I BRUTALISM

To paraphrase the end of his own first paragraph, it is hard to know quite where to begin with a response to Joseph Connolly’s hatred of Brutalist architecture (Letters, December). For someone living in London, he seems very irate about an “eyesore” hundreds of miles away that his eye need never see. Perhaps he feels that the people of Durham need assistance from him in hating it.

What is ludicrous is that those who want such structures levelled by the wrecking ball feel that their lives will somehow be improved by a building no longer being there, even if it is out of sight. They become obsessed with its annihilation, as a matter of empty principle, even if its demise makes little difference to their own existence.

For many years, a couple of councillors, driven to please a handful of locals with an architecture-loathing axe to grind, obsessed in this very same way about the Tricorn Centre and car park in Portsmouth, another example of 1960s

Brutalism. They got their wish for demolition, despite much protest from preservation societies, and decades later the empty space is nothing more than just another car park.

Like those who might come round to the ideas formulated and expressed in conceptual “art” simply if it wasn’t called art, those who will not take any time to appreciate Brutalist architecture might be won over a bit more if they were not asked to find any beauty in it, whether on the surface or underlying. I love Brutalism, and believe every example of it should be preserved, but I would never call it beautiful, any more than I would ever call it ugly. I just happen to find it unique and interesting, and I find it condescending to be told otherwise. Stefan Badham

Portsmouth