Assuming that you’re in the AEC world, one of the best things about being a structural engineer is that you’re allowed, even expected, to stay out of discussions of architectural style. That said, I’ve ventured into the topic before and see no reason not to now, even when combined with the far-more-fraught topic of politics. The trigger for this is yesterday’s article in the New York Times on brutalism (the architectural style) and current politics: The Politics of Brutalism.
The article is worth reading in its entirety, and I don’t want to summarize because I’m likely to distort it in the process. I don’t think I’m giving away any secrets to say that some people like the brutalist style and some don’t, or that some of the people who don’t like it describe it in overtly political terms: oppressive, foreign, elitist, and so on. Something that the article does not really discuss is that the same is true or pretty much any style: Roman-revival classical may have been a popular style 200 years ago, but it is hardly without negative connotations today. It simply depends on who you are talking to. Classical architecture represents, to some people, a dominant-culture hierarchy. Why else would it be so popular with banks? Similar concerns can be raised about gothic architecture, or pretty much any other historicist style.
These concerns about style are not embedded in the physical artifacts. They are cultural, based in how buildings are seen by different people. So the skill of an architectural designer in using any given style will have little effect on people who are predisposed to see that style as “good” or “bad”. I’m making a non-classical argument here, that the meaning of a work of art (assuming we can all agree that architecture is art, and good luck with that) is socially constructed, not inherent in the art itself. If you believe that, as I do, then attempting to create or mandate a national style is doomed to failure.
Personally, I care about quality in design, and I support good design in styles that I personally dislike over mediocre design in my favorites. Amazingly, that statement is political.
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