It's fascinating how neatly being politically conservative or progressive lines up with the corresponding architectural view. I like brutalism, but I disagree with the removal of Scruton from that position, it seems political. What annoys me about articles like the above is that they seem to ignore the possibility that aesthetics involves a lot of subjectivity. The argument seems to boil down to, "of course it's ugly…
Only it's really not that neat. When the brutalist monstrosities (you may correctly infer I don't like most of them one bit, though I do like much modernism) were being designed and built post-war, brutalism particularly was embraced as enthusiastically on all parts of the political spectrum. The mood was to build a "better world" and to borrow a cliche, embrace the "white heat of technology". Futurism, science, nuclear and modernism - including brutalism - was good. End of. Many fine examples of classic architecture were levelled, like the oft mourned Penn station, to put in an awesome, imposing brutalist slab that was looking tired and shabby within a decade. I'm sure the comparative cheapness and quickness of build won more fans in one part of the political map though.
As people started to live in them, use them, and live around them, it very rapidly became clear that brutalism - like much post-war architecture - didn't give a toss about humans. That was the real exciting new development in post-war architecture. The vision was inspiring, the reality was counter-productive in so many cases, as the scale or the amount of extra walking required wrecked the reality. They may have been impressive to look at, but so frequently fail to work as a building, or for people.
There are a few brutalist that work, and far more considered modernist, but in the main I call the brutalist experiment failed for those who have to use, inhabit or visit them. The ones that really work, seem to have one common feature - they remember the humans - you know, those things that use buildings? :)
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