broke: brutalism is bad because big scary concrete block
woke: brutalism is good because [40 minute architecture history lecture ensues]
bespoke: brutalism is good because it means a building was designed with an honest-to-god aesthetic instead of purely on the basis of "we need X square feet, what's the cheapest and fastest you can cram that in without getting us on the news," which makes it a marvel and a delight no matter how goddamn gray the result is
What are your thoughts on moss and lichens growing on the concrete block buildings
Depends on the kind. I dislike the yellow moss stains on flat surfaces if they contrast, but love the healthy green and growing colonies(?).
Growing them in interstices looks cool too.
Eco-Brutalism FTW. (← except for the part where weird architects want to put whole-ass trees on buildings, because this is obviously dumb)
Trees on buildings look cool in art but they're kind of like the Solar Roadways thing - yes, it's nice to have trees/solar panels, but the "innovation" is just putting them in an absurdly impractical location
I'd honestly love the trees growing on things or even the yellow moss stains. I understand people really do like brutalism, taste is a deeply personal thing, but I personally do not enjoy buildings that are just all gray cubes. The shiny geometric look is fine with me, and even giant concrete blocks can look nice if they let people put colors on them - my train to work goes past some buildings along those lines that have years of built-up graffiti layers, and the effect is quite nice. But when they're just gray, I don't find the effect much of an improvement over Generic Office Building.
It's a matter of which trees (and what the word "tree" means, i guess). Trees are heavy, require heavy soil, and large space both vertically and horizontally. The dumb part is in solarpunk artists and architects liking to make unrealistic designs where the problem is sci-fi'd away, especially for things like apartment complexes where the maintenance, landscaping and logistics of vertical forests are ignored.
Contrast this with, say, a public library/plaza/whatever project that you partially turn into a green park that you know the Government will take care of for the long term, or with shrubs and/or smaller trees that won't attempt to destroy your small terrace before dying.
I guess we should ask an horticulturist about it.
giant concrete blocks can look nice if they let people put colors on them
I dream of a (Eco-)Brutalism-Bowellism crossover, but that's probably even further in the Unpopular Opinion™ territory lol.
Ah, yeah, I definitely was not thinking "let's just slap a redwood forest on the roof!" but I've seen buildings that had small-growing trees spaced out, probably with a lot of attention on exactly where they were relative to the structural support columns, and smaller plants around them.
Bowellism is... kind of odd, but it's visually interesting in a way that just Concrete Block Time isn't. I know not everything's going to have the same budget as the Centre Pompidou, but that "did they leave the scaffolding up?" look with the individual elements color-coded is really cool to me.
