Low effort brutalism looks cheap because it is. And that’s a good thing. In my country there’s a homeless crisis. The waitlist for government housing is five years. And that’s because too much of the government housing is single family detached houses. The politicians always say “we don’t have enough money to build government housing for everyone who needs it”. You know how many homeless we’d have if the government built soviet block style apartment buildings? Next to none. The people who can live on their own and just don’t have enough money can live in that, the people who need support can stay in the homeless shelters that have support, and only the people who want to be homeless would be left. Brutalism is efficient. American style suburbia is inefficient, so much so that it needs to be subsidized by the government using money taken from the city, because the suburbanites can’t pay for their own single family detached houses, even the ones with high paying jobs.
I completely agree, except with the suggestion that apartment blocks must be brutalist to be space efficient. It wouldn’t be very difficult to make apartment blocks which dont look depressingly gray and blocky. Its just the cheapest thing to do, but in my opinion even (or especially) the lower class deserves to live in homely conditions too.
Well I may be biased because I think brutalist architecture is beautiful, but I disagree. Every penny saved on the appearance of the building is a penny towards the functionality of the building, or towards housing more people. Would I rather have a pretty brick facade or 1% better thermal and sonic insulation? I’ll pick the insulation. Would I rather have a visually interesting architectural shape or rooftop solar? I’ll pick the solar. Visual appearance has never been a factor in my living needs, ugly wallpaper aside. I don’t really understand the mindset of that stuff being important. I’ll pick a nice colour for my bedsheets, and that’s as far as it goes. And besides, elegance of form and function is a beauty all its own. I recently got a new mouse and it’s beautiful to me because it works well. It has a pleasing heft, comfortable shape, no waste, and that’s beautiful. A mouse in the most pleasing colour, but with poor ergonomics, would be ugly to me. Single family detached houses are hideous to me.
I get where you’re coming from, but making the slightest effort towards aesthetics when designing the apartment blocks doesn’t cost much comparatively. I think brutalist architecture has its place too, but I could definitely see how coming home to apartment #5722 on floor #12 of block 31 in a trite and looming concrete labyrinth isnt very appealing to a lot of people. Making homely and livable apartments costs only slightly more and would do wonders in getting people to accept them.