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In my community: I love the cutsie pootsie Victorians everywhere, the time-capsule 1910s look. Some people want to make it easier to demolish this stuff and bui

In my community: I love the cutsie pootsie Victorians everywhere, the time-capsule 1910s look. Some people want to make it easier to demolish this stuff and build whatever house you want - the rule is you have to keep the facade or whatever - and I sympathize with that. But nobody gives a fuck about the brutalist structures being torn down, like the VA in Chicago or the Federal Building in Boston, because they're ugly. I mean they are of significantly greater historical significance than some random dilapidated Victorian home in San Francisco. So the law protects the local community's most mobilized opinion of what's pretty and cute, not what's significant. People's definition of meaningful or sentimental, when it relates to a past that isn't personally theirs / belonging to their family... it's a very mainstream notion of beauty or awe. It sucks for this tree, those kids should not have chopped it down, whatever, nobody needs to have that conversation. But have you personally ever given a fuck about a sentimental something outside your family that is also ugly?

HPsquared 3y ago
I'm happy with that bias.
nathan_compton 3y ago
You may not have noticed, but objects literally have no value beyond what people think of them. If a community thinks a building is significant, it is.
- napierzaza 3y ago
  [dead]
jfengel 3y ago
It's notable that this tree was probably a few hundred years old. That's not especially old by European or tree standards, and this tree was of no real historical significance. But it's older than any of those structures you describe. The brutalist structures might one day be beloved. Perhaps a few centuries from now. They're certainly built for it; one problem with them is that they're hard to demolish. (And often lousy air flow, which is hard to retrofit because the walls are literally artificial rock.) Ugly things can get some sentiment once you see it as "yours". Time can do that. Notions of beauty change, and things go in and out of fashion. Even trees have been seen as ugly at various points, when what people wanted was to tear it all down and build things.
- teruakohatu 3y ago
  > which is hard to retrofit This is a great feature. I had a fantastic private office with a view in a brutalist building when most of the staff, far more senior than I, had to use open workspaces, because this particular building was not able to be retrofitted.
- c5karl 3y ago
  Brutalist does not have to be ugly. The Washington, D.C., subway system is brutalist, but Harry Weese's design for the system is beloved by locals and visitors alike. There are ugly buildings of every architectural style.
sp332 3y ago
People still make brutalist buildings. The replacement VA in Chicago is not technically brutalist, but it still blends in with the neighborhood. https://www.mmarchitecturalphotography.com/chicago-architectural-photographers/photography-of-the-chicago-illinois-veterans-home/ https://www.mmarchitecturalphotography.com/chicago-architect... No one is going to replace an old Victorian with something similar.
lmm 3y ago
And why should we? We value beautiful things and want to preserve them; yes, we put a higher priority on something beautiful but insignifcant than on something significant but ugly. What's wrong with that? Buildings are made by humans for human purposes; if humans value beauty we should make them beautiful.
Nursie 3y ago
People have to live in and around those places. Concrete monstrosities make that less pleasant. Brutalist architecture (for the most part, I know there are a few exceptions but they are exceptions) feels impersonal, oppressive, monolithic. It also for the most part feels and looks drab, as the materials dull and stain, and make everything a sad grey-beige. It's the stuff of dystopia. It's the human spirit being relentlessly ground under the weight of impersonal mediocrity. The whole ethos of 'form follows function' is oxymoronic - making people feel good, making spaces warm, welcoming, decorative, these are all part of 'function'. So yes, lets tear down the brutalist crap. However well-meaning its proponents were, it's been a failure and it's time to move on.
desas 3y ago
> nobody gives a fuck about the brutalist structures being torn down, like the VA in Chicago or the Federal Building in Boston, because they're ugly In the UK we have listed some of our most famous brutalist buildings for protection. This includes the Barbican Centre in London and the Corbusier inspired Park Hill in Sheffield - the largest listed building in Europe. It's not without controversy though.
- dudeinjapan 3y ago
  There are a few brutalist buildings worth keeping. Just like there are a few shits you are proud of enough to snap a pic on your iPhone.
- Nursie 3y ago
  I find it amusing and mildly horrifying when people tried to start movements to save buildings like the Tricorn centre in Portsmouth. The Barbican seems like a good candidate to keep around, because it has some thought gone into it, and people seem to like it, use it and like the accommodation. Most of the rest seem to fall into the realm of "sad, cheap city-centre retail blocks" and "places to warehouse poor people". Both of which suffered from being soul-crushing, and seemed to just court anti-social behaviour of various forms. I suppose there's also London's South Bank area. As someone that used to work in the middle of it, the thing we always said was the best thing about working in South Bank was that we could look across the river at basically anything else...

HPsquared 3y ago

I'm happy with that bias.

nathan_compton 3y ago

You may not have noticed, but objects literally have no value beyond what people think of them. If a community thinks a building is significant, it is.

napierzaza 3y ago
[dead]

jfengel 3y ago

It's notable that this tree was probably a few hundred years old. That's not especially old by European or tree standards, and this tree was of no real historical significance. But it's older than any of those structures you describe. The brutalist structures might one day be beloved. Perhaps a few centuries from now. They're certainly built for it; one problem with them is that they're hard to demolish. (And often lousy air flow, which is hard to retrofit because the walls are literally artificial rock.) Ugly things can get some sentiment once you see it as "yours". Time can do that. Notions of beauty change, and things go in and out of fashion. Even trees have been seen as ugly at various points, when what people wanted was to tear it all down and build things.

teruakohatu 3y ago
> which is hard to retrofit This is a great feature. I had a fantastic private office with a view in a brutalist building when most of the staff, far more senior than I, had to use open workspaces, because this particular building was not able to be retrofitted.
c5karl 3y ago
Brutalist does not have to be ugly. The Washington, D.C., subway system is brutalist, but Harry Weese's design for the system is beloved by locals and visitors alike. There are ugly buildings of every architectural style.

sp332 3y ago

People still make brutalist buildings. The replacement VA in Chicago is not technically brutalist, but it still blends in with the neighborhood. https://www.mmarchitecturalphotography.com/chicago-architectural-photographers/photography-of-the-chicago-illinois-veterans-home/ https://www.mmarchitecturalphotography.com/chicago-architect... No one is going to replace an old Victorian with something similar.

lmm 3y ago

And why should we? We value beautiful things and want to preserve them; yes, we put a higher priority on something beautiful but insignifcant than on something significant but ugly. What's wrong with that? Buildings are made by humans for human purposes; if humans value beauty we should make them beautiful.

Nursie 3y ago

People have to live in and around those places. Concrete monstrosities make that less pleasant. Brutalist architecture (for the most part, I know there are a few exceptions but they are exceptions) feels impersonal, oppressive, monolithic. It also for the most part feels and looks drab, as the materials dull and stain, and make everything a sad grey-beige. It's the stuff of dystopia. It's the human spirit being relentlessly ground under the weight of impersonal mediocrity. The whole ethos of 'form follows function' is oxymoronic - making people feel good, making spaces warm, welcoming, decorative, these are all part of 'function'. So yes, lets tear down the brutalist crap. However well-meaning its proponents were, it's been a failure and it's time to move on.

desas 3y ago

> nobody gives a fuck about the brutalist structures being torn down, like the VA in Chicago or the Federal Building in Boston, because they're ugly In the UK we have listed some of our most famous brutalist buildings for protection. This includes the Barbican Centre in London and the Corbusier inspired Park Hill in Sheffield - the largest listed building in Europe. It's not without controversy though.

dudeinjapan 3y ago
There are a few brutalist buildings worth keeping. Just like there are a few shits you are proud of enough to snap a pic on your iPhone.
Nursie 3y ago
I find it amusing and mildly horrifying when people tried to start movements to save buildings like the Tricorn centre in Portsmouth. The Barbican seems like a good candidate to keep around, because it has some thought gone into it, and people seem to like it, use it and like the accommodation. Most of the rest seem to fall into the realm of "sad, cheap city-centre retail blocks" and "places to warehouse poor people". Both of which suffered from being soul-crushing, and seemed to just court anti-social behaviour of various forms. I suppose there's also London's South Bank area. As someone that used to work in the middle of it, the thing we always said was the best thing about working in South Bank was that we could look across the river at basically anything else...