Is this "new" brutalist architecture?  

cont.
Ho yes, it was not just ugly, it was critical of consumerism, it was not just a bad sculpture, it was an attack on those old values that pushed the consuming humanity to the edge of the planets sustainability. The product was not to be used, it should just be seen and the proud owner of the newly acquired piece with it!
It is all far too simple to me. Why should Mona Hatoum's "Paravent" look like a kitchen tool? Why would an ugly sculpture by Zaha Hadid be well designed when you decide to call it a bench? Very pragmatic indeed! Let's face it, the emperor has no cloths. Why can we not judge Marcio Kogan's building as architecture? Why should we start to see it as a sculpture? I would not go down that path because it would simply not stand a chance if it was judged as a sculpture. In a public space I have no need for someone to express him or herself. I have as much need for humour as a polar bear on a melting ice patch, and I have as much need for irony as school building after an earthquake. I do not want my living space divided by an enlarged kitchen grater, nor do I appreciate a set of gold plated cooking pots as a work of art. It is just too easy. Of course we laugh at a pair of upright condoms in porcelain as salt and pepper shakers-but for how long? And how critical is it of the Catholic Church or over population in general?or was it to support poor Malaysian rubber tree planters?
In an wave of optimism you stated that now in 2010 all or almost all technical issues are solved!...and so we could look at products in another dimension? I might be mistaken, but we have only started to solve the most basic technical issues. The efficiency of our technologies is about 4%, in other words for every "thing" we make, we consume 25 times the amount of materials and energy-is that what you call solved? We can not even imagine a transportation system that does not kill ten thousands of people a year and pollutes the planet. We can not make a communication system that does not fills the atmosphere with radiation or lighting that consumes too much energy or contains mercury like in fluorescent lighting etc. I am not so sure that we have all these problems behind us and that there is not difference between those who try to solve them and those who prefer to play the harp while the city is burning because after all they are artists?
Is there no space for art in design? In my books there is not. There is, and there should be space for beauty, there should be attention for proportion and harmony, but art is too important to be squeezed into a building or a product. Art is a very demanding messenger, and the message it wanted to convey might be important but I do not want to see a message in the hole punch on my desk, or in the shape of my printer or the chair I am sitting on.

finally...
When I will be sitting comfortably, which is not the case, I will go to the next level, not to see if I am sitting on a sculpture, but if that comfort will last for a long time and what kind of recycling the designer has foreseen when it will eventually break down and if the shapes, proportions and colours are such that I will not get irritated by it and be forced to buy another one before this one has served it's time. Because that is what products should do, they should serve us well, for as long as they last and re-enter the cycle that will bring them back in the same function or in another-in the meantime when in need for art I will listen to music.
I hope you have a laugh while reading this

I am not as comprehensive and consistent on this point as Koen...
but I ought to be. 🙂
Koen is rigorously rational in distinguishing between crafts and arts.
A craft ought to meet our rational needs for tools.
An art ought to explore and express and speak to what it means to be human.
A craft may be worked out with some art, but it should never be subordinated to art, because, quite simply, it is terribly wasteful since doing so results in a less than optimal tool.
As I age, I increasingly loath waste, prize elegance, have a sense of fit with context, and begrudge no on any amount of anything so long as it is the amount necessary to do thoroughly and lastingly what a human being basically requires to live as any other human being should.
Put another way, the older I get, the more I seek out, appreciate, even love the rational tool, whether old, or new.
Put yet another way, the older I get, the more I see that many tools that are are not worth doing, yet the more I think that what tools are worth making, ought to be much better made.
I will go to my death bed thinking much of what is on computers is utterly worthless and not worth the waste of programming hours spent on it. On the other hand, I will go to the same death bed confident that Windows is a piece of shit that ought to be replaced by something made drastically better, even if it were just another post Apple, post Linux rehash of Unix.

cont.
I don't believe we need Black Berries and iPods and 99 percent of the crap cell phones we have. Nor do we need desk tops and lap tops. Nor do we need game consoles, nor game boys. I have seen the iPhone and it in a much better version is all that we need. We need to be done with all the useless, disposable, short-lived, polluting techno legacy crap that probably should never have been built in the first place.
We need to do what is needed vastly better and stop waisting our time spreading ourselves too thin in the design, engineering, manufacturing, marketing and maintenance of thousands of things we don't need.
Everything Koen says that needs drastic improvement he is absolutely correct about. I would only add that about two thirds of everything that needs improving is not needed at all and the world would be vastly better off without it.
The world doesn't need a lot of artistic buildings. It needs a lot of great buildings. It needs a lot more buildings that function better, more efficiently, with greater durability, and more beauty.
But here's the rub.
I love Il Duomo in Florence.
I love the Guggenheim.
I love Gehry's Bilbao.
And yet I know these are not rational buildings.
Who really requires a dome to pray inside?
Who wants to look at rectangular paintings hanging askew relative to the upward spiral of the floor in a building that coarsens a neighborhood with its inharmonious bunker-ism?
Who wants to waste vast amounts of materials to get a Bilbao?
I can only say that most architecture ought to be as Koen describes, yet some of it ought to be art, because human beings want and like some buildings that are works of art,not just works of craft.
I know, I know, I am trying to have it both ways.
I believe we need it both ways, but a lot less of one (art buildings) that the other.