OMG that's such an aesthetic!
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I am still trying to figure out who unironically likes Brutalism. Other than Tankies of course.
I am just thankful that where I live they are using modern building techniques to get an old school look. They just built a new apartment complex in my town, and it was built with modern materials to get all of the benefits that come with that, but externally they made it look like it was built with brick and stone (to be fair, parts of it were). Its actually pretty good looking.
Brutalism has one redeeming feature: It is durable. If you like brutalism for its overkill in structural durability, that's perfectly reasonable. A bird can shatter a glass wall flying into it, but a nice yard-thick cement one?
An additional plus to brutalism is it is extremely simple and straightforward. Every design is "box", except the REALLY creative ones, which is "cylinder". That makes it much harder to screw up and turn into a ticking deathtrap when postmodernist intersectional studies majors get hired as architects because we live in hell. They are postmodernists, they can make only pain, failure, and despair, so diverting their output into entirely "despair" can possibly spare the pain and failure aspects.
The Wall is a bit of a combination modernist-brutalism mix. It's all exposed metal and cylinders, and can look perfectly impressive, for its purpose in demoralizing those who'd attempt to cross it, intimidate those near it, and fuel despair in those around it.
But not when built by communists. Most of it was built sub standard to begin with and allowed to decay from day one.
Compared to their other works, at least some of those buildings are still standing. The farms and shit? Already long gone in less than 30 years.
(Shrug)
My understanding is Ghetto in the Sky has never had difficulty staying near capacity.
Accountants. Brutalist structures, having the ability to be thrown up from pre-fab concrete slabs, make for brilliant cheap, utterly shite, mass housing. That's why tankies love them.
Me. I unironically think it looks cool when done sparingly and well. For a good example, look at the game Control. That being said, I also like the hyper modern aesthetic alongside more classical architecture.
Most brutalist architecture looks like absolute dogshit, and doesn’t match the purpose of the building so like why?
I enjoy looking at pictures of Brutalist architecture, even stuff like in the OP, because I'm from eastern Europe, I grew up in this kind of environment, and it gives me nostalgic feelings. You can take a nice picture of a Brutalist building, with good lighting, and when I see one of these, it reminds me of childhood.
Also by the way, that photo of the commieblocks in the OP looks terrible, but it's taken in winter and there's a crane. At least in my town, these commieblocks might look ugly on their own, but commies had the advantage of not having to worry about property rights, so these high-rise apartment blocks are surrounded by greenery. Trees and parks and big patches of grass aren't part of brutalism, but they're linked together in my mind because that's how it was done here.
Nowadays, modern property developers mostly build shit where the buildings look as ugly as these, if not worse, and on top of that there's not a single tree in sight, because they have to pay for land and it's expensive. I'm far right, but I honestly shudder to think what the housing situation in this country would be like today if literal fucking Bolsheviks didn't spend half a century building Panelaky.
I do love modern efforts to build with actual aesthetics, though. Hungary seems to be making huge steps forward there.
It's interesting how people demand diversity in everything, and then turn around and throw this dismal uniform aesthetic at everyone.
They don't want diversity of thought. It's why everything creative they do (architecture, fiction, etc.) turns out the same.
Brutalist architecture is dope. The commies can't ruin it just by using it once.
Eh, it's like the cubicle thing. Office cubicles were originally invented as a way to improve the workspace ... but they lend themselves so easily to cubicle farms that that's the way they are just about universally implemented.
Similarly, Brutalist architecture doesn't have to be implemented as some abomination you'd never choose for something you actually use ... but it almost always gets implemented that way.
To be fair, large, low cost apartment blocks tend to look like shit no matter who designed them. You can only repeat a cheap-to-build pattern so many times before it looks bleak and boring.
It's not like there aren't visually intersting examples of the style;
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d6/1981_BostonCityHall_byLebovich8_HABS_MA1176.jpg/800px-1981_BostonCityHall_byLebovich8_HABS_MA1176.jpg
Your linked example is universally reviled andthere have been tonnes of petitions for it to be torn down.
It looks interesting the first time you see it, and depressing the next 100.
Boston City Hall is a dump and they sadly tore down the most interesting part of downtown Boston to build it (over 200 Victorian commercial buildings including the entire Scollay Square neighborhood).
There was a lot of it In my home town.
Skarne Blocks. Hexagonal in shape, spacious houses, apartments for the north Americans. Lots of brutalist architecture, pre stressed concrete, etc.
Lots of open spaces, really nice. Until the housing authority moved the human vermin in. Lifts used as toilets. Bin stores used as toilets. Dog excrement everywhere. Trash everywhere.
Yeah, brutalist architecture is nice. But I wouldn't want to live near it.