Rich Lowry of National Review Online explains why he’s no fan of a certain style of federal government building.
There’s a reason God created dynamite.
The brutalist federal buildings that have blighted Washington, D.C., 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.
The Department of Housing and Urban and Development just announced that it is leaving its godawful headquarters in Washington for a less hideous space in Northern Virginia. HUD Secretary Scott Turner has described the structure as “the ugliest building in D.C.,” which is a dubious claim only because there are so many other buildings in Washington that compete for that distinction.
He’s not the first HUD secretary to hate the building. Jack Kemp called it “ten floors of basement.”
Meanwhile, the FBI is also departing its HQ, designated by the U.K. building materials retailer Buildworld as the ugliest building in the United States and the second ugliest in the world.
The moves are in keeping with the spirit of President Trump’s executive order stipulating that federal buildings should “respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States and our system of self-government.”
That EO should be considered common sense, but has several trigger words for defenders of the architectural status quo, including “traditional,” “classical,” and, perhaps foremost of all, “beautify.” …
… Brutalism, with its blocky, minimalist structures made of poured concrete, was a creation of a postwar 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.
To be sure, concrete is extremely important to modern life, but no one has ever said, “Oh, it’s so elegant and uplifting.”
The post Ditching DC’s ‘brutalist’ federal government buildings first appeared on John Locke Foundation.
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Author: Mitch Kokai
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