I'm surprised that so many folks here (obv not everyone) have so readily accepted the word "brutalist" to apparently mean "simple, functional, and minimal", because that's definitely NOT what brutalism entails in the architectural world!
I really like a lot of brutalist architecture, but much of it is far LESS functional/useful/practical than other styles. Brutalism was an aesthetic, largely a reaction to existing forms--many of which were characterized by their utility! A lot of brutalist architects were rebelling against the bourgeois notion of a building as merely (as they saw it) "a place intended for humans to live, work, and play", and instead asserting the notion of a building as an artistic form in its own right, which often meant intentionally disregarding or downplaying the importance of the building's utility for the humans who interacted with it! Anyone who has lived or worked in a brutalist building can aver this truth: if the building served its function w/r/t humans, it was often DESPITE its artistic intentions, which prioritized almost everything else instead.
I really like a lot of brutalist architecture, but much of it is far LESS functional/useful/practical than other styles. Brutalism was an aesthetic, largely a reaction to existing forms--many of which were characterized by their utility! A lot of brutalist architects were rebelling against the bourgeois notion of a building as merely (as they saw it) "a place intended for humans to live, work, and play", and instead asserting the notion of a building as an artistic form in its own right, which often meant intentionally disregarding or downplaying the importance of the building's utility for the humans who interacted with it! Anyone who has lived or worked in a brutalist building can aver this truth: if the building served its function w/r/t humans, it was often DESPITE its artistic intentions, which prioritized almost everything else instead.