70’s Architecture - The Ugly Valley

I have a bone to pick with the architects of the 70’s. The advancers of brutalism and split style homes. The era in which much of my town  and America today was built. Woe to you if your town was constructed during the same time, because the architects of the 70s did us a disservice.

Curator and critic, Mimi Zeiger, has termed 70s architecture as “the ugly valley”. I don’t know who that is, but I stumbled upon that quote and I couldn’t agree more. My theory is that if you’re flipping a building from the early 1900s, you update it, and if it’s from the 70’s, you replace it. It’s difficult to give a face lift to a building with bad bones.

Take me to a city that was built up during the 1800’s, and I won’t be mad at you. The Brownstones of Brooklyn, the avenues of Paris; quality materials and craftsmanship went into these buildings, and I love them. I also love the old historic homes of the South with wrap-around porches and long Victorian windows. As a teenager I saw the covers of Southern Living Magazine and wondered where those homes were located. The obvious answer should have been: The South. But that didn't occur to me then. 

I had grown up in California, Idaho, and Texas, and I had never seen homes like the ones in Southern Living. Then, in 2019 I moved to a small town in South Georgia for a year. You could throw a rock and hit a Victorian window. I would walk my dog through the neighborhood each day, soaking it in. The beauty was never lost on me.

Which brings me back to my repulsion with the 70’s. I’m currently sitting outside a coffee shop with an unsightly exterior that is no fault of the owner’s. I’m surrounded by columns of ridged brown cement, gray vinyl siding, and a blue metal roof. I don’t know when this complex was built, but I have a good guess. And I think at this point you do too. 

70’s architecture sucks.