Yeah, some people trying to rebuild the reputation of this era are suggesting substituting terms like Heroic for Brutal. And you can see what they mean, not least at universities they were trying to convey the sense that great, world-changing things were happening in these buildings.
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Is that at Easter Island University?
I actually kind of like this. The Suny Buffalo one that is.
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The SUNY system was established 75 years ago, so many of the campuses built in the 60’s had libraries and dorms in this style. SUNY Oswego has a whole brutalist quad, including the Penfield library that’s fabulous.
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McGill, McLennan Library
Okay, so it’s not in the US.
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I note I think this photos were taken not very far from each other, with Lauinger just to the left of Healy
You are correct, Lau is just to the left of Healy. Unfortunately, brutalism just isn’t for me. One thing I took away from my Georgetown visit is my preference for campus uniformity, something that Georgetown lacks. Healy hall is majestic, but Lau right next door just sticks out like a sore thumb (in my opinion, of course). The rest of Georgetown’s buildings were a mixture of all different types of architecture, with nothing else that looks much like Healy and nothing else that looks anything like Lau. Contrast this with a place like Boston College, where all the buildings are uniform. That aesthetic is much more my type - but to each to own.
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Boston University Law School
George Sherman Union
Mugar library
All three are referred to as the Sert Complex and are adjacent to each other. They helped BU get the nickname “Big and Ugly”.
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Built as part of the Christian Science Church complex, now part of Northeastern University.
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Why has nobody yet mentioned UIC? They have actually tried to redo some of their building so that they don’t look like prisons, but…
Here is the main administration building
SES building (it is awful inside)
Behavioral Science building (it’s worse inside)
More Behavioral Science Building
Even more BSB (it’s actually built like a rat’s maze inside)
Taft Hall…
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Penfield, Hewett, Lanigan, Mahar, and Tyler…a quint!
Snygg as well. The great SUNY expansion is a Brutalist wonderland!
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It’s a dorm complex; basically a giant human habitrail.
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Yes!! And set on the shores of the magnificent Lake Ontario- what a cool campus!
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Brutal (lol!) When I first saw it I thought it was a parking garage.
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I am not a fan of brutalist architecture, but I have always loved this building. My dad went to grad school at UCSD and he and my mom would watch a not particularly good detective show called Simon and Simon because this library was in the credits.
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This is Boston University’s brand new Computer and Data Sciences Building. Not Brutalist but i wonder if 40 years from now people will look at it like they look at Brutalism today. “What were they thinking?”
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I personally think that is pretty cool.
But you are probably right.
There is a very well-documented cycle where some current style is popular, then a few years later styles have moved on. And then for a longish period, that once-popular style is considered increasingly bad–not cool, just outdated and unfashionable. And this is the death zone for a lot of buildings, which get torn down or “modernized” in ways that hopelessly muddle the original design.
And then things start turning around. The merely outdated starts becoming considered historic. Preservationists start organizing to save prominent examples. And so on. And eventually, they get to the point the surviving examples are highly valued.
Brutalism went through the death zone and is now (maybe) starting to transition to its historic period. And very likely, the contemporary designs popular today are going to through the same thing.
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