Hot take: Art Nouveau definitely has the advantage of needing less maintainance to not look like a piss-soaked warzone. If it's a bit dirty, if there's some cracks in the facade, some corrosion, some peeling paint, that only makes it look lived-in until we're getting into actual unsound territory. With brutalism, all of that is a problem much sooner, as it relies so heavily on having that clean, futurist drawing-board look.
Art nouveau gets a really good patina, art deco needs to be maintained but not necessarily perfectly clean (a lot of Manhattan), and brutalism is just extremely maintenance-intensive and shockingly difficult to build properly in the first place.
Hot take: Art Nouveau definitely has the advantage of needing less maintainance to not look like a piss-soaked warzone. If it's a bit dirty, if there's some cracks in the facade, some corrosion, some peeling paint, that only makes it look lived-in until we're getting into actual unsound territory. With brutalism, all of that is a problem much sooner, as it relies so heavily on having that clean, futurist drawing-board look.
Art nouveau gets a really good patina, art deco needs to be maintained but not necessarily perfectly clean (a lot of Manhattan), and brutalism is just extremely maintenance-intensive and shockingly difficult to build properly in the first place.
YES.
But again, I want AN used for average people's homes, instead just for the rich.