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Comment by mattzito | Hacker News Reader

I mean - SOME of it is beautiful. I have to stare at this building every day:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kips_Bay_Towers

It’s plain hideous. Sigh.

I rather found it beautiful. Brutalist architecture has its own beauty - to be honest about materials, unapologetic forms and it’s unwavering stability. Also, I’ve been to the Dallas City hall and it is such an insane building, imposing and looming over you as you enter through its facade.

I don’t really like most brutalism but Dallas city hall is one of my favorite buildings. You might recognize it from Robocop

Oh man, turns out Dallas has four I.M. Pei buildings! Fountain Place, at least, seems to be as close to objectively cool as possible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_Place

In particular the interiors of brutalist structures don't get enough appreciation. Boston City Hall — not done by Pei — stands out in that the exterior is quite ugly but the interior is utilitarian and soothingly cavernous.

Unrelatedly, my grandfather lived in one of the Kips Bay Towers during the 70s when he was working in New York as a graphic designer. I have a soft spot for them.

>In particular the interiors of brutalist structures don't get enough appreciation. Boston City Hall — not done by Pei — stands out in that the exterior is quite ugly but the interior is utilitarian and soothingly cavernous.

As a resident of Boston who's had to travel to city hall many times on Business, I wouldn't call the interior "soothingly cavernous". Perhaps it was initially and has been modified since, but I find it dark sized to make both the visitor and the worker insignificant. Most open space is unusable and appears to have no purpose, but the spaces that are in-use, are somehow cramped and lifeless.

I strongly disagree. I feel that honesty about materials is bullshit. It's like saying painting should look like paint on canvas and not like mona lisa.

This is one of the things the greek - again - got right. Lot of the elements in classical architecture of stone buildings are there just to look nice and some of them even just copy elements that were necessary in wooden construction but were replicated in stone as well because they look nice.

That's not to say simple shapes cannot be pleasing. But making concrete look like concrete really isn't an achievement to speak off. It can be a stylistic choice of course.

Wow, I've walked by that block so many times and never would have guessed it was the work of IM Pei

> I have to stare at this building every day:

I like Manuel Gagneux's commentary on the Kips Bay Plaza: https://youtu.be/08GChbQcWxI?t=164.

That's an interesting and somehow comforting way to look at it.

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