> A building which does not learn, its unfortunate inhabitants must adapt to it.

That's one of the most interesting and depressing parts of post-WW2 architecture (it's present in certain "high culture" architecture before, but not as ubiquitous). It seems narcissistic, entirely focused on what the architect thought would look cool, and completely detached from the individuals who would actually be using the space.

There's a Ludwig Mies van der Rohe building near hear, and the usage of space is simply terrible. It's only a few stories tall, and you have to either wait a long time for the slow and unpleasant elevators to arrive, or rummage around several sets of doors behind them to find the hidden stairs. There's another "urban renewal project" nearby designed by I.M. Pei, and it's a huge deadzone in the middle of a bustling area. It feels almost like finding a dead city from a Lovecraft story - you have these empty huge expanses of concrete that seem much too large for humans. Places where people would congregate, like retail, is deliberately placed underground and away from the road, making the whole area feel abandoned.

Say what you will about modern architecture, but I find it much more pleasant than the stuff that was coming out post-war.

It's one thing to decide for cool instead of beautiful (or useful) but a whole another thing to get paid for it. Those architects won a contest, right? One the premise of... what? We can build the ugliest, yay? Humans are just details? What exactly is the selling point of brutalism for a communal living area? You want to design your own bunker, be my guest. But something paid by the public should serve the public, not be a practical joke on the citizens. Yet another failure of the local authorities, move on...

Some of it was needing to build cheap, low-maintenance buildings quickly, to replace what had been destroyed in the war. There's nothing wrong with making a considered decision to build something ugly and cheap because getting usable space is a higher priority than making it look good. But when you try to make a virtue of that by pretending ugly is pretty, then you're making a major mistake.

Makes fully sense indeed. Ironically enough, what is built nowadays around me is exactly the other way around: personal space buildings look at least half-way passable, and public/office buildings are all those gray square turds, with some glass. But yes this is Switzerland, birthplace of Le Corbusier...

Steward Brand, "How Buildings Learn".

https://bookshop.org/p/books/how-buildings-learn-what-happen...