Actually that first house is worse than Darth Vader, it's more like Rick Moranis' character Dark Helmet in "Spaceballs," the spoof of Star Wars.
Look, I love me some good minimalist techno music. Problem is, when minimalist techno is done poorly it's like listening to paint dry. Yes, I meant "listening." It's excruciating. Thing is though, you basically need to be a genuine artist (and maybe a genius) to fully pull it off. Done well though it has this life all its own that's fun and playful and mathematically complex and engaging. But there are 4, maybe 5 people on the planet that can play it well. Daniel Bell would be one of them. It's also a bit of an acquired taste. I'll grant you that. But if you want something more accessible that gives the same vibe then "Einstein on the Beach" by Philip Glass gives you a general idea of what I'm getting at. All that said, I'm not sure I'd want to live in minimal techno or the architectural equivalent of that.
Most architects aren't artists. Most of them spend their lives in quiet desperation drawing out HVAC shafts and stairwells. And most developers don't actually care about aesthetics except in terms of marketing. Gone are the days of building a nice facade because you're leaving a mark. While blacking techniques like shou sugi ban answer the problem of making wood last, resist both rot and fire and are both environmentally friendly and aesthetically pleasing in context (and with some restraint) most developers won't have even heard of it let alone use it at scale. It's too time consuming and expensive to do correctly. So we're left with mostly cheap knockoffs of what might have been a really nice design idea, once upon a time and when created with a lot of thought, effort, skill and context. In the context of minimalism the Japanese had a whole philosophy devoted to creating structures using shou sugi ban. Ma (the planning of space, including negative space, and sort of 3-D visualization of elevations and vistas), Wabi (austerity/simplicity/even stoicism) - Sabi (the beauty of decay or imperfections), and Shibui (elegance, or as you put it, "style". I also like to think "fun" too/the unexpected). Like Vitruvius, who defined classical Roman architecture, you can't just mix and match ideas or forget to follow one of the tenets. It won't work. Also, to pull it off you have to have some skill too. How many architects bother? How many developers listen to the architects who even bother? And nearly all of this is completely lost on the lay person.
A friend of mine had a term for this: "fashion damage." In his context it was when someone buys something for the name or the current trend but without thought of either the context they'll be wearing it in or what will work on their body. Say what you will, but someone like Grace Jones could literally wear a garbage bag (and did once) and still look stunning, most of us will never be that lucky (or confident or sexy). Same with architecture. Unless you're the Grace Jones of architecture you should probably not try to pull off the worst trends in fashion. But if you are the Grace Jones of architecture then please, make the world a little more interesting for the lot of us.
The real problem here, in both recent posts, is loss of contextualization due to the editing down of our experiences via Google or AI or just poorly written textbooks. There is no sense of why people chose to use blackening techniques (save money, use common materials wisely), minimalism (save money, good space planning for tight quarters) or how to apply that in a modern context or in a different society. People like Frank Lloyd Wright liberally cribbed from both Japanese and Native/Indigenous American design ideas but he spent untold hours and threw away untold hundreds of designs that just weren't working until he perfected his craft. And even so we still dig at him for shoddy building materials, probably because the people building for him really didn't understand the vision or want to put in the effort or expense. Any "BIG NEW IDEA" that you tackle should be approached with the same amount of dedication. If you don't have the stomach for that, then choose someone who did and let them guide you. If you're going to tackle it yourself then be ready to put in the work, and also be ready to throw out what isn't working. All art, and architecture can be art, is also throwing away things that don't work. Any time you get too sentimental you get schmaltzy.
To say this is completely lost on the lay person is generalizing quite badly and sounds a bit arrogant. There are far more lay people who have the opinions that John has written about. Most people naturally have an aversion to the brutalist fashion trends in architecture, because it is instinctively off putting. This black architecture is like leaving scars on the earth that we can’t avoid seeing.
Also, and I've been thinking about this since your comment, people DON'T have a natural aversion to brutalism. Think about Scottish castles. Or Roman forts. Those are brutalism too, in the purest sense. Yet they evoke romantic ideas about moors and gladiators. Just don't live in one without renos. They're cold and drafty without renos. Even something like the Tower of London is pretty grim when you really look at it. Sure, it's been dressed up, has a nice garden, some gaudy jewelry inside, but it's thick stone meant for war. It's brutal. It was always meant to be brutal. And for some people it's pretty, or at least evocative.
Of course, if you're going to try this with a house then you should look to good interpretations of that style. Casa Loma in TO comes to mind. Using modern materials and techniques to replicate an old style fortress but then dressing it with all sorts of decorative finishes (like the different colours of stone and other Scottish Baronial touches). But you could also replicate the simple keep (or donjon) in plain square stone. Lots of people think they're pretty to look at too. Just not sure I'd like to live in one. For a modernist take on it you might convert a cold-war missile silo. At least one person did a pretty good job. Not much to see above ground though. Anyway, I can imagine a nice house in shou sugi ban or in stone but miniature. It really comes down to those all important details though.
1) I love that they used hangings as sound insulation. Also something they did in the 14th century with tapestries but for drafts!
2) I'm struck by how similar the styles are with Vancouver. One of the solutions that worked there were large, vegetated setbacks on one side with a small road/sidewalks in the middle. Vancouver famously has no freeways in the town too.
3) Free apartments! Mixed use! Okay, the wait for them is an issue though. But it's nicer than a watch for retirement.
I guess Haussmann (Paris) is another way to go too. Probably something more to your liking, but still not that dissimilar in actual structure except that it's much shorter. If you had the space.... but that doesn't exist in Halifax either.
I'd say Halifax, with its accessible bedrock and its small size and its hills is probably better suited to terraces and well positioned towers. I'm trying to think what worked in cities I personally lived in like San Francisco, West End Vancouver, Portland, and the Silverlake/Los Feliz area of Los Angeles. All hilly areas.
1) It's hidden gems, moments of design or interest, especially something with a park or entertainment function. Using the hills and valleys to create such moments.
2) Interspersed with natural beauty, lots of vegetation at all times of the year, hard but not impossible to do on the East Coast. Especially with some sculpture thrown in.
3) Transit, lots and lots of transit. Maybe even cover over the first storey of streets to put in light rail beneath the "new street" which is now at the second storey (they did this in old Seattle in some areas).
4) Funiculars, see transit., also in Quebec City.
5) More use! For a small city Halifax sure has a lot of vacant/unused space in the city.
Brutalism is widely reviled for its harsh, utilitarian aesthetic, typically using raw concrete and angular, block-like shapes, aiming to make a bold statement about functionality over form. It was born out of a specific post-World War II desire to rebuild cities quickly and cheaply, but the resulting structures often come off as cold and uninviting.
Castles, on the other hand, are centuries-old monuments that emerged from different cultural contexts and intentions. They were designed for defense and grandeur, not just to function but to also signify power, status, and permanence. Their architecture is typically much more detailed, with a focus on design and the interplay of form and function, evoking a sense of history, craftsmanship, and beauty.
So yes, it’s about intention, context, and culture. Brutalism, in its effort to reject ornamentation in favor of raw functionality, often clashes with the cultural heritage of castles, which were built to endure for centuries, while embodying a particular vision of beauty, power, and history. Castles reflect durability and legacy in a way that Brutalism simply doesn't—its emphasis is on stark modernism, often disregarding human scale and comfort.
The contrast might even be something like this: Brutalism, when compared to castles, lacks the warmth and intricacy that comes from architecture built with an eye toward legacy and meaning. In this sense, Brutalism might represent a kind of brutal resignation - mere existence, whereas castles represent a more tempered, enduring relationship with time, the future, and survival.
Well, yes and no. Early "castles," (the motte and bailey type) didn't have as much of a legacy as you might think and may or may not have been always been intended to last for centuries. That's only partly true and a romanticization of the past, a vast oversimplification. Motte and bailey type castles last for something like one century of time (12th to 13th centuries, approx.) in Scotland and then are generally abandoned. Back then it's a blink of an eye! I mean, not as bad as Rococo, that lasts even less time and is hands down far more about decoration but we keep those around more often just to admire the sheer chutzpah.
But if we're talking only the 60's type of brutalism then it might surprise you to learn that there are people (at least some friends in Germany) that are interested in not only preserving it but celebrating it in film and articles. And I do think people like Corbusier were interested in legacy. If you read how he envisioned it then he sees his structures as "machinery for living," so getting out of the way and away from artifice. Remember too that the 1920's and 1950's are both about shattering the past and moving on to something else. Out of the ritual of say, a "Downton Abbey" or a "Guilded Age" and into a more democratic and engaged society that doesn't spend all it's time going upstairs, changing into another outfit and then coming downstairs for a few hours for a walk or a meal and repeating that three times a day. The useless into the useful.
So, to your point about resignation I'm not sure I agree. Monks famously lived in cells, plain, nearly undecorated, small, functional cells. Yes, they prayed in cathedrals but today our cathedrals are all online or in cyberspace or maybe still in the offices of multinational corporations. What monks specifically seek out as a way to engage with the spiritual (the rejection of ornamentation and distraction) might have some relevance to our current society which is far too distracted at every single level. Or at least I think that's also a need it's answering.
How did you go from what I said about the specifics of Japanese architectural philosophy being lost on the lay person to people having a natural aversion to brutalism? Does that mean you think most people have a handle on architectural philosophies? If so, then it's changed since my day and it's not generally true of even builders here in the Valley today. If anything, the people building structures ought to have a much broader context of good design and be taught those philosophies because they directly impact which materials are chosen and why and how specific sites require specific treatments. If your criticism is that, "everyone can see it's bad," then the problem is that everyone is seeing the schlock, not the real thing and not the reason for the real thing. Brutalism is a specific social and political statement for a specific era. Japanese brutalism was more about hardiness and stoicism in the face of interminable devastating civil war and lack of resources. Also, fire suppression. But hardiness and stoicism, done well, can actually be beautiful. Severe, but maintaining a certain gravitas.
If we're seeing more of it now then it's US, and WE are saying things like, "big black box means I'm tough and mean business, don't care about your wimpy feelings or community," or "all of the lower classes deserve meagre shelter and need to be reminded they're here on the sufferance of the state," or something along those lines. If you're protesting that things don't look nice and it brings forth an immediate instinct against such architecture then WHY are we building any of it? People seem to forget that it's a choice and that choice is that WE are saying something generally negative. Just as shag carpet and orange and avocado decor gave rise to 70's optimism (and goofiness) today's black boxes are giving rise to feelings of power, loneliness/inability to connect, machismo, lack of imagination, etc. Prior forms of Brutalism came about after the war, a way to process loss, memories or nightmares of battlefield obstacles, regimentation as security against feeling, etc. Today's Brutalism is remixing these ideas, not very successfully because it doesn't ground them in its own point of view (generally, there are exceptions). It's junk philosophy. The throwaway forms repurposed, but still hinting at the underlying general malaise that underscores what John and you are reacting to. Still, if you want to change the architecture, you have make a case for hope, or goofiness, or something.
Honestly, I think it all makes a lot of sense. There's a malaise precisely because behind our masks we're all worried, very worried. And we should be. There's smoke (and sometimes fire) in today's world. So yeah, we're building fortresses for the same reason(s) we built fortresses in the past. We just aren't willing to look at them yet or call them fortresses while we're building them so they're coming out all wonky and off kilter. If we just called a spade a spade then we could make better looking ones or at least more functional ones.
OR
I'm completely wrong on this and have fallen for the marketing of pain, misery and terror that suffuses our news/infotainment industry but it's all completely a lie. There is no reason to be worried except to sell ads. So shame on Madison Avenue (a reference to where old agencies used to do business).
Actually that first house is worse than Darth Vader, it's more like Rick Moranis' character Dark Helmet in "Spaceballs," the spoof of Star Wars.
Look, I love me some good minimalist techno music. Problem is, when minimalist techno is done poorly it's like listening to paint dry. Yes, I meant "listening." It's excruciating. Thing is though, you basically need to be a genuine artist (and maybe a genius) to fully pull it off. Done well though it has this life all its own that's fun and playful and mathematically complex and engaging. But there are 4, maybe 5 people on the planet that can play it well. Daniel Bell would be one of them. It's also a bit of an acquired taste. I'll grant you that. But if you want something more accessible that gives the same vibe then "Einstein on the Beach" by Philip Glass gives you a general idea of what I'm getting at. All that said, I'm not sure I'd want to live in minimal techno or the architectural equivalent of that.
Most architects aren't artists. Most of them spend their lives in quiet desperation drawing out HVAC shafts and stairwells. And most developers don't actually care about aesthetics except in terms of marketing. Gone are the days of building a nice facade because you're leaving a mark. While blacking techniques like shou sugi ban answer the problem of making wood last, resist both rot and fire and are both environmentally friendly and aesthetically pleasing in context (and with some restraint) most developers won't have even heard of it let alone use it at scale. It's too time consuming and expensive to do correctly. So we're left with mostly cheap knockoffs of what might have been a really nice design idea, once upon a time and when created with a lot of thought, effort, skill and context. In the context of minimalism the Japanese had a whole philosophy devoted to creating structures using shou sugi ban. Ma (the planning of space, including negative space, and sort of 3-D visualization of elevations and vistas), Wabi (austerity/simplicity/even stoicism) - Sabi (the beauty of decay or imperfections), and Shibui (elegance, or as you put it, "style". I also like to think "fun" too/the unexpected). Like Vitruvius, who defined classical Roman architecture, you can't just mix and match ideas or forget to follow one of the tenets. It won't work. Also, to pull it off you have to have some skill too. How many architects bother? How many developers listen to the architects who even bother? And nearly all of this is completely lost on the lay person.
A friend of mine had a term for this: "fashion damage." In his context it was when someone buys something for the name or the current trend but without thought of either the context they'll be wearing it in or what will work on their body. Say what you will, but someone like Grace Jones could literally wear a garbage bag (and did once) and still look stunning, most of us will never be that lucky (or confident or sexy). Same with architecture. Unless you're the Grace Jones of architecture you should probably not try to pull off the worst trends in fashion. But if you are the Grace Jones of architecture then please, make the world a little more interesting for the lot of us.
The real problem here, in both recent posts, is loss of contextualization due to the editing down of our experiences via Google or AI or just poorly written textbooks. There is no sense of why people chose to use blackening techniques (save money, use common materials wisely), minimalism (save money, good space planning for tight quarters) or how to apply that in a modern context or in a different society. People like Frank Lloyd Wright liberally cribbed from both Japanese and Native/Indigenous American design ideas but he spent untold hours and threw away untold hundreds of designs that just weren't working until he perfected his craft. And even so we still dig at him for shoddy building materials, probably because the people building for him really didn't understand the vision or want to put in the effort or expense. Any "BIG NEW IDEA" that you tackle should be approached with the same amount of dedication. If you don't have the stomach for that, then choose someone who did and let them guide you. If you're going to tackle it yourself then be ready to put in the work, and also be ready to throw out what isn't working. All art, and architecture can be art, is also throwing away things that don't work. Any time you get too sentimental you get schmaltzy.
To say this is completely lost on the lay person is generalizing quite badly and sounds a bit arrogant. There are far more lay people who have the opinions that John has written about. Most people naturally have an aversion to the brutalist fashion trends in architecture, because it is instinctively off putting. This black architecture is like leaving scars on the earth that we can’t avoid seeing.
Also, and I've been thinking about this since your comment, people DON'T have a natural aversion to brutalism. Think about Scottish castles. Or Roman forts. Those are brutalism too, in the purest sense. Yet they evoke romantic ideas about moors and gladiators. Just don't live in one without renos. They're cold and drafty without renos. Even something like the Tower of London is pretty grim when you really look at it. Sure, it's been dressed up, has a nice garden, some gaudy jewelry inside, but it's thick stone meant for war. It's brutal. It was always meant to be brutal. And for some people it's pretty, or at least evocative.
Of course, if you're going to try this with a house then you should look to good interpretations of that style. Casa Loma in TO comes to mind. Using modern materials and techniques to replicate an old style fortress but then dressing it with all sorts of decorative finishes (like the different colours of stone and other Scottish Baronial touches). But you could also replicate the simple keep (or donjon) in plain square stone. Lots of people think they're pretty to look at too. Just not sure I'd like to live in one. For a modernist take on it you might convert a cold-war missile silo. At least one person did a pretty good job. Not much to see above ground though. Anyway, I can imagine a nice house in shou sugi ban or in stone but miniature. It really comes down to those all important details though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWd41KqCdFc
Soviet Grey... a sympathetic view.
That's an interesting video. Couple of notes:
1) I love that they used hangings as sound insulation. Also something they did in the 14th century with tapestries but for drafts!
2) I'm struck by how similar the styles are with Vancouver. One of the solutions that worked there were large, vegetated setbacks on one side with a small road/sidewalks in the middle. Vancouver famously has no freeways in the town too.
3) Free apartments! Mixed use! Okay, the wait for them is an issue though. But it's nicer than a watch for retirement.
I guess Haussmann (Paris) is another way to go too. Probably something more to your liking, but still not that dissimilar in actual structure except that it's much shorter. If you had the space.... but that doesn't exist in Halifax either.
I'd say Halifax, with its accessible bedrock and its small size and its hills is probably better suited to terraces and well positioned towers. I'm trying to think what worked in cities I personally lived in like San Francisco, West End Vancouver, Portland, and the Silverlake/Los Feliz area of Los Angeles. All hilly areas.
1) It's hidden gems, moments of design or interest, especially something with a park or entertainment function. Using the hills and valleys to create such moments.
2) Interspersed with natural beauty, lots of vegetation at all times of the year, hard but not impossible to do on the East Coast. Especially with some sculpture thrown in.
3) Transit, lots and lots of transit. Maybe even cover over the first storey of streets to put in light rail beneath the "new street" which is now at the second storey (they did this in old Seattle in some areas).
4) Funiculars, see transit., also in Quebec City.
5) More use! For a small city Halifax sure has a lot of vacant/unused space in the city.
Brutalism is widely reviled for its harsh, utilitarian aesthetic, typically using raw concrete and angular, block-like shapes, aiming to make a bold statement about functionality over form. It was born out of a specific post-World War II desire to rebuild cities quickly and cheaply, but the resulting structures often come off as cold and uninviting.
Castles, on the other hand, are centuries-old monuments that emerged from different cultural contexts and intentions. They were designed for defense and grandeur, not just to function but to also signify power, status, and permanence. Their architecture is typically much more detailed, with a focus on design and the interplay of form and function, evoking a sense of history, craftsmanship, and beauty.
So yes, it’s about intention, context, and culture. Brutalism, in its effort to reject ornamentation in favor of raw functionality, often clashes with the cultural heritage of castles, which were built to endure for centuries, while embodying a particular vision of beauty, power, and history. Castles reflect durability and legacy in a way that Brutalism simply doesn't—its emphasis is on stark modernism, often disregarding human scale and comfort.
The contrast might even be something like this: Brutalism, when compared to castles, lacks the warmth and intricacy that comes from architecture built with an eye toward legacy and meaning. In this sense, Brutalism might represent a kind of brutal resignation - mere existence, whereas castles represent a more tempered, enduring relationship with time, the future, and survival.
Well, yes and no. Early "castles," (the motte and bailey type) didn't have as much of a legacy as you might think and may or may not have been always been intended to last for centuries. That's only partly true and a romanticization of the past, a vast oversimplification. Motte and bailey type castles last for something like one century of time (12th to 13th centuries, approx.) in Scotland and then are generally abandoned. Back then it's a blink of an eye! I mean, not as bad as Rococo, that lasts even less time and is hands down far more about decoration but we keep those around more often just to admire the sheer chutzpah.
But if we're talking only the 60's type of brutalism then it might surprise you to learn that there are people (at least some friends in Germany) that are interested in not only preserving it but celebrating it in film and articles. And I do think people like Corbusier were interested in legacy. If you read how he envisioned it then he sees his structures as "machinery for living," so getting out of the way and away from artifice. Remember too that the 1920's and 1950's are both about shattering the past and moving on to something else. Out of the ritual of say, a "Downton Abbey" or a "Guilded Age" and into a more democratic and engaged society that doesn't spend all it's time going upstairs, changing into another outfit and then coming downstairs for a few hours for a walk or a meal and repeating that three times a day. The useless into the useful.
So, to your point about resignation I'm not sure I agree. Monks famously lived in cells, plain, nearly undecorated, small, functional cells. Yes, they prayed in cathedrals but today our cathedrals are all online or in cyberspace or maybe still in the offices of multinational corporations. What monks specifically seek out as a way to engage with the spiritual (the rejection of ornamentation and distraction) might have some relevance to our current society which is far too distracted at every single level. Or at least I think that's also a need it's answering.
Well, I cop to being arrogant.
How did you go from what I said about the specifics of Japanese architectural philosophy being lost on the lay person to people having a natural aversion to brutalism? Does that mean you think most people have a handle on architectural philosophies? If so, then it's changed since my day and it's not generally true of even builders here in the Valley today. If anything, the people building structures ought to have a much broader context of good design and be taught those philosophies because they directly impact which materials are chosen and why and how specific sites require specific treatments. If your criticism is that, "everyone can see it's bad," then the problem is that everyone is seeing the schlock, not the real thing and not the reason for the real thing. Brutalism is a specific social and political statement for a specific era. Japanese brutalism was more about hardiness and stoicism in the face of interminable devastating civil war and lack of resources. Also, fire suppression. But hardiness and stoicism, done well, can actually be beautiful. Severe, but maintaining a certain gravitas.
If we're seeing more of it now then it's US, and WE are saying things like, "big black box means I'm tough and mean business, don't care about your wimpy feelings or community," or "all of the lower classes deserve meagre shelter and need to be reminded they're here on the sufferance of the state," or something along those lines. If you're protesting that things don't look nice and it brings forth an immediate instinct against such architecture then WHY are we building any of it? People seem to forget that it's a choice and that choice is that WE are saying something generally negative. Just as shag carpet and orange and avocado decor gave rise to 70's optimism (and goofiness) today's black boxes are giving rise to feelings of power, loneliness/inability to connect, machismo, lack of imagination, etc. Prior forms of Brutalism came about after the war, a way to process loss, memories or nightmares of battlefield obstacles, regimentation as security against feeling, etc. Today's Brutalism is remixing these ideas, not very successfully because it doesn't ground them in its own point of view (generally, there are exceptions). It's junk philosophy. The throwaway forms repurposed, but still hinting at the underlying general malaise that underscores what John and you are reacting to. Still, if you want to change the architecture, you have make a case for hope, or goofiness, or something.
Honestly, I think it all makes a lot of sense. There's a malaise precisely because behind our masks we're all worried, very worried. And we should be. There's smoke (and sometimes fire) in today's world. So yeah, we're building fortresses for the same reason(s) we built fortresses in the past. We just aren't willing to look at them yet or call them fortresses while we're building them so they're coming out all wonky and off kilter. If we just called a spade a spade then we could make better looking ones or at least more functional ones.
OR
I'm completely wrong on this and have fallen for the marketing of pain, misery and terror that suffuses our news/infotainment industry but it's all completely a lie. There is no reason to be worried except to sell ads. So shame on Madison Avenue (a reference to where old agencies used to do business).
Thanks for these fascinating notes.