Comments by "Kim Jong-un" (@SupremeLeaderKimJong-un) on "History Summarized: Beauty and Brutalism" video.

  1. My favorite example of Brutalism is the DC Metro! The stations of the DC Metro are a sight to behold. The flashing lights, the hexagonal floor tiles, the waffles...chef's kiss design. Many Metro stations were designed by Chicago architect Harry Weese, and they not only have aspects of Brutalist design, but also reflect the influence of Washington's neoclassical architecture in their overarching coffered ceiling vaults! Weese worked with lighting designer Bill Lam from Cambridge, MA on the indirect lighting used throughout the system. Weese and his employees visited European cities like Lisbon, Moscow, Milan, Paris, Rome, and Stockholm, hoping to take the best elements of each and combine them into the perfect system for DC. In Lisbon, they noted the design of the ticket booth and the attendant’s uniform, as well as the minimal interruption of the subway stairs on a typical street. In Moscow, they took note of the palatial glories of the underground stations, from cut-glass lanterns to marble paneling. In Milan, they took note of its Modernist design. Weese created a proposal with dozens of views for station interiors with a simple semiellipse, with a flat bottom and curved top. For cut-and-cover stations, the vault was proposed to have straight, vertical walls supporting a curved ceiling. In Weese’s first presentations to the US Commission of Fine Arts during the spring and summer of 1967, he attempted to assimilate his European travels into something Washingtonian, stations are shallow when possible, entered through cuts in the sidewalk, as in Lisbon, with minimal interruptions between street and platform. But the CFA wanted it to feel monumental, no exposed rock walls like Stockholm, and something like the inside of a thermos bottle. So he changed his thought. He felt the necessities of each station would produce the variety, that "You don't try to make them different for different's sake. We think it's very appropriate for Washington. After all". To Weese, the sweeping, swooping, floating lines of Metro's plazas, stations and mezzanines are the system's best feature. Once they were chosen, he said, the long, long escalators and the indirect, somewhat dim lighting in stations fell into step as a result.
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