[aclimatt]

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.

[AareyBaba]

What the buildings look like in color

National Theatre https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a8/Pr...

The Transgas building https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Pr...

Koospol (The CUBE) https://s3.amazonaws.com/gs-waymarking-images/315ed165-5a22-...

DBK Department Store https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/98/Pr...

[fourtrees]

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.

[hitekker]

I like the cube one. The rest are pretty dull and are in line with the GP’s sentiment.

[jdavis703]

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]

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

[mc32]

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]

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.

[ocschwar]

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.

[Radiant]

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.

[kfprt]

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

[sofixa]

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.