Funny you mention relics of wars. Have you seen the ruins of the Oslobođenje building in Sarajevo? That war ruin somehow manages to capture the aesthetic of w

Funny you mention relics of wars. Have you seen the ruins of the Oslobođenje building in Sarajevo? That war ruin somehow manages to capture the aesthetic of well maintained brutalist architecture almost perfectly. Brutalist buildings on their best days look like ruins from a city under siege. Walking into a neighborhood with brutalist architecture feels like you've walked into some alternate timeline where WWIII is raging. The cynical side of me suspects that brutalist architecture is a reflection of the psychological damage WWII inflicted on a generation of architects. They experienced an ugly world, then sought to recreate that ugliness in their work. Experiencing war corrupted them. Their legacy, their still standing buildings, are not unlike the iron harvest French and Belgian farmers experience every year when they till their fields and find bombs from WWI.