At the time it I thought the local council were being very naive and narrow minded to tear it down. But now I can see that it would be a constant reminder to those living in poverty with a shortage of housing nearby despite what it was meant to represent.
>‘How can they get grants for arts projects when we can’t get grants for homes? I could have bought a new home for my family with this money.’
Unfortunately given the nature of how the thing's created you can't really move it somewhere else. Might've actually been easier to move the house first.
"Ugly" is an emotional response, and isn't universal. Maybe some people find bare concrete ugly some of the time, but that's a far cry from it being "fundamentally an ugly material".
There's plenty of bare concrete buildings which are appreciated. This house in Chile comes to mind: https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/houses/108353211/am... . The Barbican Centre in London makes extensive use of bare concrete, and is widely appreciated.
We can talk about expected beauty - that is, how beautiful you would expect a random person to say something is. And on that metric bare concrete scores very low.
> The Barbican Centre in London makes extensive use of bare concrete
It does not. Its concrete has been worked to expose the granite aggregate.
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/255227503860482433/
Bare concrete looks like this:
https://www.friendlyshade.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/bar...
> and is widely appreciated.
It was voted London's ugliest building in 2003. And I would say it is appreciated more for its cool layout than its materials.