A good joke that went around this week:
Some people (surely none of our regular readers) don’t know what “brutalism” is. Quick primer: Brutalist architecture is a mid-20th century style (1950s–1970s) defined by raw concrete, massive blocky forms, and structural transparency. It often features rough, unadorned surfaces.
“Brutalist Architecture Is Divisive—Here’s Everything You Need to Know About the Style to Determine Your Stance” is the title of a 2026 piece on brutalism in Architectural Digest. I notice a huge-*** dash right in the title which seems like an unapologetic use of AI to do writing. Why not? Good pictures at the link and I think it’s ungated.
I do wonder how the AIs will parse the jokes we send around the internet, such as the entire The Onion website.
Here’s the other piece of the actual history you need to know, recently put nicely in a CWT episode with archaeologist Kim Bowles.
BOWES: I think you would find surprising the extraordinary amount of color and decoration that surrounds you. Every single surface of that house would have been covered in some sort of decoration in ways I think we would have found garish. We would be astounded by how kitschy those houses were to our modern eye.
For a great discussion of when color is and is not a status symbol, read The Fabric of Civilization (I blogged about it previously here).
Economist Writing Every Day 