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Every time a holier-than-thou architectural magazine waxes poetic about the beauty of "poor forgotten brutalism", they make their point by showing extremely wel

Every time a holier-than-thou architectural magazine waxes poetic about the beauty of "poor forgotten brutalism", they make their point by showing extremely well-cropped, always black and white, high contrast images to make the shadows pop. And then say wow isn't it a shame we're tearing these down? It's because that's not what crumbling Soviet-era buildings look like. Sure they're fun to photograph. I've seen these buildings from Prague to Prizren and they are categorically awful, as most others agree. Concrete doesn't aesthetically age well. Preserve one or two for historical importance and raze the rest. It's fair to open dialogue about the importance of preserving historical buildings even if most people think they're ugly. After all, we've committed countless "mistakes" in the past when taste has changed (Penn Station anyone?). But the least we can do is start with some honest photography.

jdavis703 5y ago
Concrete requires protection against water intrusion. Unfortunately everyone from Prizren to Surfside doesn’t want to pay. That doesn’t mean it can’t look nice. The DC subway is brutalist, and very well might be the most beautiful subway system in the US.
- sokols 5y ago
  You can be sure for Prizren yes, although there are far less brutalist buildings there :).
Radiant 5y ago
I'd agree with you if you were talking about generic "commieblock" buildings, but the ones presented in this article are pretty original and have a monumental feel to them. Pretty sad to see your sentiment upvoted this high on HN.
mc32 5y ago
I'm not even sure why exposed concrete architecture took off. It's not economical, it looks rudimentary and institutional (functional without adornment). But, it costs more, is tougher to maintain, and has drawbacks --like massive loads which must be accounted for when building them. Raw concrete makes sense for dams and hydroelectric projects because you need mass to hold water. Otherwise, it's a poor choice and in today's climate with carbon footprint considerations, it should be a choice of last resort.
- dirtyid 5y ago
  Concrete = fast and cheap for post WW2 reconstruction. Which built up excess of labour / expertise in concrete construction that also spread abroad with post war emmigration. It's still the only economical choice for many regions. Not everyone has access to cheap, renewable lumber.
  - mc32 5y ago
    Concrete is useful. Large imposing structures poured in lace like a slurry wall doesn’t make sense. As a component of the structure yes, but not as used in typical unfinished concrete of that style. Steel and glass is cheaper, easier to maintain and has more flexible design. Plus it doesn’t look dystopian.
    - dirtyid 5y ago
      >Steel and glass is cheaper If memory serve, it wasn't at the time. There wasn't sufficient industrial capacity for steel + glass post war to address scale of ongoing construction demands. Building form work out of wood and pouring concrete from local aggregate was cheaper in terms of labour, materials and logistics. It became self reinforcing with economies of scale as concrete supply chains popped up regionally. Which is building science in a nutshell, do what makes most economic sense at the time. Usually limited by transportation costs. Ergo cladding eventually replaced by cheap light weight building envelop systems due to increase in global trade and sourcing from Asia. IMO applying dystopian to Brutalism is an label applied after the fact due to various cultural factors. The style itself was continuation of modernism. Of course modernism since inception has been a friction point between academia and popular sentiment. I do think many architects did delude / post rationalize concrete aesthetics to a degree, in no small response to fact that they had to work with it out of economic neccessity. Architecture school is very good at brainwashing students who entered due to love of classical aesthetics into embracing modern aethetics, because there just aren't much opportunites to build outside of dominant building systems of the era. So designers learned to love and celebrate concrete.
ocschwar 5y ago
I love how the most beautiful old quarters in the Baltic states are there because the Soviet Union "punished" those cities and didn't get Kruschyovas built there.
kfprt 5y ago
Brutalism was just another communist crime, razing old europe so they could stamp their manifestations of authoritarianism on it.
- sofixa 5y ago
  Brutalism was popular in France too, withmany extremely popular proponents (Le Corbusier to name one). Many big projects in the 50-60-70-80s were built in a brutalist style. Most have aged terribly though mostly IMHO due to poor maintennce.
  - kfprt 5y ago
    When a classical building is run down people flock to visit it. Pantheon/Coliseum. Brutalist buildings we're ugly and depressing as built.
AareyBaba 5y ago
What the buildings look like in color National Theatre https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a8/Praha_Nova_Scena.jpg/1280px-Praha_Nova_Scena.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a8/Pr... The Transgas building https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Praha_Transgas_8.jpg/1920px-Praha_Transgas_8.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Pr... Koospol (The CUBE) https://s3.amazonaws.com/gs-waymarking-images/315ed165-5a22-40a1-9271-db4fce13069f.jpg https://s3.amazonaws.com/gs-waymarking-images/315ed165-5a22-... DBK Department Store https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/98/Praha_DBK_6.jpg/1920px-Praha_DBK_6.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/98/Pr...
- hitekker 5y ago
  I like the cube one. The rest are pretty dull and are in line with the GP’s sentiment.
- fourtrees 5y ago
  Brutalism produced disasters and masterpieces like any other artistic trend. Let's do what we've been doing for thousands of years and keep the masterpieces and a few of the disasters to show the range of the style and move on. Badly designed, built, or photographed buildings exists regardless of their style. You don't have to go too far (in the US at least) to find examples of awful neoclassicism for instance.
rospaya 5y ago
It's basically masturbation for western audiences that get to see weird retro buildings without any context that could tell them the whole story, especially if it's in Eastern Europe. I regularly see buildings I've been in on r/urbanhell that are great places to live but just look different and are located in the poor wastelands east of Vienna. This is shockingly evident with the "spomeniks" trend that is basically recreating Edward Said's orientalism but for the Balkans. Westerners come on a cheap Ryanair flight, see a building and write endless blogposts about the ancient bloodthirsty peoples that once built these alien artifacts. Black and white photos included.

jdavis703 5y ago

Concrete requires protection against water intrusion. Unfortunately everyone from Prizren to Surfside doesn’t want to pay. That doesn’t mean it can’t look nice. The DC subway is brutalist, and very well might be the most beautiful subway system in the US.

sokols 5y ago
You can be sure for Prizren yes, although there are far less brutalist buildings there :).

Radiant 5y ago

I'd agree with you if you were talking about generic "commieblock" buildings, but the ones presented in this article are pretty original and have a monumental feel to them. Pretty sad to see your sentiment upvoted this high on HN.

mc32 5y ago

I'm not even sure why exposed concrete architecture took off. It's not economical, it looks rudimentary and institutional (functional without adornment). But, it costs more, is tougher to maintain, and has drawbacks --like massive loads which must be accounted for when building them. Raw concrete makes sense for dams and hydroelectric projects because you need mass to hold water. Otherwise, it's a poor choice and in today's climate with carbon footprint considerations, it should be a choice of last resort.

dirtyid 5y ago
Concrete = fast and cheap for post WW2 reconstruction. Which built up excess of labour / expertise in concrete construction that also spread abroad with post war emmigration. It's still the only economical choice for many regions. Not everyone has access to cheap, renewable lumber.
- mc32 5y ago
  Concrete is useful. Large imposing structures poured in lace like a slurry wall doesn’t make sense. As a component of the structure yes, but not as used in typical unfinished concrete of that style. Steel and glass is cheaper, easier to maintain and has more flexible design. Plus it doesn’t look dystopian.
  - dirtyid 5y ago
    >Steel and glass is cheaper If memory serve, it wasn't at the time. There wasn't sufficient industrial capacity for steel + glass post war to address scale of ongoing construction demands. Building form work out of wood and pouring concrete from local aggregate was cheaper in terms of labour, materials and logistics. It became self reinforcing with economies of scale as concrete supply chains popped up regionally. Which is building science in a nutshell, do what makes most economic sense at the time. Usually limited by transportation costs. Ergo cladding eventually replaced by cheap light weight building envelop systems due to increase in global trade and sourcing from Asia. IMO applying dystopian to Brutalism is an label applied after the fact due to various cultural factors. The style itself was continuation of modernism. Of course modernism since inception has been a friction point between academia and popular sentiment. I do think many architects did delude / post rationalize concrete aesthetics to a degree, in no small response to fact that they had to work with it out of economic neccessity. Architecture school is very good at brainwashing students who entered due to love of classical aesthetics into embracing modern aethetics, because there just aren't much opportunites to build outside of dominant building systems of the era. So designers learned to love and celebrate concrete.

ocschwar 5y ago

I love how the most beautiful old quarters in the Baltic states are there because the Soviet Union "punished" those cities and didn't get Kruschyovas built there.

kfprt 5y ago

Brutalism was just another communist crime, razing old europe so they could stamp their manifestations of authoritarianism on it.

sofixa 5y ago
Brutalism was popular in France too, withmany extremely popular proponents (Le Corbusier to name one). Many big projects in the 50-60-70-80s were built in a brutalist style. Most have aged terribly though mostly IMHO due to poor maintennce.
- kfprt 5y ago
  When a classical building is run down people flock to visit it. Pantheon/Coliseum. Brutalist buildings we're ugly and depressing as built.

AareyBaba 5y ago

What the buildings look like in color National Theatre https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a8/Praha_Nova_Scena.jpg/1280px-Praha_Nova_Scena.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a8/Pr... The Transgas building https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Praha_Transgas_8.jpg/1920px-Praha_Transgas_8.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Pr... Koospol (The CUBE) https://s3.amazonaws.com/gs-waymarking-images/315ed165-5a22-40a1-9271-db4fce13069f.jpg https://s3.amazonaws.com/gs-waymarking-images/315ed165-5a22-... DBK Department Store https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/98/Praha_DBK_6.jpg/1920px-Praha_DBK_6.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/98/Pr...

hitekker 5y ago
I like the cube one. The rest are pretty dull and are in line with the GP’s sentiment.
fourtrees 5y ago
Brutalism produced disasters and masterpieces like any other artistic trend. Let's do what we've been doing for thousands of years and keep the masterpieces and a few of the disasters to show the range of the style and move on. Badly designed, built, or photographed buildings exists regardless of their style. You don't have to go too far (in the US at least) to find examples of awful neoclassicism for instance.

rospaya 5y ago

It's basically masturbation for western audiences that get to see weird retro buildings without any context that could tell them the whole story, especially if it's in Eastern Europe. I regularly see buildings I've been in on r/urbanhell that are great places to live but just look different and are located in the poor wastelands east of Vienna. This is shockingly evident with the "spomeniks" trend that is basically recreating Edward Said's orientalism but for the Balkans. Westerners come on a cheap Ryanair flight, see a building and write endless blogposts about the ancient bloodthirsty peoples that once built these alien artifacts. Black and white photos included.