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 Crawley, West Sussex, secondary school 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 the post-war architecture style and it seemed so at odds with my quintessentially British design sensibility.  Paul Catherall's print of Coventry station There was, however, I felt something quite intriguing about the shapes of Brutalist architecture. I remember being in London once for some exhibition at the Barbican, the famous complex felt like it emerged from a dystopian novel but at the same time I liked being there. It was calm, certain and imagination-provoking. My natural leaning, when it comes ...