Design Debate

I have been pondering Brutalism lately, a very polarising form of architecture, and as with many things, I feel conflicted about it. My secondary school in Crawley, West Sussex, was cold, draughty, stark and grey, and not a building I liked at all. I compared it to the mainly Victorian – and considerably smaller – one I had left behind in Alresford, Hampshire. That had warm red bricks and chunky radiators you could sit on. I think that concrete enclosure was perhaps my first real taste of post-war architecture, and it seemed so at odds with my quintessentially British design sensibility. Paul Catherall's print of Coventry Station There was, however, something quite intriguing about the shapes of Brutalist architecture. I remember being in London once for an exhibition at the Barbican. The famous complex felt as though it had emerged from a dystopian novel, but at the same time I liked being there. It was calm, certain and imagination-provoking. My natural leaning...