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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

There was never anything particularly functional or honest about brutalist architecture. A Mies van der Rohe skyscraper is functional and honest: not much more than the structural steel necessary to keep the thing upright and the glass windows necessary to let in light for the humans inside.

Compare with monstrosities like the old Prentice hospital in Chicago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prentice_Women%27s_Hospital_Bu.... Nothing functional about the tiny windows, or weirdly-shaped circular interior spaces, or wrapping the whole thing in a material (concrete) that doesn't hold up well to a snowy climate. Just architectural wankery.

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I think Mies van der Rohe is a little bit of a blowhard. Look how he faked the "structural" steel in the Seagram Building. It is as much a decoration as a marble facade.

Mies would have wanted the steel frame to be visible to all; however, American building codes required that all structural steel be covered in a fireproof material (steel, with its low melting point, will fail in fires), usually concrete. This hid the structure of the building – something Mies wanted at all costs to avoid – so Mies used non-structural bronze-toned I-beams to suggest structure instead. These are visible from the outside of the building, and run vertically like mullions in the large glass windows. Now, observers look up and see a fake structure tinted bronze covering a real steel structure.

http://www.newyork-visit.com/new-york-seagram-building/

Not only does that page not have any photos of the building, but it, most noxiously, disables text highlighting and right click.

Wikipedia article for the building: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagram_Building

And it "has the worst Energy Star rating of any building in New York at 3 out of 100". "Functional", you say?

Yes, I noticed and was annoyed as well. I have the Quick Javascript Switcher extension installed, for their own good.

Even worse: it doesn't disable highlighting, it just tries to overwrite click-drag with a swipe gesture to navigate between (?) articles.

UX at its worst.

I don't know exactly what 'functional' and 'honest' mean when applied to architecture any more than I do when 'organic' is bandied about. I do know that the bronze mullions Mies van der Rohe designed on the Segrams are purely decorative and the high bit on the aesthetics included running all the lights all night long as a signature statement.

It's not that I'm against modernist glass and steel. Bunshaft's Lever House sits on the same corner as Mies work and is one of my favorite architectural works. I'm not even against glass houses, though I think Johnson's earlier one is a better design than Farnsworth...if at least for not being built in a flood plain.

I don't know exactly what 'functional' and 'honest' mean when applied to architecture

Well, they did provide a definition for "honest" - that it looks like it's built with the materials it's actually built with.

Of course, so did stone houses for centuries, and they still managed to look pleasing in the process.

What I mean when I say I don't know what 'honest' means, is that I don't think that people using that word mean that a house clad in vinyl siding that looks like it is clad in vinyl siding is honest. Nor do they mean that Roman architecture of the classical constructed as opus latericium [1] is dishonest (or doubly dishonest if is still clad with marble).

I don't think 'honesty' (and 'functionality') are an improvement on the Vitruvian, 'firmitas, utilitas, and venustas'[2] for no other reason than Vitruvius backed the concepts up with examples and the examples included everything from fortifications to bridges to temples...which in map pretty well as typologies in which each takes priority over the others.

Perhaps it's because Vitruvius honored those generals, the city, and his gods rather than bricks.[3]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_latericium

[2]: firmness, commodity, and delight

[3]: https://www.yatzer.com/even-brick-wants-be-something-louis-k...

Flat roofs are also architectural wankery here in Canada, but they are more and more popular these days. My friend built a contemporary and modern house with the flat roof. Thought they were having troubles with leaks, but then learnt it was condensation because of a lack of an attic.

This is a design defect, not a flat roof problem per se. It is entirely possible to build a house with no attic and no condensation problem.

But that requires the architect to have a rudimentary understanding of thermodynamics, or to actually listen when the engineer tells them what is possible and what is not.

If flat roofs make condensation problems more likely and require more design work to avoid them, that's absolutely a flat roof problem.

Multi-story buildings are harder to design than one-level projects, it doesn't mean there's inherent problem in them. You just have to follow the books and do the math.

Condensation, airflow and thermal exchange issues are dealt with in any construction engineering curriculum, there are ready solutions to most configurations. If you don't follow them the issue is not with flat roof but with your lack of professionalism: moving condensation to the attic isn't a solution (especially since so many upgrade them to inhabited lofts anyway).

I don't understand why you'd use flat roofs in canada, doesn't it rain and snow a ton? That sounds like recipe for leaking and collapsing roofs compared to angled ones.

Incidentally, mono-pitched roofs seem oddly rare, people seem to go straight from flat to gabled or hipped, even in relatively temperate places where snow doesn't pile up much and a relatively shallow slope would be more than enough to handle rain and snow.

Kinda late, but the reason is building height restrictions. It lets you squeeze in an additional level in urban areas like central Toronto. Plus some people like the modern look I guess.

I'm amazed that's a hospital, I would have guessed it was a parking garage if you showed me that picture with no context.

> or wrapping the whole thing in a material (concrete) that doesn't hold up well to a snowy climate.

Wasn't the idea here was that it was cheap and quick to lay out concrete which is why it was so popular the post-WW2 building boom? This seems like a highly functional approach (see cost effective) - for the time period. But clearly not the material one should use when utilizing a brutalist approach in modern buildings.

Not sure why they made the windows like that other than a sci-fi style exterior. Not all brutalist buildings have tiny windows though. Here's one from Toronto (a city full of brutalist architecture due to the era it exploded in growth): http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3026/2410356675_5df008e7f2.jp...

Concrete is the material that defines the brutalist approach. The name comes from the French, "beton brut" - raw concrete. You can't do brutalism without concrete.

I agree overall, but am curious: Having only briefly lived in colder climes, what about concrete doesn't hold up well in snow?

Freezing water expands in little cracks and makes them bigger.

Water leaks into cracks and cervices when its warm and then freezes when its cold. Since the ice expands and concrete has negligable tensile strength the cracks and crevices expand even further and the material begins to chip away and crumble.

Water penetrates the surface causing the surface of the concrete to flake off and eventually rusts the encased rebar which expands as it rusts which eventually cracks the concrete from within.

The Gardiner Expressway in Toronto is a good example of this - it seems as it's permanently under refurbishment.

Concrete may stain and crack, but at least it doesn't yellow and droop like that terrible architectural stucco they use today.

I agree, brutalism is one of three disperately non-showing styles in Dwell based solely on functionality. Also the exteriors become infested with red mites due to porousness and algae.

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