I love brutalist architecture, and find it beautiful in it's own way.
I suspect that how it feels to me, doesn't differ much from how it feels to those who dislike it: stark; sterile; imposing; impenetrable; alien.
I submit that it is okay for art to make us feel this way. There is plenty of art, architectural or otherwise, that make us feel other ways, and having a variety in this respect adds richness to one's life (as well as options for those of us who enjoy it).
Yeah I didn't like the article in part because it works from an odd premise, that any building that many people dislike essentially is disliked by everyone, and therefore is not in need of saving. If that was the standard, almost no modern art or architecture would be preserved.
I love brutalist architecture. Why, I don't know, but it has always felt interesting, clean, and serene — even cozy in its own way — to me. I grew up around and spending a lot of time in brutalist architecture, and have fond memories of a lot of it. It's also different from a lot of other architecture, as you point out, and worthwhile in that regard alone I think.
Nobody is debating whether art pieces like that can exist, in general.
These are not mere art pieces that one experiences at their leisure. These are environments that people must live and work in and around, often with little choice in the matter.
I submit that deliberately making the environment inhospitable for the people living there requires more justification than “I decree this discomfort is artistic, and will be good for you”.
I believe that the number of people who are forced to view a given piece of brutalist architecture all day constitutes a small fraction of its dislikers.
I walk a mile through my city and I see buildings of all shapes and sizes, and if I don't favor one, I note that I do not favor it, and at worst, look in a different direction, and am past it in a matter of seconds (and I don't think it should be destroyed either). Beyond that, I could walk 1 block one way or another to avoid it, if it was sufficiently objectionable.
Having said that, if you work or live in a building you do not favor, or perhaps across the street from one which obscures your view (assuming you have one), that isn't great.
Having spent many hours working at a window table in the now-Geisel Library, looking out over the chaparral canyons to the east, I will submit my lived experience of it as having been highly hospitable.
By analogy, if you are playing music over your entire block 24/7 and you pick music that is really pushing the boundaries of most people's tastes: you're not sophisticated, you're just an asshole.
To continue the analogy, each building plays its own music to the city, and the 'destroy art I don't like' here is akin to saying "no, don't play THAT genre to the entire city, only play THIS genre of music to the entire city"
Does liking THIS genre of music somehow make one more sophisticated when playing it to the entire city?
I submit that it is okay for art to make us feel this way. There is plenty of art, architectural or otherwise, that make us feel other ways, and having a variety in this respect adds richness to one's life (as well as options for those of us who enjoy it).