me emotion and delight; give me, in short, life.