Mies would have wanted the steel frame to be visible to all; however, American building codes required that all structural steel be covered in a fireproof material (steel, with its low melting point, will fail in fires), usually concrete. This hid the structure of the building – something Mies wanted at all costs to avoid – so Mies used non-structural bronze-toned I-beams to suggest structure instead. These are visible from the outside of the building, and run vertically like mullions in the large glass windows. Now, observers look up and see a fake structure tinted bronze covering a real steel structure.
Wikipedia article for the building: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagram_Building
UX at its worst.
It's not that I'm against modernist glass and steel. Bunshaft's Lever House sits on the same corner as Mies work and is one of my favorite architectural works. I'm not even against glass houses, though I think Johnson's earlier one is a better design than Farnsworth...if at least for not being built in a flood plain.
Well, they did provide a definition for "honest" - that it looks like it's built with the materials it's actually built with.
Of course, so did stone houses for centuries, and they still managed to look pleasing in the process.
I don't think 'honesty' (and 'functionality') are an improvement on the Vitruvian, 'firmitas, utilitas, and venustas'[2] for no other reason than Vitruvius backed the concepts up with examples and the examples included everything from fortifications to bridges to temples...which in map pretty well as typologies in which each takes priority over the others.
Perhaps it's because Vitruvius honored those generals, the city, and his gods rather than bricks.[3]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_latericium
[2]: firmness, commodity, and delight
[3]: https://www.yatzer.com/even-brick-wants-be-something-louis-k...
Condensation, airflow and thermal exchange issues are dealt with in any construction engineering curriculum, there are ready solutions to most configurations. If you don't follow them the issue is not with flat roof but with your lack of professionalism: moving condensation to the attic isn't a solution (especially since so many upgrade them to inhabited lofts anyway).
Incidentally, mono-pitched roofs seem oddly rare, people seem to go straight from flat to gabled or hipped, even in relatively temperate places where snow doesn't pile up much and a relatively shallow slope would be more than enough to handle rain and snow.
Wasn't the idea here was that it was cheap and quick to lay out concrete which is why it was so popular the post-WW2 building boom? This seems like a highly functional approach (see cost effective) - for the time period. But clearly not the material one should use when utilizing a brutalist approach in modern buildings.
Not sure why they made the windows like that other than a sci-fi style exterior. Not all brutalist buildings have tiny windows though. Here's one from Toronto (a city full of brutalist architecture due to the era it exploded in growth): http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3026/2410356675_5df008e7f2.jp...
The Gardiner Expressway in Toronto is a good example of this - it seems as it's permanently under refurbishment.
Compare with monstrosities like the old Prentice hospital in Chicago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prentice_Women%27s_Hospital_Bu.... Nothing functional about the tiny windows, or weirdly-shaped circular interior spaces, or wrapping the whole thing in a material (concrete) that doesn't hold up well to a snowy climate. Just architectural wankery.