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You're conflating brutalism and soulless/inhuman/ugly concrete-heavy design; this is a common misunderstanding. Brutalism when done thoughtfully and well is be

You're conflating brutalism and soulless/inhuman/ugly concrete-heavy design; this is a common misunderstanding. Brutalism when done thoughtfully and well is beautiful, uplifting, and provides a sense of calm and space. The Simon Fraser U campus is a good example: https://modernistarchitecture.blogspot.com/2015/12/a-brutalist-acropolis-in-great-white.html https://modernistarchitecture.blogspot.com/2015/12/a-brutali...

rayiner 7y ago
Still ugly, imposing, and not human scale.
cgh 7y ago
You should probably speak to some actual SFU grads about this “uplifting” architecture sometime. Locally, it’s known as a place that exacerbates depression.
growlist 7y ago
> Brutalism when done thoughtfully and well is beautiful, uplifting, and provides a sense of calm and space And yet common folk - unfairly deprived of an education in hifalutin architecture-speak - still seem to consider brutalism to be as ugly as sin.
remarkEon 7y ago
Concrete buildings like this, even when thoughtfully designed, end up looking decrepit and decayed after just a couple of years as the concrete ages and discolours. I see nothing “uplifting” about that building.
crooked-v 7y ago
To me that's not 'beautiful'. It's the same unpleasant monochrome concrete architecture I was stuck with in community college, just on a larger scale.
Fricken 7y ago
Check out this list of movies that utilized the SFU campus: https://604now.com/movies-filmed-at-sfu/ https://604now.com/movies-filmed-at-sfu/ In every case the campus is used to represent the headquarters of some government agency or military facility, or as the setting for some dystopian sci-fi. I'm interested in both brutalism and dystopian sci-fi, but I don't want to live in a dystopian future, and I don't like being around the brutalist architecture in my city either.
barry-cotter 7y ago
It's not a misunderstanding, it's an opinion. Brutalism is like the worst of modern art in that it's ugly unless you spend a lot of time and effort deliberately altering your preferences, but much worse because you can't escape it because it's architecture, not decoration. Brutalism, like so much of modern architecture, is for and by architects with no consideration given for people who have not spent tens to hundreds of hours learning to perceive striking, visually interesting but ugly buildings as beautiful.

rayiner 7y ago

Still ugly, imposing, and not human scale.

cgh 7y ago

You should probably speak to some actual SFU grads about this “uplifting” architecture sometime. Locally, it’s known as a place that exacerbates depression.

growlist 7y ago

> Brutalism when done thoughtfully and well is beautiful, uplifting, and provides a sense of calm and space And yet common folk - unfairly deprived of an education in hifalutin architecture-speak - still seem to consider brutalism to be as ugly as sin.

remarkEon 7y ago

Concrete buildings like this, even when thoughtfully designed, end up looking decrepit and decayed after just a couple of years as the concrete ages and discolours. I see nothing “uplifting” about that building.

crooked-v 7y ago

To me that's not 'beautiful'. It's the same unpleasant monochrome concrete architecture I was stuck with in community college, just on a larger scale.

Fricken 7y ago

Check out this list of movies that utilized the SFU campus: https://604now.com/movies-filmed-at-sfu/ https://604now.com/movies-filmed-at-sfu/ In every case the campus is used to represent the headquarters of some government agency or military facility, or as the setting for some dystopian sci-fi. I'm interested in both brutalism and dystopian sci-fi, but I don't want to live in a dystopian future, and I don't like being around the brutalist architecture in my city either.

barry-cotter 7y ago

It's not a misunderstanding, it's an opinion. Brutalism is like the worst of modern art in that it's ugly unless you spend a lot of time and effort deliberately altering your preferences, but much worse because you can't escape it because it's architecture, not decoration. Brutalism, like so much of modern architecture, is for and by architects with no consideration given for people who have not spent tens to hundreds of hours learning to perceive striking, visually interesting but ugly buildings as beautiful.