<story><title>Brutalism is Back</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/t-magazine/design/brutalist-architecture-revival.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mdasen</author><text>Part of the problem is that concrete doesn&amp;#x27;t age well.  The building might start as looking ok, but quickly becomes discolored.  It&amp;#x27;s worsened by the fact that many of the buildings made no accommodation for how they wouldn&amp;#x27;t allow water to just drip and discolor them even worse.&lt;p&gt;The article talks about them belonging to &amp;quot;an era of muscular, public-minded development&amp;quot;.  Later, it says, &amp;quot;Brutalism wasn’t fully popular with a broad public, whose members were never convinced that awe-inspiring concrete dourness was what society was truly missing, and it ultimately depended on the good will of sympathetic planners&amp;quot;.  So, actually, it harkens back to an era when politicians and planners felt that they didn&amp;#x27;t need to be accountable.&lt;p&gt;The worst part of the article is when it argues, &amp;quot;THERE’S NO QUESTION that Brutalism looks exceedingly cool. [author&amp;#x27;s emphasis]&amp;quot;.   I think most of the broad public would disagree - and the article basically says that.  Brutalism is just gross and dirty to me.  There&amp;#x27;s nothing interesting or cool about it for me.  Brutalism means putting a lot of money into something that&amp;#x27;s crappy.  As rayiner points out (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=12688217&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=12688217&lt;/a&gt;), it isn&amp;#x27;t honest like the article portrays it as.  The buildings are often needlessly complicated or purposely ugly.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>usrusr</author><text>Done right, aging concrete can be very beautiful. It blends with nature, slowly taking up color and texture of natural rock. Unfortunately, the &amp;quot;doing it right&amp;quot; has to happen at the drawing board, where people tend to picture pristine surfaces of perfectly even coloring. There, they are easily tempted to go for those minimalist shapes that exaggerate shinyness when new (that&amp;#x27;s why people go for that look) as much as raggedness when not. The difference between patina and grit happens before building even starts.&lt;p&gt;If I had a few man-decades of developer time to burn, without any chance of ever seeing adequate return, my dream software project would be a tool that analyzes architectural model data, simulates aging and creates an &amp;quot;aging forecast&amp;quot; version ready for rendering. This could help architects and clients to avoid badly aging designs if they choose to factor that into their decisions. Or at least it could generally promote the idea that sustainable is not just about day to day energy use but also about long term attractivity .</text></comment>
<story><title>Brutalism is Back</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/t-magazine/design/brutalist-architecture-revival.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mdasen</author><text>Part of the problem is that concrete doesn&amp;#x27;t age well.  The building might start as looking ok, but quickly becomes discolored.  It&amp;#x27;s worsened by the fact that many of the buildings made no accommodation for how they wouldn&amp;#x27;t allow water to just drip and discolor them even worse.&lt;p&gt;The article talks about them belonging to &amp;quot;an era of muscular, public-minded development&amp;quot;.  Later, it says, &amp;quot;Brutalism wasn’t fully popular with a broad public, whose members were never convinced that awe-inspiring concrete dourness was what society was truly missing, and it ultimately depended on the good will of sympathetic planners&amp;quot;.  So, actually, it harkens back to an era when politicians and planners felt that they didn&amp;#x27;t need to be accountable.&lt;p&gt;The worst part of the article is when it argues, &amp;quot;THERE’S NO QUESTION that Brutalism looks exceedingly cool. [author&amp;#x27;s emphasis]&amp;quot;.   I think most of the broad public would disagree - and the article basically says that.  Brutalism is just gross and dirty to me.  There&amp;#x27;s nothing interesting or cool about it for me.  Brutalism means putting a lot of money into something that&amp;#x27;s crappy.  As rayiner points out (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=12688217&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=12688217&lt;/a&gt;), it isn&amp;#x27;t honest like the article portrays it as.  The buildings are often needlessly complicated or purposely ugly.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pimeys</author><text>&amp;gt; Part of the problem is that concrete doesn&amp;#x27;t age well. The building might start as looking ok, but quickly becomes discolored. It&amp;#x27;s worsened by the fact that many of the buildings made no accommodation for how they wouldn&amp;#x27;t allow water to just drip and discolor them even worse.&lt;p&gt;Funny how people see things differently. For my eye the discolored old concrete buildings look very inspiring and I guess it was the original idea that the buildings show their age...</text></comment>