This is not really what brutalism is about. Brutalism in architecture is often very playful and indeed more like a poetry and celebration of the raw materials and structure, not at all about the pure functionality absence of any aesthetic as formulated in that text. Brutalist buildings often neglect functionality in favour of architectural idiosyncracies. Like for example Trellick Tower: the elevators are in a separate tower outside the building and only serve every third floor. Brutalism celebrates raw form over function, and mostly people really don't enjoy living in these buildings.
Brutalism is one of those things that means many things to many people, and gets brutally simplified (heh) in the public eye. There's more to any brutalist building than the architect's own idea of brutalism, and of course each architect's idea of what brutalism can be is more than the stripped-down least common denominator definition.
For example, one of the ideas behind using raw concrete for public buildings instead of something sleeker and more expensive is to make public institutions more welcoming and accessible to ordinary people. Traditionally, public buildings were built to project the prestige and power of the class of people who ran elite institutions, at the expense of common people who themselves might feel a bit raw and brutal compared to the sleek and expensive buildings where the sleek and expensive elites ran the world in their sleek and expensive suits. Raw concrete is supposed to communicate that the building, and the institution inside, is (at least supposed to be) working for the public, not spending their money to elevate and aggrandize the people in power.
In other words, in those cases, concrete is meant to create a relatable and accessible rawness, like Gritty the Philadelphia Flyers mascot.
I think it works out a lot better in reality than people think, when a building is well-designed. Architectural photography can hide ugliness — almost every building has its equivalent of the flattering "Myspace angle" — but it can also manufacture it, and with the right lighting, angle, and exposure, it's easy to make any tall concrete building look like a gloomy looming hulk.
Local feelings are a better guide to whether a building is good or not than the feelings of people who have never seen a building in person and have been primed by tendentious photography.
My favorite architecture combines raw elements (concrete, brick, structural supports) with softer touches. To me, the exposed skeleton denotes honesty and stability.
When I was in Switzerland like ten years ago a lot if newer buildings had both exposed concrete and wood. Not a lot of wood, but enough to provide some accents in the otherwise gray texture.
This is always mentioned, but the term is growing on me. I think we just want websites that are easy to load and read that don’t make a few tabs on chrome take 3GB of memory.
but the word brutalism is just too delicious to let the architects have it for a style they've moved on from based on a building material that's so specific to buildings. It's like modernism, there's always a new modern.
and I'm not joking, I think the word brutalist is so attractive to people that it begs to be recolonized regardless of the narrow context in which it once thrived.
I like your thinking, but there could be confusion if used imprecisely. Namely, people might think it's a website that isn't broken (this could be seen as a benefit for the playfully opinionated), or a website made primarily with functional languages/programming style.
I suppose you'd have to refer to a site as Functionalist.
To echo you, I was going to say myself that if anything current web design is more like brutalist architecture. It is a celebration of the raw materials and structure: HTML, CSS, JS. There are confusing features, technical flourishes, … well, maybe not so much poetry. Maybe roccoco, not brutalist?
>not at all about the pure functionality absence of any aesthetic as
That's exactly the vibe I got from https://brutalistwebsites.com. Like many, I like both the aesthetics of brutalist architecture and brutalist websites – but that doesn't mean "form follows function" can be applied here. Many "brutalist" websites are very confusing, inaccessible, and/or impracticable. I suspect that minimalism or simplicism would be a better term for what the guidelines want to achieve.
Nevertheless, it is quite possible to combine playful aethetics with accessible technology, but that requires compromise and a lot of experience.
Yeah, I can acknowledge that. Though surveys do show that most people tend to favor classical architecture.
There's also the matter of what you're comparing it to. Some brutalism may not be beautiful, or as beautiful as something classical in form, but the best examples are just interesting in a way that a generic 5-over-2 building isn't.
I think maintenance of materials matters a lot as well. Concrete's aesthetic really depends on it being clean and crack-free.
> Concrete's aesthetic really depends on it being clean and crack-free.
... unless you're into the aesthetic of crumbling urban decay? I mean I should know better than to pick pointless fights on the internet, but you kinda teed it up
I saw it in a movie theater a long time ago, the images where exiting, the music unlike anything I had every heard... It was stimulating and at the same time uncomfortable, I remember I was glad to finally see the credits after 1.5 hours of a bombardment of sound.
Still it made a big impression on me and made me discover a whole new genre of music and composers.
For a bit of a laugh, I wrote a Brualist ecommerce platform called Bruce
https://bruce.huginn.uk/
I worked for an ecom company (in finance) and we were looking at replatforming. I wondered two things: how hard is it to write an ecom store, and could it be much more performant.
I suppose main problem with going too brutal would be that many people would find it hard to trust.
I really like interfaces like this honestly. If it included the product images and clicking the image opened the full image in a new tab (the normal browser way by linking to the image source) it would be perfect.
minimal cognitive load[1] from the outset: no (algorithmic) slop dumped onto your cortex - one of the reasons i've never been able to do, say, (music) streaming services
Yes. In this design, color could actually _mean_ something. Interesting how color grabs your attention in a helpful way when it isn't all over the place.
Small nitpick on your site. I added an item to my basket, and the value that appears next to the basket link is (0) instead of (1): https://i.imgur.com/AB8Xjqb.png
Yeah, the thing is I'm an accountant not a professional coder. I couldn't work it out. It did bother me, but not enough to sort properly as this was abit of fun.
That's much better than local online store SPA I used that leaked memory many megabytes per second, so I periodically reset the SPA so that the browser can free the leaked memory.
The British government has issued a visual design system for their government websites that embraces this philosophy (in their case, for accessibility and speed more than aesthetics).
I would not call the GDS design "brutalist". As the linked article says, brutalism is about "raw [content/architecture], true to its construction". In other words, it's an aesthetic movement that pretends it's not about aesthetics.
The GDS design guides are not rooted in aesthetics, they're truly rooted in practicality. Their goal is for the site to be navigable and understandable by as close to 100% of the UK population as they can get. That has to include people with old or unusual devices, people with disabilities, people on slow connections, and so on. It's all about the user.
Actually-existing brutalist buildings are not like this. The architects put aesthetic sensibilities first, usability second, while fraudulently claiming they were doing the opposite[1]. When people complained about how unpleasant it was to live in them, they did the "you're holding it wrong" dodge, and said the users (i.e. inhabitants) were to blame.
[1] For example, they would put in industrial-looking concrete greebles on the sides of buildings, making them look like they served a structural purpose, but actually they didn't. It was purely decorative, but ugly decoration that only appealed to other brutalist architects, meant to trick people into thinking it was some "raw" construction element sticking out.
EDIT lol the stained concrete appreciation society have arrived; but no amount of downvotes will make anyone want to live in coventry
> It was purely decorative, but ugly decoration that only appealed to other brutalist architects, meant to trick people into thinking it was some "raw" construction element sticking out.
That's really funny, because I've seen websites that tries to appeal to "hacker"/"minimalist" aesthetics doing the same thing.
An example: the file-hosting service https://0x0.st. When you try to visit a link to a non-existing file, it will crash with a trace message that exposes the offending code block from fhost.c.
this is a personal opinion disguised as a rational argument and general truth. It essentially reads as "I don't like brutalism, nobody does, it sucks and therefore this has nothing to do with it". It's intellectually dishonest and cheap.
Brutalism was never about stripping buildings of all aesthetics, a common misconception or often heard derogatory argument against many forms of minimalism. Minimalism does not eliminate design. It is more about rejecting purely decorative elements and working directly with the structural elements and building material. Recognising aesthetic choices is therefore not fraudulent or dishonest, but your lack of understanding what brutalism is about.
I actually like that - nature easily integrates it back into itself. That can't happen with glass towers.
As for the anti-human, I always read it as a reminder that there are things bigger than human, which may be why brutalism is so popular with governments.
> I actually like that - nature easily integrates it back into itself. That can't happen with glass towers.
Moss and vines look great on Britain's Georgian and Gothic architecture. On Brutalist flat surfaces, it just looks dirty.
Brutalism is an academic justification of the brutalisation of the working class, who invariably were the ones who ended up living in cheaply constructed Brutalist architecture. The middle and upper classes (and the architects) keep to their pretty Georgian Neo-classical houses.
I don't disagree that the concrete hellholes brutalism became associated with are brutal in that sense, but if you want to see a version of brutalism this doesn't apply to see London's Barbican Estate. It was built on brutalist and modernist lines but was an aspirational development for "middle and upper middle class professionals" [1] and remains highly sought after to this day.
Only seeing it from the outside I dismissed it for many years, but once I went in I realised both how huge it is and how it shows the ideas of brutalist and modernist architecture do exist independently of the depressing concrete boxes that have often been built in their name.
It may not be to your taste, but the fact that those flats sell for millions today is a counterexample to your claim that brutalism is nothing more than an assault on the lower class. The fact is that plenty of wealthy people disagree with your aesthetic judgement enough to pay to live in those flats for sums that would easily buy them a house in a leafy, conveniently commutable part of London. It provides an alternative motive for at least some brutalist designs.
>Brutalism is an academic justification of the brutalisation of the working class, who invariably were the ones who ended up living in cheaply constructed Brutalist architecture. The middle and upper classes (and the architects) keep to their pretty Georgian Neo-classical houses.
Yep, and they'll pull out the "umm well akshually 'brutalism' comes from the french betón brut, it doesn't mean 'brutal'", but they're wrong; the word "brutalism" itself wasn't coined by the French, it was coined by a bunch of too-clever-by-half Anglophone students. They knew exactly what double meaning it would have; it was always a mean-spirited pun.
> Moss and vines look great on Britain's Georgian and Gothic architecture. On Brutalist flat surfaces, it just looks dirty.
That's just like your opinion, man.
> Brutalism is an academic justification of the brutalisation of the working class, who invariably were the ones who ended up living in cheaply constructed Brutalist architecture. The middle and upper classes (and the architects) keep to their pretty Georgian Neo-classical houses.
That is a projection. Most brutalist buildings are not living spaces but things like bridges, university buildings, libraries, airports, museums, etc. Who do those oppress?
If you don't like the concrete because the Soviets used a lot of it, say that without the pseudo-intelecualization.
Personally I don’t like it because Britain was full of it when I was growing up (still is in places) and it was
- ugly
- dirty
- dark
- felt impersonal, not designed for people
- usually smelled of piss
- often associated with petty crime
They create spaces that are unfriendly, often cold, wet and dark. They have odd corners and cavities hidden away from view. As a result nobody felt affection or ownership of the spaces, so they would be used as a toilet, or a site for mugging.
Most brutalist buildings should be wiped from the earth. People report liking living in the Barbican, perhaps we can keep that one. Most of the rest are nothing more than an eyesore.
Brutalism, can be used well or as mere styling that copies the look, but not the spirit. The same can be said about any other design flavour. E.g. there are a thousand examples of things that try to copy the style of apple products, but do so only in style and not in spirit.
E.g. a brutalist blog is certainly usable (see for example: http://blog.fefe.de/ which uses the browsers default css and allows you to apply custom css "themes"). If you look neutral at it, it is just text and text is front and center. With clean markup it is more accessible than most sites and people are free to style their default browser template any way they like. This is not anti-human.
Brutalism can be anti-human, but so can be a friendly cushy design language that hides the truth behind fluffy words. It always depends on the execution.
>I actually like that - nature easily integrates it back into itself.
Water infiltration causes mould and other nasty problems for the people inside, and it makes the exterior physically crumble apart. It's not a thing to be celebrated.
"It looks good when it's fucked up" is the last refuge of indefensible monumentalism; reminiscent of Albert Speer's "Ruin Value", likely devised because he was smart enough to realize his buildings wouldn't survive the decade.
It shouldn't have to be said, but the main function of a building is to keep nature out.
>As for the anti-human, I always read it as a reminder that there are things bigger than human, which may be why brutalism is so popular with governments.
You can make big things to provoke feelings of awe and wonder, or feelings of intimidation and powerlessness. It's a choice. And art is only a welcome "reminder" when it's occasional. People put a skull on their shelf, so that when their eye lands on it some drowsy evening, they are reminded: memento mori. But nobody would like it if every advert on the tube said "you're going to die someday lol". You can't get away from architecture; a brutalist city is one where people cannot go about their day without being reminded that they are tiny and insignificant, and powerful people can do what they like to them.
> Water infiltration causes mould and other nasty problems for the people inside
Then build it accordingly - use water management techniques such as impermeabilization, double walls, drainage, and so many others that ensure the building is safe and sound because rain tends to fall on them anyway and it's not like things like green roofs are a universally bad thing - they even help with heat management. And suspended gardens were even a thing in Babylon.
> It shouldn't have to be said, but the main function of a building is to keep nature out.
No. It's to keep people comfortable, to foster human relationships and social activities within and around it, gently guiding people towards a goal without them realizing it. Architecture was never about buildings - it's about the people who use them.
Well, lots of things do look good like that. E.g. a cottage with roses growing round the door. But agreed that just lack of environmental control, while beautiful in its own devaying way, is not great for the people who have to use the building.
As a webdesigner this is something I subscribe to, with one exception: websites where falling out of the norm in a certain way is part of the point that needs to be communicated (e.g. an artist portfolio).
The ML in HTML stands for "markup language". Too many frameworks produce garbage markup, which is why for typical CMS systems I write my own themes that use HTML as it was intended to be used.
One of my favourite German hacker/nerd blogs uses more or less the browsers defaults for ages now and it is so blazingly fast that it is my regular "does the internet work"-website: https://blog.fefe.de/
| "Only the act of design can make the content less readable"
I disagree with this, HTML in it's raw rendered state is not pleasant to read. You have to apply some rules (or specify the rules in your browser) to get the text to a state where it is pleasant to read.
Well, it's not going to get less readable if you do nothing, which I think was the point. You're getting at being able to make it more readable with design, which is possible, and addressed a few sentences later. But, the defaults aren't too bad: black text on white, blue or purple hyperlinks with underlines, larger headings, responsive, etc. The one thing I would always do is enforce a maximum line length for larger monitors.
Only links and buttons respond to clicks, and buttons look like buttons - finally! Flat design is moronic, and this smartphone thing of magic zones to stroke is awful.
It's a fun exercise, from my (hazy) memories of college lectures, Brutalism is roughly:
- structural elements aren't obscured by decoration
- infrastructure (cabling, conduits, piping, ductwork, etc) is likewise 'left exposed'
- building materials also left unadorned
- physical shapes are building-blocky, not 'finished'
- visual design elements are strictly utilitarian, or incidental to materials
I've gotta say while I mostly agree with the author, this article's "A website's materials aren't HTML tags, CSS, or JavaScript code" claim really rubs me the wrong way right off the bat - the structural elements are absolutely HTML and CSS and JS. HTML is the physical architectural structure, CSS is the visual treatment, and JS is the infrastructure that allows interactivity.
If anything, default browser styles would seem to be the nearest we've got to "HTML (structural elements) aren't obscured by decoration (CSS)." No rounded corners, no drop shadows, no parallax. Which makes "The default visual appearance of a button is often unpleasant or clashes with the visual language of the site" - I think under Brutalism, the clash would essentially be accepted as a hazard of "building materials left unadorned." Maybe you could sneak it in under "visual design elements are strictly utilitarian," as visual design is an incredible tool for usability
Leaving the infrastructure (JS) out in the open is a little trickier, though I guess you could point to open sourcing your codebase and not obfuscating your production code so it's easily reviewable in the Dev Tools as a way to satisfy that ideal. Static HTML sites also seem like they'd be a little more in line with Brutalism than SPAs I suppose.
While I agree with the sentiment (and motivation) the layout (and hence the readability) suffers: the hierarchies are off (for example the gigantic "Colophon" at the end), section titles too big and there is visual noise due to "permalink" scattered around, etc. All this could still be fixed without adding elements or styles but just by choosing the correct weights and slightly better rules.
Don't agree that links should be underlined. When there are a lot of links, underlining them makes the paragraph look very messy and hard to read [1]. Wikipedia for example does not underline its links. Just keep them blue.
At least on my iPad's Safari, the below is presented in blue on a black background, barely readable due to long-understood asymmetries in the human retina's response to color:
> Content is readable on all reasonable screens and devices.
The site fails to meet its own stated design criteria.
Brutalist web design is, I think, the best web design. Or at least, it's the sort that I find works the best for me. One of my problems with most modern web design is that it's so full of unnecessary visual fluff and frippery.
Brutalism is a word that means something when it comes to architecture, and is just used as a catchy word for hipsters in webdesign communities, there is nothing more to that, it's yet another design fad like "flat".
There’s more to it. The philosophy behind the architecture (functionalism, simplicity, and keeping the raw material’s appearance instead of hiding it) maps very well to a philosophy of web design. The main difference is that “raw” now refers to (roughly) the HTML code rather than concrete. The other points, simplicity and the utilitarian character of the layout and of the underlying code, and buttons that look like buttons (analogous to doors that look like doors) are very similar.
| "A website is not a magazine, though it might have magazine-like articles. A website is not an application, although you might use it to purchase products or interact with other people. A website is not a database, although it might be driven by one."
This feels overwrought. A website is a collection of documents (webpages). That's it. A document is just a vehicle to store and/or transmit information. They can be made to be pretty and engaging to make that information easier to consume.
If a website is only a collection of web pages then you cannot have Amazon, hotels.com or any other site where the user pays money and receives something physical as a purchase.
So the document metaphor is too simple as it only describes what happends at the html/css level but not how the user interacts with the site and the purchases that result from this interaction.
But it's not a metaphor, it's literally how browsers as clients relate to webpages. Your browser is essentially just a very specialized document viewer. It's capability to enable those documents to dynamically incorporate other internet resources (like Amazon or Hotels.com do) even has "document" in it's name: Document Object Model. Sure, those other resources can be a component of the site, but they're mostly useless without that document providing interaction with them.
In the same way as this was a mistakes for building (beauty matter) it is too for website.
We human respond to more than the "content" or raw function of things. We have an emotional connection with everything.
The visual cues, the color, the composition all affect how you are perceive and use a product or house.
The brutalist look shout to other this place is about business/information, I despise beauty and think it’s a waste of time.
.jpg){kind=link}
