But, that discounts the thousands of buildings that were built and subsequently torn down because they failed by some metric. The style didn't make them failures; they just weren't good. Brutalist buildings are no exception, they're just more recent and so we have a lot more of the stinkers still standing.
And, we're living in a time where people value the past (even the recent-ish past) more than folks in previous generations. We venerate old buildings, maybe because the pace of destruction and rebuilding has accelerated beyond our comfort zone for change. So, it's likely that a lot of poorly conceived Brutalist architecture will live long enough to be hated. And, it also does seem to be the case that retrofitting Brutalist buildings to suit modern needs and tastes may be more difficult than previous kinds of architecture. The Grenfell tower is a tragic example of that (though one could reasonably argue that it didn't have to be that way...a little more money spent would have saved lives).
I don't know. I happen to be fond of a lot of Brutalist architecture. Not all of it. And, I recognize and agree with many of your points. But, I think there's a beauty to be found in the raw concrete, straight lines, cantilevered elements, etc. of the best Brutalist architecture. I like the design of those decades, in general, not just the buildings.
Buildings with flat roofs and piss poor drainage in the West of Scotland (rains a bit) are held up as timeless paragons of the style.
This tells me there is a massive disconnect between architects and normal people.
(EDIT: There is quite a lot of Brutalist stuff I like but there is a lot of shit decaying ruins that I'm repeatedly told are brilliant that are most certainly not)
Having spent time in quite a few 'iconic' Brutalist building, my experience is that they're frequently terrible. Impressive looking, but deeply unfriendly to their inhabitants. There's one where it sometimes rains indoors because the venting and vault-ceilings are so poorly executed. It's still lauded as great architecture.
Well, on the other end of the scale we have McMansions[0] - although part of the critiques[1] also feel like architect snobbery to me at times.
1. Badly-designed and badly-built (as in, objectively not up to some verifiable standard) homes built with the look of better-built homes but none of the construction quality those homes have.
2. Houses built by the newly-rich on small lots, in contrast with the houses inherited by the old money on larger tracts of land.
The inevitable and, perhaps, deliberate conflation between the two senses is pure class warfare, of the "Established upper class striking against the newly arrived" sense.
If you have a different style of window in every fitting without a strong aesthetic tie then you've just raised the build and maintenance cost of the property for no reason except cargo cultism.
I have never been in, nor seen a brutalist building that looked good and was functional. They may exist, but all the examples in my home town (and there are many) are terrible buildings best left in the scrapheap of history.
The Brutalists were disingenuous in many ways.
You'll hear the trope "Oh 'Brutalism' doesn't mean the English word brutal, it's derived from the French 'Béton brut!'" absolutely everywhere in print and on the internet.
This is lazy journalism parroting a faux-profound claim, frequently repeated by people trying to look sophisticated. It's e.g. all over the Wiki article on Brutalism and is probably in 10 different comments downthread.
The British people who coined and popularized the term (Ventris and the Smithsons, mostly) were native English speakers and were perfectly aware of the connotations/double meaning of the word "brutal" when designing buildings that ordinary people think look like supervillain lairs. The "French etymology" claim is just a twee shibboleth for architectural-world pretension.
That said, this site is hilarious.
I do agree that Brutalism can look oppressive, but it doesn't have to. The Barbican in London is a wonderful estate, with highly sought-after apartments.
I live in an old house with low ceilings and doorways I have to duck through, so the Barbican headroom seems comparatively luxurious.
Well, may be because qualities like these:
> beautiful and human
aren't considered to be good and desirable in architecture by everyone.
Brutalism is totalitarian architecture.
Not particularly. There were some brutalist buildings put up in the Soviet Union in the late 1970s and early 1980s [1] - but it absolutely was not a predominant architectural style, nothing at all comparable to brutalism's reign in the UK.
For example, an apartment building in Moscow [2] is notable just for being one of the very few examples of brutalist residential architecture in a city full of non-brutalist apartment buildings.
[1] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Брутализм#.D0.91.D1.80.D1.83.D... [2] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Дом_авиаторов_на_Беговой_улице
Personally, I love brutalism especially because of how impersonal, cold and unnatural it is. It's not about balance of power, but rather the inner emotional feeling and comfort.
At least in Brazil, the biggest name in Brutalism, Oscar Niemeyer, who brought us atrocities such as the Metropolitan Cathedral of Rio de Janeiro [1] and the whole shitstorm called Brasilia, has always been an avid communist.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_de_Janeiro_Cathedral#/medi...
Cost. You don't have to pay for and manage pesky craftsmen with their finicky details. Fabricate some concrete slabs in a factory, ship them to site and hoist them into place and you're done.
At the very least the art-deco guys tried to find some compromise with form, and Bauhaus did emphasise function at all costs.
Brutalism for its own sake reminds me of the dudes who hear the trope "nice guys finish last" and then go about acting the scoundrel just cause they think the opposite might be true. Maybe they get a few "wins" here and there but romantically, and to all practical intents and purposes it's a dead end.
That is not true. They went for a new blend of usefulness, looks and manufacturability. The look was just new and different (although similar to some precursors: De Stijl and some Russian constructivism), it wasn't ignored at all. Today, many things seem to be cargo-culted Bauhaus designs with many of the good aspects removed. Not all buildings with "simple" shapes look good.
But that's not what brutalism in a western architectural sense really is.
Big empty space when you enter, no place to hang your coat.
Concrete stairs everywhere, nothing to soften your steps and slippery in the winter with even just a bit of snow outside. Wood stairs might absorb the some moisture and eventually rot, but they're easy to replace. When our stairs finally started cracking they just stayed cracked until the entire stairwell needed to be replaced.
Everything looked the same => easy to get lost and hard to get a true sense of the building.
Brutalism is the worst thing to happen to architecture. I don't understand why anyone would do it. The soft pastels, flowered windows, and charming, modest architectural flourishes of the old parts of European cities like Vilnius are so much more beautiful and human. Or even some modern Asian cities like Tokyo where things are bright and modern, without being depressing and harsh.