I think they are stunning because they are so ugly. Looking at pictures once is one thing and living or working there is another thing. Add the unwanted associations with the totalitarian regime... I have to admit that I am in favor of destroying them and replacing them with something nicer wherever possible. I respect that beauty is in the eye of the beholder; just my $0.02.
The totalitarian association is what makes them so fucked up. The architects themselves had no true intention of making "art" - they were embodying evil, actually broadcasting and embedding evil into everyday life, for no reason other than pure hatred of the basic human needs in everyday life. They hated their own kind. And anyone who celebrated them, even as a cerebral exercise was evil as well. There are certain buildings in Buenos Aires that you know were where people were tortured in cages in the basement; under the dictatorship, this functioned as a type of psychological abuse of the population who have to walk by that place.
The Kremlin is a type of thing like that, even though it existed long before brutalist architecture; its purpose is the same. A boot stamping forever on a human face.
Statistically, I hate totalitarianism more than the next guy, but these buildings don't really embody evil to me, for the most part. They embody the necessary concomitant of evil, power, and broadcast it, which suggests totalitarianism in some cases but not in others. In some of these cases it's appropriate. A bank, for example, wants to project an image of invulnerability; a bridge, likewise, doesn't have to be friendly-looking or inviting, but needs to look like it can ignore traffic, storms, bombs, or whatever else is thrown at it. And for a power station a powerful appearance is obvious. Not all power is a boot to the face.
A lot of these buildings look like they're designed with an aesthetic appropriate to their function, which I think is a good principle for architecture in general.
> The architects themselves had no true intention of making "art" - they were embodying evil, actually broadcasting and embedding evil into everyday life, for no reason other than pure hatred of the basic human needs in everyday life. They hated their own kind.
??? Of course not. They probably thought they were building happy communities under the glorious sun of communism. Unfortunately they were tragically wrong (on both their buildings and their economical system)
One of the main drivers of later Soviet Bloc architecture was relentless uniformization and centralization of industry. By far the fastest way to churn out apartments was to standardize a few typical panels, produce them en masse and cover the entire country in just a few types of buildings.
My Google search results were probably skewed towards architecture by the facts that I am a native of the city where "sorela architecture" is found, that I was actually very recently there for a visit and that I searched for several architectonic terms right before engaging in this discussion.
I don't think that's true for all brutalist architecture, otherwise how could you explain its presence in the UK and other countries where there was no communist regime?
