I spent four awful, expensive years becoming a dentist in a brutalist building that began its life with the name "Health Sciences Unit A". Christ, what a mess that building was.
The ugliness goes away after a while, the ugliness you get used to, the ugliness is a matter of opinion. What didn't go away, what wasn't a matter of opinion, though, was the utter disregard for what James Howard Kunstler calls "human scale". The walls of this building ran, STRAIGHT UP without interruption for 15 stories from the plaza outside of it. You couldn't sit next to it, get in it, see inside of it, or shelter under it. You COULD walk a half block away and sit in a nice park. But the building stood in disregard of and negligence to the humans attempting to use it.
The ugliness goes away after a while, the ugliness you get used to, the ugliness is a matter of opinion. What didn't go away, what wasn't a matter of opinion, though, was the utter disregard for what James Howard Kunstler calls "human scale". The walls of this building ran, STRAIGHT UP without interruption for 15 stories from the plaza outside of it. You couldn't sit next to it, get in it, see inside of it, or shelter under it. You COULD walk a half block away and sit in a nice park. But the building stood in disregard of and negligence to the humans attempting to use it.
Of course, I'm only just parroting the ideas of Kunstler, which you can read or watch here: http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_subu...