Review: Why Are Federal Buildings So Ugly?

Our capital's brutalist architecture is on display at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.

Developers, please feel free to tear down nearly any building erected during the 1960s and '70s in the United States. Capital Brutalism, an exhibit on view through February 17 at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., amply demonstrates why.

Brutalist buildings are unornamented concrete hulks. Perhaps the most iconic is the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building, declared the ugliest building in the U.S. and the second ugliest in the world in a Buildworld survey. As documented in the exhibition, our nation's capital is pockmarked with many other Brutalist piles.

The Brutalist concrete behemoth home of the Department of Housing and Urban Development arose as part of an "urban renewal" project that displaced some 1,500 businesses and 23,000 residents, comprising primarily African American and immigrant families. Yes: The housing bureaucracy's headquarters is built on razed homes.

The exhibition asks, "Might we find a way to love these places and to live with them into the future?" Not me. But see this well-crafted show to make up your own mind.

Comments

[Peter Kreeft taught me LOGIC, BEWARE !!!!!!!]

I lived for 10 years in St Louis, the home of Pruitt–Igoe.
The real problem were the racists implementing laws that supposedly were to ameliorate the race problems
All covered in
Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City
by Colin Gordon (Author)
And he said in an interveiw
"There’s the tremendous impact of Federal money and policies that swamped local policy here. No one would have built Pruitt-Igoe, cleared the Mill Creek Valley or built Busch Stadium I without Federal money. St. Louis County was considered to be one of the worst performers in the nation by HUD (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development).'"

https://nextstl.com/2011/03/colin-gordon-talks-mapping-decline-vacant-land-and-urban-renewal-with-nextstl/

This is classic "someone spending someone else's money on something the spender don't have to live with"

Pruitt-Igoe was not just ugly it was a mega-waste of money. It was soon leveled to the ground. all 10 huge buildings
https://proteanmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Pruitt-Igoe-5.png

and while I'm at it , this too is a TAKINGS case, a completely immoral and unconstitutional and racist waste of money and an abuse of power

[Fist of Etiquette]

If we were going to slowly turn into the Soviet Union we might as well have started looking like it.

[mtrueman]

Don't take the red baiting too seriously. It might be an improvement. Apparently you are not familiar with the Seven Sisters, designed and built under Stalin. Maybe a little over the top, but striking buildings, nevertheless. The Moscow subway system from the same era is still praised for its beauty and function.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sisters_(Moscow)

[Randy Sax]

I don't know, I don't mind it.

[Brandybuck]

It's a touchstone of the 70s vibe. It has its own charm.

Also, it's the government. All government offices need to be located in delapidated public housing projects. The only suitable architecture for them.

[MasterThief]

Are they cheap to erect and maintain? Do they serve their necessary purposes? That's all that should matter if they're spending our money on it.
If we're going to publicly fund cultural institutions like museums, monuments, and art galleries then I'd save the beautiful architecture for those. Anything else is a box for public servants to serve the public.

[Jerry B.]

Design, permitting, and construction of the FBI Building took from 1964 to 1974. It was built with plenty of space for paper files...just about the time that other Federal agencies, the IRS for example, were beginning to go to electronic data storage.

[Minadin]

1. Are they Cheap to erect and maintain? No.
2. Do they serve their purpose? Yes, mostly.
3. Is that purpose necessary?

[GroundTruth]

Is that purpose Constitutional?

[Spiritus Mundi]

Spend moar!

[Spiritus Mundi]

Hey Bailey, why don't we just put a mask on them. That should solve everything.

[Number 2]

Brutalism?

Thomas Wolfe wrote about this over 40 years ago. It was the Bauhaus style that was considered cutting edge in the world of architecture. Interesting how long it took professors of architecture to realize what everyone else did years ago: these buildings are ugly.

[mtrueman]

Ugly, but some brutalist buildings have a certain charm. The car park (now demolished) in the Michael Caine movie Get Carter is a nice example. The setting the building provides adds a touch of menace that more conventional buildings couldn't match.

I think it was Tucker Carlson a little while back railing against brutalism and the soul destroying aesthetic of post modernism. He was mistaken. Brutalism is squarely in the modernist camp. Post modernist architecture is much more pleasing. Frank Gehry is probably the most famous of the post modernists and his Guggenheim in Bilboa, Spain attracts thousands of tourists every year.
https://www.the-art-minute.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/bilbao-3.jpg

[Brandybuck]

> Perhaps the most iconic is the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building, declared the ugliest building in the U.S.

Meh, it's not that bad. In fact, it's sort of nice, as brutalist architecture goes. Do not confuse your personal architectural preferences for objective fact.

I do not understand this streak of anti-brutalism in the libertarian movement. Did Ayn Rand take over again and architectural styles are now being condemned as enemies of the rightthink? Bollocks!

The problem is NOT the architecture of government buildings. The problem is GOVERNMENT itself.

[Minadin]

I'm not a fan of brutalism in particular or architectural movements (fads) in general. But what would I know.

[Use the Schwartz]

Brutalist architecture can be quite beautiful, but these are later bastardizations of brutalism. Pre-fab, cost-saving, unimaginative, squat blocks of manifested bureaucracy are a corruption.

[CE]

When your whole playbook is from Marx, you may as well copy the building styles from Stalin.

[But SkyNet is a Private Company]

Modern architecture of all stripes was awful. Mid 50s thru the 70s.

The all-purpose round astroturfed sports stadiums, the apartment buildings, the state and local government buildings.

Downtown Nashville is a treasure of neo-Gothic architecture from the Victorian era- interspersed amongst the government monstrosities built in the Modernist period and the sleek post-modernist new office towers

It wasn’t just architecture that was awful in the 60s and 70s - fashion, hairstyles, art.

But it was the absolute height of popular music and movies

[mtrueman]

Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Cleveland all have excellent, even dominating examples of the neo Gothic style. Maybe an advantage of being in the rust belt.

[Peter Kreeft taught me LOGIC, BEWARE !!!!!!!]

Biden ,with no explanation at all, immediately rescinded Trump's "Executive Order on Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture"
and I do not recall one voice raised on REASON
Am I wrong?

[markm23]

Why shouldn't government buildings be ugly? I don't want my tax dollars spent on decorations.

[Peter Kreeft taught me LOGIC, BEWARE !!!!!!!]

We are not talking at all about decoration !!!! But about what is decorated. UTTERLLY DIFFERENT
When you see a building going up (and of course not yet decorated) do you NEVER say "Oh, beautiful" or "Oh, ugly" ??
C'omn , you aer addicted to arguing.not a good characteristic