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Well said! The most egregious use of brutalist architecture I’ve encountered is the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth. What architect in his right mind would create such a monstrosity of concrete, steel, and rivets to commemorate the Archangel’s announcement and the Virgin’s fiat, and to contain the very spot of the Incarnation? Verbum caro HIC factum est. It’s a sacrilege. As Jordan Peterson has said, brutalist architect tells the person, “You don’t matter!!”

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Good stuff. I think it started earlier. The metric system is one symptom of a move away from measurement by human dimensions to the cold and abstract. We see the same principal when we compare the planned cities of the Enlightenment onward, like the uniform "blocks" of Paris or many US cities, with the organic sprawl of older, especially mediaeval settlements. Likewise, compare Westminster Abbey, which grew bit by bit over generations, with St Paul's Cathedral in London, built all at once by a single mind. One has grown organically and collectively, the other has had a form imposed upon it. It seems to me that the modern trend for bare concrete churches is an extension of the same principle: one of de-socialisation and ultimately, of de-humanisation, all devised by expert committees. One could say something similar about the wretched Covid masks: another centralised imposition which flattens difference, crushes expression and so prevents the interaction and communication that makes a society more than just a myriad isolated consumers. Yet here we are, sitting behind identical screens, slaves to glowing rectangles...

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Yeah this was a great piece, thanks again for suggesting it to me.

I studied in a library that was quintessential brutalism:

https://bluesyemre.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/robarts-library-university-of-toronto-2.jpg?w=1000

And I totally agree with your sentiments. But there’s also this part of me that’s drawn to this specific architecture.

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