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The Barbican

(arslan.io)
723 points farslan | 3 comments | 12 May 25 15:28 UTC | HN request time: 0.428s | source
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tetris11 ◴[12 May 25 16:26 UTC] No.43964795[source]▶
When people point to examples of bad brutalist architecture, I point them to the Barbican as a beautiful counter-example.
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munificent ◴[12 May 25 17:11 UTC] No.43965276[source]▶
My appreciation of Brutalist architecture seems to be in direct proportion to the number of plants it incorporates.

A Brutalist building with zero plants looks like a totalitarian prison hellscape designed to destroy your soul before it destroys your body.

A Brutalist building surrounded by trees with every nook containing greenery and vines dangling down looks like some kind of idyllic Star Wars planet populated by fuzzy hobbit-like creatures.

I'm not sure why I find this effect so strong. Perhaps because flat gray concrete is aesthetically ambiguous. When paired with greenery, it looks like stone. In it's absence, it looks like industrial mechanism.

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1. chilmers ◴[12 May 25 18:10 UTC] No.43965918[source]▶
Agreed. I think greenery and water enhances most architectural styles, but Brutalism is the only one that absolutely _requires_ it. I wonder how differently the perception of the style would be if the Brutalist estates in the UK that became a byword for grimness and ugliness had been embowered and properly maintained by their housing groups and local councils.
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2. pjc50 ◴[13 May 25 08:42 UTC] No.43970841[source]▶
For many modern buildings, the concept art used to sell it to the planners has a lot more plants in than actually get planted, or survive the first year.

> embowered

I think this is a typo for "empowered", but it's also a great word for covering something with trees.

3. BoxOfRain ◴[13 May 25 12:42 UTC] No.43972286[source]▶
There's only so far you can economically maintain a building of bare concrete in a damp maritime climate like the UK I think, the porous material is just going to be a nightmare when it doesn't dry out for much of the year.

I don't like Brutalism in general, but it looks a lot less ugly somewhere sunny like Spain or the South of France than the UK in my opinion.