The most important piece of context that people always miss when they criticize modern architecture, especially Brutalism and the International style, is that they are presenting a counter-point or alternative to the classical styles. In classical architecture, the goal was to design a building that fit classical ideas of aesthetic; for the shape and design of the building to not so much express what the building is for, but rather, for it to blend in quietly into a collective of similar buildings. Hierarchy would be represented (the more important the building, the more grand it was; it was not proper to violate that rule) but
purpose was not reflected. When it came to materials, you used whatever you could for the structure—that was invisible. The face of the building was purely decoration. A lot of vernacular buildings in Europe that look stone are actually wood covered in plaster. The moldings aren't stone carvings; they're painted wood carvings. There is a lot of trickery, a lot of metaphor. To understand the stories that the
architecture is telling you, you need to understand world and architectural history right back to ancient Greece. Why are classical columns designed the way they are? There are reasons for it! Do you know them? Probably not. But they look pretty!
Prettier than this, I assume you'll say:
189 Red River Rd., built 1989, architect Arthur Erickson
So, how modernism and Brutalism contrast to this is now obvious.
Classical ideas of aesthetic? No. Abandon aesthetic. We want modern: clean lines, no historical imagery. We've just invented a massive inventory of new building materials and techniques, let's not hide them!
Let's express them. Buildings aren't decorated piles of stones with mysteries inside anymore. They're machines. Look at how they work! Look at what they're made of, what holds them up! That's the modernist philosophy. No more does every building look the same: not only does the shape of the building express what it does, the shapes that make up the building express what the parts of the building itself do within the whole. Brutalist buildings are probably the best example of this. Historical universities or schools were boxes, and the different activities going on inside were just stuffed into the box. In Brutalism, the library has a distinct shape from the labs which are distinct from the classrooms which are distinct from the cafeteria. All have a common theme, but just by looking at the building, you can determine that it's many parts coming together and forming a single entity. What is the building made of? Gone are the days when structural members were hidden inside brick and wood veneers. You can touch the supporting columns. You can see the imprint of the wooden slats used to hold the concrete in place while it dried. Different materials have different textures, and you can use them to make patterns and express ideas that way, instead of using ancient metaphors and allegories and carvings of acanthus leaves. When is the last time you saw an acanthus? Millions of them are carved into Canadian buildings for no reason other than "it has been done for 2,500 years".
But the most important reason architecture changed so sharply in the interwar period, and then modernism cemented itself in the postwar years? It looked toward the future. Back then, people were more optimistic about the future than we are today. They looked at the classical buildings we fawn over and many people saw dusty, obsolete trash. They knocked it all down with glee. At the time, every building looked that way, and everyone knew that those veneers were not genuine. The largest classical office building in my city is covered in terra cotta panels and carvings mass produced in Montreal intended to decorate the exteriors of middle class homes, with the exception of a carving bearing the name of the building none of them were intended for it; they depict monkeys and guava. It was an office building for a timber and ship building company. Under that is an ugly concrete and brick superstructure, nothing anyone would say is pleasing. It's facade is nothing more than a facade. In Brutalism, there is no facade; only structure.
This building:
The vertical columns between the windows are I-Beams welded to the facade so that the expressive elements of its architecture are literally the same thing that holds the building up. Not Brutalism, but the same idea: celebrating what makes the building a building, not celebrating centuries old tradition that means little to most people today.
Classical proportions, International style was all about that: the building is a conformist box of a certain proportion is one feature International and Brutalism do not share (those concrete boxes that you think are Brutalist, like
these two buildings, are actually International).
If you can explain all of the reasons classical architecture uses the proportions, materials, carvings, columns, layouts that it does, then go ahead, tell me how great it is. But you can't. Few can. You need to go to university to do that. The style "beaux arts" is literally named for L'Ecole des Beaux Arts, the school where they taught architecture in that specific style, inspired by a certain interpretation of existing classical styles.
I've always found classical architecture to be pretty, mainly because it's old and "intricate", but modern architecture, especially Brutalism, is wondrous, and unlike classical architecture, where the closer you look, the more you find unintended imperfections and flaws and lies (especially here in the north where most of the grand buildings were kits made in quarries near Toronto and shipped here to be assembled like Lego) but with modern architecture, the closer you look, the more obvious its philosophy is.