In (soon-to-be-only-a) memory of it, and of Edinburgh's postwar utopian concrete dream, I have been looking through some of my brutalist/modernist photo frenzies of the past few years (random selections on a crappy phone camera). Apart from the sheer orgiastic authenticity of these concrete monoliths, I don't know quite why I love it all so much - perhaps because I think of postwar concrete buildings as a kind of marker for what was lost in the war (often literally, as replacements for bombed buildings - hence London being uglier than Paris, etc.) and for the egalitarian, civic-minded hopes of those postwar decades. Glassy, sandstone, privatised cubes (or spirals) don't really cut it as markers of either memory or hope; the best that can be said of the replacement is that it will no doubt be replaced itself within a decade or two (such is the cynical, short-termist modus operandi of investment groups behind developments like this) - hopefully by that point, it will be a case of "come back state/council-led concrete building projects, all is forgiven".
