I swear there were like 3 guys in the 60s or something that loved brutalism so much that they spent the next few years going to major cities to convince mayors to build the ugliest, most ghastly buildings that would remain as eyesores for decades to come.
Brutalised architecture absolutely slaps when done right
Well the right hotel looks pretty decent, although seeing just bare concrete makes me want to indulge in suspicously cheap vodka and intoxicate myself for my entire life + depression.
It has it’s weird charm, like looking back to the awful past of the USSR. These are a great reminder for us eastern europeans to never ever let another communist regime to power.
Maybe I would love the brutalism’s uniqueness but this stigma is coming strong with me unfortunately.
Looks like the Barbican in London to me, it’s apartments and a public bar/drinking/working area, nice spot to hang out!
For me personally that looks very interesting if that’s the right word, it pikes my curiousity, but it evokes a very uneasy feeling which would make me want to leave rather than hang around this area.
Kind of “nothing is allowed here if it’s not with explicit purpose”
Brutalism has absolutely grown on me with age
It’s kinda okay, but some cheap white (or any other color!) paint would absolutely be an improvement in my eyes. I’ve yet to see an example (and at this point I don’t think there is any), where paint over otherwise okay brutalist architecture would improve things. Bare Concrete is just an ugly and unfinished look.
This looks like something out of Mass Effect.
I applaud their efforts and results!
Beats black box urbanism. (But I might be misremembering the name of the style lol.)
Where I live there was a period in the 80s where people got obsessed with ‘roughcast’ and decided to start covering their houses with sharp rocks. I’d be scared of falling against them while drunk and tearing my face open.
Eh that doesn’t look so bad.
It does in person.
Like how close do you have to get before you can even see that it’s rough? Brutalism can be seen the second you see the building.
Brutalism is also about showing the materials used for the structure rather than using facades. (But I don’t think anyone is saying rough rock coverings are brutalist lol)
Rough rock coverings are facades!
Depending on the coloration of the material in of the texture and how rough it is, several feet to hundreds of yards/meters away.
But the reason brutalism is easier to see far away is more about the solid rectangular shapes and style than the texture of the material. If you made a concrete version of a building normallly made of stone with lots of fine details like a cathedral it wouldn’t be considered brutalism just because it was all concrete.
You can see the texture of a wall from hundreds of yards away? You have better vision than I do Legolas.
That must be a nightmare to keep clean.
Pebble dash can fuck off
There’s a building in my hometown with this stuff. I have vivid memories of scraping against it on my bike. Over 20 years later my heart still jumps if I pass this dreaded material
only so much you can do when everything else has already been done…
It’s time for Solarpunk architecture.
Can’t be brutalist if there’s no concrete!
Needs less metal and more concrete.
Is that the cybertruck x 9000?
The amount of rust seems on track.
Elon just claimed it was on X.
I find some of the origin story fascinating. Apparently it almost started a war with Libya (2nd story).
Only the bottom part of the sandcrawler was built for close-up scenes in the Tatooine desert for Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope. In Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones these large vessels appeared on matte paintings. George Lucas took many pictures of the treads of NASA’s space rocket carrier (known as a crawler) as inspiration for the sandcrawler.
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sandcrawler/Legends
In Jay’s book, the author implies that the original shooting location of the Jawa Sandcrawler may have been a little too close to the Libyan border for Gaddafi’s comfort, because the Libyan government “rushed inspectors across the border to ensure Lucas’s crew wasn’t constructing some newfangled military vehicle.”
The vehicle’s original design was conceived by Colin Cantwell, and was later redesigned by Ralph McQuarrie, one of the most famous of the Star Wars designers. It was modeled after NASA moon rovers from the time. There were smaller models, of course, used for effects shots, but the bottom half of outsize Sandcrawler — complete with tank treads — was also built to accommodate a notable scene where Luke Skywalker’s uncle buys R2-D2 from the Jawas.
That’s hilarious. I wonder what Gaddafi thought when the inspectors returned to give their report.
“It’s just Jawas, sir.”
TIL my aesthetic is brutalism
If you’re basing that off the Pic, that is not brutalism. Brutalism is awesome though, like a modern day architecture terrible from the 20th century totalitarians. Unpopular opinion, but I’ve always thought the Chinese did it best
Nah, went off on the “bigger and uglier”.
And surely the Chinese did it fine, but Yugoslav Brutalism is just something else ;)
Yeah, when there is some real design work, rather than just big concrete block, brutalism can look very cool. However most places seemed to want to just go with dismal box as an aesthetic.
Nah I love big box brutalism. Gimme gimme gimme all those long, labyrinthine, resource-conscious angular concrete buildings. Just looking at my campus’s inexplicably brutalist administrations office was my favorite part of university
I mean, there has to be someone that gets turned on by ugly, nothing wrong with that. Most people don’t like it though.
Me: “Perhaps we should put function ahead of form”
Lemmy: “No”
There is a middle ground. Living in a concrete block city probably isn’t the best for your mental health.
Show me an office tower that is not built with wrought iron and concrete. The thing people don’t like about Brutalism is its honesty. If a layer of chinzy art deco spray painted Styrofoam is the difference between making it through the day and cracking up, you’ve got bigger problems.
This also heavily undersells how beautiful a clever concrete structure can be. I’ll take eye-popping geometries of stone over flat texture-less mirror-window walls any day.
Nope, would look better with a paint job
The university I attended was almost entirely composed of brutalist buildings, and I loved it.
Best comment
Mmmm resource utilization-effective monolithic architecture
Fuck yeah
“It’s not brutalism, it’s concrete expressionism!” Or some shit like that.
I can only think they thought it looked good from a distance, which it still doesn’t but from making a little model it can seem clean and all that.
I guess I understand why people don’t like it but brutalism looks so good from like any distance. I would live in a brutalist house if I could
Brutalism is my jam. -someone who lives in a city with a lot of brutalism architecture
I like brutalism in pictures but not as much in person.
Lol I JUST heard this exact reference, image to word, in a “stuff you should know” podcast. They just couldn’t remember the name of the sand crawler.
Life can be pretty weird, or you heard it too lol
