earnest-peer:
thefutureoneandall:
another-normal-anomaly:
whenyouw:
When sketch becomes reality //
The Ray and Maria Stata Center (MIT) by Frank O.Gehry
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
The world’s most expensive pile of hideous garbage. Now with classrooms in it!
The Stata Center is an insult to the basic concept of architecture. If you could design a piece of art to personally offend an abstract concept, this would be it.
I have bitched about brutalism before, and I will do so again. But brutalism is supposed to be livable and pleasant for those in the building, and occasionally it even succeeds. The Stata Center is what happens when someone who wants to make symbolic art about confusion and unusability is accidentally permitted to make art out of people’s offices and classrooms.
It might sound like I’m exaggerating. I’m really not. There were some unplanned issues with Stata, like the failure to build in proper drainage or downslopes for snow. In Boston. Which got the developers sued. But those are minor problems compared to the intentional stuff.
This is the plan for floor seven of the Stata Center. See how it’s two completely distinct sections? Floors seven, eight, and nine are actually two distinct components, so walking from one end of nine to the other involves six flights of stairs. And even below that, well, here’s floor four. You know what description I’ve never wanted to give to an room? “Jagged.” But here’s Frank goddamn Gehry, designing two rooms with a combined total of twenty eight exterior walls.
I could go on, but I’ll restrain myself. The Stata Center is an interesting building. It’s just sort of a shame when exotic concept art happens on people’s living spaces instead of on canvas.
I’m not a real libertarian, but I still immediately thought “this is what spending other people’s mobey on other people’s buildings looks like”.
Also, could you point to some liveable brutalism? I’m a little doubtful about that.
Also, could you point to some liveable brutalism? I’m a little doubtful about that.
I really can’t… By “supposed to be livable and pleasant” I meant “when fans of brutalism praise it that’s what they keep telling me”. Well, first they tell me about its artistic and historical significance, and then when I say “but it’s not just a painting, some poor bastard has to live there”, then they tell me the “livable and pleasant for the inhabitants” bit.
I don’t find it especially accurate, but it’s still more noble than Stata, which is basically justified with “wouldn’t it be funny if I made people work in a literal maze?”
My experience with brutalism is that it’s more hostile to the actual inhabitants than it is to onlookers. I don’t actually object to it for the usual ‘eyesore’ reasons, I object to it because people keep making me use the damn buildings.
You nailed my impression with “spending other people’s money” – I think it’s reason brutalism is generally reserved for universities, schools, state houses, and train stations. They get to hire a big-name architect, receive lots of favorable press, and have your building featured in travel guides and Wikipedia. In return, the people who live there get to inhabit a grim box with disastrous energy efficiency, no natural light, wasted space, and no capacity for retrofitting or modification, which will need to be entirely torn down when the rebar rusts (and you won’t even know if that happened).
I’ll give brutalism a few passes for its age. The complete impenetrability for wifi and cell service isn’t something they could have foreseen, energy efficiency wasn’t on anyone’s mind, most of it was built before the rebar rusting issue was known, and most pre-2000 architecture failed to anticipate “everyone wants to have access to outlets anywhere they sit down”.
But it’s still true that brutalism is much less able to adjust to these changes than its contemporaries, and that’s not an accident. It’s high modernist ideology at its worst – buildings designed to impose on their surroundings, making practical decisions for ideological reasons, and refusing to concede any chance of needing modification down the line.
I feel a bit strongly here, obviously, and I ought to at least try answering the question.
I’m told the Barbican is actually quite nice, and Bradfield Hall is the least-bad brutalist structure I’ve lived in. It’s brick, so it’s not falling down, and it actually fits fairly nicely in its space. While it suffers the usual lack of light (the current Wiki page is apparently vandalized to say the inhabitants ‘despise’ it), ideology was at least welded to purpose – the windowless rooms are climate-controlled laboratories.
I think @anaisnein is a big brutalism fan, and might be kind enough to share a favorite example of a livable building?
I am abroad on my phone on shitty wifi so can’t find you a good residential example right now. I must say I generally like it best as a style for grand public spaces like museums. I will just say though, lack of light is absolutely not a universal or necessary characteristic of the style. You have experienced shitty brutalist architecture, which is atrocious. I only have like six pics total to choose from already sitting on my phone, but
Edited to add that Frank Gehry should be taken out back and summarily shot. That’s not brutalist, it’s pure bullshit wanking.
fearlessstateofmind backup 