Brutally Sad

August 18, 2011 by Taylor Studios in Design & Planning

Visiting my family during the Christmas holiday is dreadful. Each year, dread seems to arrive a bit earlier. Last year, it started early in November. I may only have a few weeks of comfort remaining this year…

My family is not the problem, nor is Seasonal Affective Disorder or Christmas music. Those damn buildings are the problem. They sadden me.

Traveling by car north up I-90/94 to get to my holiday destination on the north side of Chicago, takes me alongside the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). The campus is highly visible for a stretch of the elevated I- 90/94 roadway. When this stretch is soon to arrive, I play a CD of happy music to offset the impending feelings of sorrow.

And then it happens. The UIC Administrative Building comes into view. Sucking life, truth, and all that is worthy into its concrete exterior, it stands as a beacon, the tallest of scattered buildings composing what I refer to as the “Campus of Sighs.” It seemed appropriate that upon researching the campus buildings, I learned they were designed by a devotee of the architectural movement called Brutalism.


Brutalism’s characteristics include striking repetitive angular shapes and a rough, blocky appearance. Brutalism has been criticized for ignoring aspects of the environment from which it is placed, adding to the sense that the structures feel starkly out of place.

I don’t know which or how many of these “Brutalist” characteristics mingle in my mind when I drive past the “Campus of Sighs.” For me, it may simply create of sadness because it is colorless and imposing. Perhaps it is due to the feeling that each building seems to have sunken eyes and Andy Rooney’s eyebrows.

Abraham Lincoln and Brutalism

Taylor Studios is currently designing an exhibit on Abraham Lincoln’s life. Aspects of the exhibit design will require interpreting sadness, including Lincoln’s melancholia and the public sentiment generated by his assassination.

Perhaps modified ‘Brutalist” elements might find expression in the exhibit when interpreting sadness. Use of drab color, perhaps an exhibit element or two that seems out of place, an imposing element overshadowing the room, a preponderance of rectilinear shapes, and use of cold materials would enhance the unconscious emotion of sadness.

Of Lincoln’s sadness, his law partner William Herndon said, “His melancholy dripped from him as he walked.”