My first experience with Brutalist Modern Architecture was attending Hudson Valley Community College, where this kind of minimalism was the norm in several of the buildings built in the late 1960s. This form of architecture is plain, exposing the inter-workings of the building to public view, and is easily noted by the rather plain poured concrete appearance on both the inside and and outside of the building.

Brutalism, like most forms of architecture vary in their beauty and functionality. Some are well planned out and complete their functionality with minimal imposition on the user. Things make sense in some buildings, despite the changing uses of the buildings as they age. Others where unnecessarily stylistic and nonfunctional, emphasizing their large size and power over their use.

Brutalist buildings look ugly when the concrete gets wet. They are cold and damp inside when it rains or otherwise is cold. They tend to lack sufficient insulation, and tend to rely on their thick concrete walls to keep heat or cold inside them. They are simple buildings, and demonstrate to the user how a building works with as few complications as possible.

Brutalism impresses upon you size and power of an industrial system. You feel like you are inside a parking garage, with little more to calm the human senses. You feel small compared to the thousands of pounds of concrete that are surrounding you, providing the function of a building, and being quite honest about being a building.

This building style was a critique of the International Style, that had grown popular in the 1950s, with cheap slabs of marble and other rock facades covering buildings, and their insides covered with gleaming white walls and shinny windows. People felt the International Style denied people what really went into a building, and brutalism was a response.

Brutalism failed in the public eye. People argued that while replacing massive marble facades with concrete facades may have been cheaper, they left humans feeling ugly and dispirited. Brutalist buildings were rarely designed to be functional, they instead emphasized the heaviness and power of concrete. They often have complicated fascia molded in concrete.

Regardless, I really like Brutalism. I think the style is modern, simple, and reflective of what buildings really are made of. They can inspire, and when property maintained, are nice places to live and be around.