We truly are at the dawn of a new Golden Age. Rich Lowry writes in the New York Post,
There’s a reason God created dynamite.
The brutalist federal buildings that have blighted Washington, DC for decades deserve the same fate as Carthage after the Third Punic War, and the nation’s capital is finally beginning to move on from these concrete monstrosities.
Attributed to Winston Churchill, “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” You know brutalist when you see it: those massive blocks of concrete, masquerading as buildings, blighting the landscape.
Like any medium, concrete can be shaped into great art in the hands of a master. Think Frank Lloyd Wright and Fallingwater.
Lowry explains,
According to The Nation magazine, Trump’s initiative is part of an agenda to “to make historical architecture on the whole inextricable from Eurocentric white supremacy.”
In short, it’s an unforgivable offense to want a government building to look nice.
Brutalism, with its blocky, minimalist structures made of poured concrete, was a creation of a post-war Europe that wanted to embrace the fresh and new and to economize on rebuilding.
Although the name “brutalism” perfectly captures the aesthetic effect, it actually comes from the French for raw concrete, béton brut.
One thing The Nation is correct about is the fact that government architecture cannot be separated from politics and ideology. This is the point I have been making for the past few years in my ongoing “County Courthouses Across America” series on Twitter (X).
I have my own long list of buildings that need to go. I start close to home with this monstrosity near downtown Minneapolis.
Riverside Plaza (1973). You may recall seeing it in the opening credits to The Mary Tyler Moore TV show.
It has to go.
