Brutalism - yay or nay?

[OzzyKP]

It is just so amazing how an architectural style so damn hideous spread so far around the globe and ruined so many damn buildings in such a short period of time.

[VetLegion]

I'd donate money towards demolishing these three (the rest can pass):

[VetLegion]

From my home city. I don't know whether this counts as brutalism, but
it's made from concrete and it's downright ugly:

[Dinner]

San Diego's Qualcomm stadium - hard on the eyes imo

Yeah, it's pretty hard on the eyes. It was designed in the early 60's and built in the mid 60's in a neo-brutalist style. Lots of people want to see it blown up.

The Geisel Library though I do like. Students at UCSD call it the mother ship because it looks like a flying saucer landing.

[Dinner]

The Salk Institute for Biological Studies (named after Jonas Salk who invented the cure for Polio and founded the institute) is another neo-brutalist piece designed and built in the early 60's.

[N35t0r]

I like our National Library's building

My grandparents' (former) house was also a brutalist piece, and I loved it

[Dinner]

It is just so amazing how an architectural style so damn hideous spread so far around the globe and ruined so many damn buildings in such a short period of time.

It was cheap to build and so it became popular. Not popular with the people who had to look at them or work in them or, heaven forbid, live in one but cheap was very popular with developers.

[Cort Haus]

Neo-brutalist, Oerdin? That sounds like the architects gave up on it in 1961 and suddenly got re-enthused in 1962.

[Cort Haus]

I've become a fan of the Geisel Library thanks to this thread

[Dinner]

What I don't like is all the naked concrete of brutalism. I know that was the big attraction because it was dirt cheap and you didn't even have to paint it but it looks so monstrously ugly and most of the time there isn't even a green growing thing in sight.

[Dinner]

Neo-brutalist, Oerdin? That sounds like the architects gave up on it in 1961 and suddenly got re-enthused in 1962.

Well, I guess it is brutalist in that it is naked concrete but the design themes seem different from the more iconic and well known brutalist buildings so I've heard it called neo-brutalist but maybe its just a subgroup of brutalism. I honestly don't know how architects classify it.

[Dinner]

Mairie d'Ivry district in Paris, and it's mental. Almost medieval with its overhangs and gables

This I kind of like. Yes, it's still that ugly concrete but the designers at least got creative with shapes and found ways to incorporate some green bushes and trees.

[MRT144]

Nay.

[Cort Haus]

From my home city. I don't know whether this counts as brutalism, but
it's made from concrete and it's downright ugly:

****ing hell, that's grim.

I think it's fair to say that it is brutalist. Rough concrete. Geometric. Striking. Angular. I checked, and it's definitely not Constructivist, International Style, Expressionist, Postmodern or Deconstructionist. It also has the dirty, gloomy emotive negative connotations often associated with a style that was originally a post-war budget saver.

Can Barnabus defend it, that's the question?

[N35t0r]

And with A/C units sticking out.