March 28, 2021

"In the station, shadows pool in the basins of hundreds of concrete coffers lining the domed catacomb, as if each one holds something secret."

"Light scurries to corners and crevices, rises from below, casting your features as defamiliarized, haunting forms. Everyone looms. By the time you get down here, are you as raw as the concrete? As callous as a villain? As low as your basest instincts? Cackles ricochet off concrete. Sinister plots surface from the shadows.... Washington’s most notorious Brutalist building, the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover Building, has become a living lair, a symbol of surveillance and policing.... When seen from the corner of Ninth and E streets NW, the upper structure seems to hover atop the main building. This illusion makes the long narrow windows seem as far away as a lair atop a cliff. You couldn’t imagine how to get up to them — let alone who or what looks through them. The structure on top threatens to either take off for space or to crush the structure below. Viewed from Pennsylvania Avenue, the entire building crescendos to an angle, as if plowing toward the National Mall. The FBI building is defined by geometry so rigid that the winding wires of surveillance cameras look playful by comparison. But like the most interesting villains, it’s untamed. You don’t know what it will do next."

From "Brutalist buildings aren’t unlovable. You’re looking at them wrong" by Kelsey Ables (WaPo).

ADDED: Government isn't unlovable. You're just looking at it wrong

He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark mustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

52 comments:

Gilbert Pinfold said...

Humanities Building, UW-Madison. Wellcome headquarters, Research Triangle Park NC (Elion-Hitchings Building, named after the Nobel Prize woinners who brought you Valtrex. Gertrude Elion didn't have a PhD, so there...)

rhhardin said...

All federal entities ought to be housed in tents.

h said...

The FBI building site is a property that Donald Trump has his eye on for the Trump Presidential Library. It's right on Pennsylvania Avenue about half way between the Capitol Building and the White House; all inaugural parades pass right by. After Trump's death, it will become known colloquially as "The Trump Memorial" -- a tourist destination along with the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, the FDR memorial, and the Washington Monument. Of course the Trump Library commission will need to acquire the property currently owned by the Federal government.

Shouting Thomas said...

The FBI is now (or always has been) a partisan secret police force. I see little evidence that it investigates anything

The FBI played a big role is hatching the Russia collusion hoax and is now playing whore to the Democrats’ domestic extremism hoax. So, the FBI is now sowing Hate Whitey propaganda.

A brutalist building is just the truth when it comes to the FBI.

The Lubyanka, home to the KGB, is pretty homey by contrast.

Owen said...

Brutalist building gets florid prose makeover. Result: a thug is a tight purple dress.

Fail.

Owen said...

“is” —> “in”

:-(

Josephbleau said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
narciso said...

The lubyanka was built over the anchor insurance business, i remember that from declare.

Josephbleau said...

I understand that a love for Brutalist architecture is just nostalgia for the lost Soviet Union, and the dream of being a communist apparatchik living in a crumbling concrete apartment block with no light. But don’t these people know that if you turn a pound of shale and limestone into cement you release 0.4 lbs of deadly CO2 directly into Gaia’s nostrils? Why would you love buildings that are killing our children? I understand that the left rags on CO2 only in the abstract, as a way to prevent development that improves the lives of people other than themselves, and not in the personal sense of limiting their private plane usage and their large multiple mansions. The Hollywood Silicon Valley DC elites will not suffer by what the woke EPA bans. The left says Yay Brutalism!!

Bob Boyd said...

Those are our secret police now.

Temujin said...

Yes, if there's one thing the Soviet Union was known for, it's those stunning government designed apartment buildings. Or the government housing here in the US, like the Pruitt-Igoe housing in St. Louis, or Cabrini-Green in Chicago.

More of that, please. I say we cover Washington DC with all of it first. Let's see how that works out for the master class, then we'll figure out if anymore is required.

Lurker21 said...

When writing about brutalist government architecture and intrusive government surveillance agencies, it's best to avoid the authoritarian/totalitarian phrase "You're looking at them wrong."

Aesthetics is a funny thing and even ugly things and places can somehow take on a strange, half-repellent charm through familiarity, through their audacity, or through the things and times associated with them, but it seems more like a personal emotion, not a response one can demand of other people.

narciso said...


Along those lines

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/the_january_6_prosecutions_hit_a_speed_bump.html

The Vault Dweller said...

Leviathan can not rest in those weak and sickly Neo-Classical buildings. It demands a huge and looming Brutalist structure which does not contain it's power but actually advertises it to those that it rules over.

Wince said...

Et tu, Brute?

Anonymous said...

long narrow windows = arrow slits

In fact it is a castle complete with moat, draw bridges (though they don't raise), castle walls and fighting parapet

Lurker21 said...

I'm looking at pictures of brutalist architecture now. Most of the buildings are spectacularly, aggressively ugly. Hideous, especially the ones that advertise their giganticism as well as their brutality.

But at this point, concrete buildings, if they don't go too far out of their way to be ugly, seem to be associated with "bright college days" more than gothic or colonial structures are, and I can almost think myself into the mindset of a college administrator who would choose something magnificently hideous over something drab, undistinguished, and conventional. Education fifty years ago was about numbers and growth and bigness. The temptation to choose buildings that said bigness and "boldness" and "progress" must have been overwhelming.

mikee said...

Brutalist buildings are loved by the high level administrators in the executive offices thereof. Just like castle keeps were loved by the lords of the feudal manors.

Michael said...

Nobody's mentioned Boston City Hall yet - probably the most soul-deadening structure of the 20th Century and a lasting monument to what people like least about government.

Mikey NTH said...

Brutalist buildings are really that bad - all the warmth of a parking garage, all the charm of a coastal defense fort without the big guns.

Francisco D said...

The main architect for the U of Illinois-Chicago campus was Dawn Clark Netsch's husband Wally. He was initially applauded for his Brutalist style.

The campus was an oppressively ugly and depressing place from the lates 60's through the early 90's, especially in the dreary Chicago winters. They started tearing down some of his crap to open up the campus to more light. I hope that current students are enjoying the campus more than we did in the old days.

alfromchgo said...

The entire campus of the University of Illinois/Chicago, horrible, cold brutal. I went there at the opening. The most favored theory was that the concrete, cement, and rebar suppliers paid off big for the contract.

John Borell said...

Brutalist buildings are objectively ugly and the antithesis of Western Civilization.

That’s why they were built and that’s why the left loves them.

They hate everything about our culture, its music, art, architecture, history, language. Everything.

The left wants to destroy Western Civilization.

How do we know? They tell us over and over.

John Borell said...

As Michael said, Boston City Hall. Soulless. Designed intimidate the masses, to grind them down to the will of the vast state.

There is no individual, just the state.

There is soul, just the state.

There is no family, just the state.

No love. No joy. No beauty.

The left’s utopia.

Mikey NTH said...

Try the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice in Detroit. I called it "Our basement in the sky."

Sebastian said...

"Government isn't unlovable. You're just looking at it wrong"

True. And progressivism is political therapy to make you look at it right.

But while government may be lovable, it won't love you back.

rcocean said...

Brutalist ?! What kind of dumbshit word is that. You could also describe the buildings as Grandurist or Classicalist.

The fucking liberals and their fucking weird labels.

God of the Sea People said...

I actually like brutalist architecture, but I dislike the notion that we have some government counsel of woke architecture professors determining how federal buildings can look. I agree with Trump, if the American people are going to foot the bill for these buildings, they ought to reflect American values and preferences. That may be a hard thing to nail down exactly, but I feel pretty confident that it is something other than what a bunch of pointy-headed architecture snobs would choose.

God of the Sea People said...

Brutalist ?! What kind of dumbshit word is that.

'Brut' is the French word for concrete. 'Brutalism' is an architectural style that uses concrete.

Joe Smith said...

Liberals love Big Brother.

And there lies the problem with this country...

tim in vermont said...

With enough imagination, I suppose you could convince yourself that a prison term was a wonderful adventure, but most people prefer a better life, whatever your arguments.

NMObjectivist said...

Great post by Ann. I understand her even better now. Orwell's 1984 says so much.

Lurker21 said...

I first heard about brutalism in Dark Water, a horror movie with Jennifer Connolly. John C. Reilly is a rental agent who says, "The building was built in 1976 by Stern-Jackson and associates, in the brutalist style." I could not believe that "the brutalist style" was a thing and that a real estate agent would ever actually refer to one of his building in that way. It's not exactly a great selling point (brutalism does go well with horror movies, though).

I'm looking at pictures of Roosevelt Island where the movie was set. The Seventies buildings are ugly. The new postmodern buildings there aren't really that much better. Big organizations and corporations want big buildings, and the bureaucratic mind likes to overawe people. Something a little frightening can come out even in in more traditional styles.

I can understand the whole castle/fortress thing. After the riots of the '60s, administrators and bureaucrats probably wanted to feel secure behind thick slabs of concrete.

rehajm said...

Nobody's mentioned Boston City Hall yet

I came here to post about it. Dropped in the middle of the most revolutionary of neighborhoods. Hot in Summer, cold in winter. Smells of urine inside and out. The roof leaks. The windows leak. The unnavigable protest courtyard behind it is multilevel ice rink with 30mph winds.

Government, why are you so mad at us?

DavidUW said...

All part of the goal to force you to affirm their lies.

"Men are Women"
"Brutalism is Beautiful"
"Obesity is a Healthy Choice."
"Masks are Effective"
"White people are Evil"

Fuck them.

Unknown said...

This is one of the most stupid and foolish columns in the Washington Post, which is saying a lot. The brutalist buildings are awful. There are several on the south side of the Mall in DC that are as bad as the Hoover building, and make that section of Independence Avenue a shame.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

So far, no one has mentioned UC/Berkeley's Wurster Hall (now -- late 2020 -- "Bauer Wurster Hall" to acknowledge the architect's wife Catherine Bauer Wurster, the "Mother of Public Housing"). It and Sather Tower (the "Campanile") and Evans Hall (math) are the tallest structures on campus. It used to be said when I was there that the best view of the campus was from the Wurster observation deck, not the Campanile, b/c when you went up Wurster you saw the Campanile, whereas if you went up the Campanile you only saw Wurster. (I liked the top floor of Evans better than either, b/c it was easier to get up to than the Campanile, and no one else seemed to bother.)

Anyway, it has to be the ugliest architecture department headquarters in existence, which in today's America is really saying something. The latest Cal online map points out that while it's commonly named the ugliest building on campus, some of the Brutalist elements are functional: See those big concrete slabs overhanging all the windows? They're to reduce overheating in summer! Um, OK if you say so.

Whiskeybum said...

I've seen (from the outside only, fortunately) both the Lubyanka in Moscow and the Bolshoy Dom in St. Petersburg, as well as the FBI building in D.C. None of them look to be places where you would want to be summoned for a chat, however, the Russian buildings have nothing on the FBI building for sheer heavy, oppressing demeanor.

Whiskeybum said...

I've now looked over all of the examples of ugly, brutalist (but I repeat myself) buildings mentioned by commenters, and they are all excellent examples of this architectural travesty, with the possible exception of the Burroughs Wellcome/Elion-Hitchings Building*. If I had to pick a 'winner' from these examples, it would be a tie between the Wurster Hall (UC Berkeley) building and some of the UoI - Chicago buildings.

*I actually kinda like the Burroughs Wellcome building... it has a cheesy look of a temporary Hollywood set for a futuristic B-grade movie; it looks as if it should have been used in the movie 'Sleeper'.

Ann Althouse said...

"Brutalist ?! What kind of dumbshit word is that."/"'Brut' is the French word for concrete. 'Brutalism' is an architectural style that uses concrete.""

I don't think that's a correct account of the *origin* of the usage. The OED says it's "A style of art or architecture characterized by deliberate crudity of design (see quot. 1953)." The 1953 quote is:

1953 A. Smithson & P. Smithson in Archit. Design Dec. 342/2 House in Soho..bare concrete, brickwork and wood..would have been the first exponent of the ‘new brutalism’ in England, as the preamble to the specification shows: ‘It is our intention in this building to have the structure exposed entirely, without internal finishes.’"

According to this Guardian article, "The term nybrutalism, new brutalism, was the jocular coinage of architect Hans Asplund. He applied it to a small house in Uppsala, in his native Sweden, designed in 1949 by his contemporaries Bengt Edman and Lennart Holm and built of bricks.... Asplund's neologism caught on in Stockholm and was picked up by British architectural pilgrims to that city, among them Oliver Cox, Graeme Shankland and Michael Ventris, the decoder of Linear B (an ancient script seen as one of the great linguistic riddles). Although the epithet signified nothing, or maybe because it signified nothing, it was taken up as a slogan of defiance or something by arty young British architects, none artier than Alison and Peter Smithson and their representative on Earth, Reyner Banham, an architectural critic whose prose may cause all but the entirely insentient to wince. The Smithsons' Hunstanton School in Norfolk, finished in 1954, derives from Mies van der Rohe and has little in common with subsequent buildings that were deemed brutalist. Banham expanded Asplund's coinage, turning it into a bilingual pun on the French b̩ton brut Рliterally raw concrete...."

So the raw concrete French word is a later-arriving play on the word.

Ann Althouse said...

"Brut" isn't the French word for "concrete." It's the French word for "raw." "Béton" is concrete. "Béton brut" is "raw concrete."

tim in vermont said...

The Boston City Hall is the worst, put right in the middle of an 18th century neighborhood to glower over it and try to overshadow it.

tim in vermont said...

My college had some nice brutalist architecture though. The concrete showed mold marks from the plywood, but it was kind of a playful design. The public sculpture, on the other hand, was a joke. Kind of like the Storm King stuff.

https://stormking.org

Even the curators know the art stinks, so when they photograph it, they make sure to strongly emphasize the beauty of the surroundings, I guess like Ginger putting that mole on her cheek.

tim in vermont said...

A lot of art writers resent having to put elements in their fiction for the readers, love interests, character arcs, etc, but they have to do it or they starve. Architects have a better gig, they just have to sell their designs to a tiny committee that hates the people who will use the building anyway.

tim in vermont said...

Bill Buckley’s comment about taking names out of a phone book would be a great way to approve designs. Yeah, I have seen the Simpson’s episode where they let Homer design the car, but that’s just more elitist fiction, not a true story.

stevew said...

You and I agree on that tim in vermont. Brutalist architecture is brutal, and ugly, and not artistic in any observable, creative way. Mathematical and geometric, sure, art, nope. Cold and ugly to me.

Cold and Ugly

DaveL said...

The Ministry of Truth was a pyramid, IIRC. That's about as brutalist as you can get... Except the Ministry of Love, which was mostly underground.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

tim in vermont,

Architects have a better gig, they just have to sell their designs to a tiny committee that hates the people who will use the building anyway.

Not just architects, but "public art" practitioners, too. I remember Richard Serra talking about his "Tilted Arc" (you know, the piece that was ultimately removed from Lincoln Center after people kept complaining about it), and saying that the public meant nothing to him; their views were of no account. These are the people who had to walk endless detours around the thing in order to get from Point A to Point B, while being buffeted by winds whose velocity the damn Arc increased.

tcrosse said...

Well, it seems like everybody's architectural taste agrees with that of Prince Charles.

God of the Sea People said...

It my defense, it has been a long time since I took French. 😬 Although in this case, it looks like I misstated what I have heard about brutalist over the years. Regardless, I don’t think the stark and oppressive nature of brutalism is per se objectionable. I think good art should leave an impression, and brutalist architecture certainly does. I like lots of art and music that others might consider oppressive. However, when the government deliberately chooses an architectural style that leans into oppressiveness, I think that is a poor choice and incredibly bad signaling.

Lurker21 said...

Do architecture departments always have the worst buildings?

Or is it that they have the most flamboyant, and boldness doesn't always work.

The last time I was on a campus I got the feeling of being at some archaeological site of ancient ruins, palaces and tombs.

Everything so massive, flashy and bizarre.

Because of COVID the place was almost deserted. Because of distance learning it soon may be.

I suppose they will still need labs, and a massive amount of money seems to go into those.

Lurker21 said...

Looking at a whole page of pictures of "ugly brutalist buildings" everybody hates them. Same thing with looking at a whole block of contemporary post-modernist buildings each trying to outdo the others in outrageousness. But one's experience of modern buildings seen alone or seen in their own settings may not be so discouraging.