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Notes -
2020 and 2021 both look pretty brutalist -- although that's perhaps overly charitable to 2020, which kind of looks more like a Mexican parking garage, and is a School of Architecture so should get some sort of bonus points.
2020 is Brutalistesque, but 2021 is not Brutalist at all. The point is that "Apparently brutalism is the only acceptable architectural form these days" is clearly incorrect.
"Blocky forms made out of concrete" is brutalist enough for me -- what would you call the style of the 2021 winner?
Also what is "brutalistesqe"? 'esqe' as a suffix usually means 'similar to' -- so if buildings in a style similar to brutalism are winning architechture prizes, I would say this means that brutalism is still en vogue at least to some extent?
That's what I meant by brutalesque.
What's the difference? Are there some sort of Brutalism Police that we need to watch out for here?
And if there are, do they work for wikipedia? Because wikipedia has the following photos in their article on brutalism:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/The_History_Faculty%2C_Cambridge_%282354442890%29.jpg/1920px-The_History_Faculty%2C_Cambridge_%282354442890%29.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1a/Norfolk_Terrace.JPG/1024px-Norfolk_Terrace.JPG
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6d/Habitat_67%2C_southwest_view.jpg/1920px-Habitat_67%2C_southwest_view.jpg
I'm not sure you are -- compare that French architectural school (2021 prizewinner) with my third link, and explain to me how the one is Brutalist enough to be included in an article about Brutalism, while the other is non-Brutalist enough for you to say that it's not Brutalist at all, and therefore it getting a prize from some committee of architects two years ago is not evidence of Brutalism still being en vogue with architects.
Again, the point is that, even if there is that one exception, that hardly shows that Brutalism is in fashion. All the cool kids are clearly doing other stuff, and have been for years. Because the initial claim was the opposite; that all the cool kids are doing Brutalism.
If you acknowledge that 2021 is also Brutalist in nature, that is two prizewinners in the last four years -- which seems like a lot for something that hasn't been en vogue for forty years.
(Honestly 2023 would also qualify if you ask me, but I didn't want to get into it about whether non-square angular forms are brutalist or not -- the outside of the building is of course not brutalist, probably because it was built 150 years ago -- but anything that the renovation architect seemed to have touched looks a bit more than brutalesqe to my eye.)
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