alt Hacker NewsHere in my area of Belgium it's become very popular to build modern cube buildings. Flat roof, featureless. No longer brick but a flat white, grey or black outside. i find it absolutely disgusting.
We're really just reinventing brutalism but without much of the commendable outcrops like the barbican or whatever.
The only reason The Barbican (London) works is because wealthy people moved in. In my opinion, it's still a very ugly estate but it is a well maintained estate. So people can still admire its design.
Whereas other examples were left to deteriorate because wealthy people moved elsewhere. And thus all people see is dilapidated, ugly concrete.
While we are on the topic of brutalism, one of my most disliked Sci-Fi tropes is concrete buildings used as "futuristic" buildings. I honestly think the only reason they do this is because concrete is featureless so it could be from any era. If they used Victorian-style architecture or Germanic Gothic buildings then all you'd see is historic-looking architecture which would pull you out of the moment. But I, personally, cannot "unsee" concrete buildings in Sci-Fi. Everytime I see that I just see lazy set design. Plus I'd hope in a few hundred years we'd have found a better building material than concrete.