There is a federal building in downtown Miami that I have been watching for several years. It is large, concrete, aggressively geometric — a stack of cantilevered floors that projects over the sidewalk. It was built in 1972. It is, by any serious architectural standard, a significant work.
Most people think it is ugly. I understand this response. Brutalism is a style that demands something from its audience. It does not flatter. It does not reassure. It presents itself as what it is: concrete, mass, structure. If you are not prepared to meet it on its own terms, it will seem hostile.
The Irreplaceability Argument
The argument for preserving Brutalist buildings is not primarily aesthetic. It is about irreplaceability. You cannot rebuild a 1972 federal office building. The skills, the materials, the institutional will to build that way no longer exist. Once these buildings are gone, they are gone.
The argument for preservation is not that these buildings are beautiful. It is that they are irreplaceable.
Florida has already lost several significant Brutalist buildings. The old Miami-Dade County Courthouse. The original Miami International Airport terminal. Several university buildings that were demolished to make way for newer facilities. Each loss is permanent. The window for preservation is closing.
What is needed is not just advocacy but education. People cannot fight for buildings they have not learned to see. The work of architectural criticism, at its most basic, is teaching people to look at what is in front of them.