It’s official, pals https://twitter.com/BenjaminMillar/status/1263759518082596871

I’m actually a bit ambivalent about this because it doesn’t seem like something former patients are happy about! sorry

the reappraisal of brutalist architecture is in part about nostalgia for the post-war era of large, utilitarian structures for public use — mass housing, universities, transit centres, hospitals. it’s not a coincidence that right-wingers don’t like brutalism.

dismissing experiences people had in brutalist buildings of being stripped of personhood, of being treated, well, brutally — that’s pretty on the nose? it’s exactly what right-wing critics accuse brutalist architects of doing

there’s something about a derelict, unsafe, asbestos-stuffed brutalist building being preserved for purely aesthetic reasons that seems really perverse to me!

the Footscray Psychiatric Hospital is not like the Sirius building or the Plumbers Union building. it’s not beloved, nobody grew up there, it’s not a centre of working life

I’m not saying we should only heritage list nice places but the more I think about this the more annoyed I feel about the state of the discourse on brutalism