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be used as stage sets for docudramas about East Germany. They are a tribute to soulless monumentality and a gut punch to the human spirit. If they don’t eventually get a welldeserved appointment with a wrecking ball, they should be donated to North Korea.

The original justifications of brutalism no longer apply. The buildings aren’t new anymore, and aren’t cheap. They haven’t aged well in any sense, not aesthetically or functionally. The FBI building is literally falling apart, and the expense of maintaining the HUD building has become ruinous.

Defenders of the brutalist buildings say that they are now part of our heritage and should be preserved as such. That’s not fair, though, to the people who have to work in them, or who walk or drive by them every day. They are a net subtraction to the D.C. landscape and to human happiness. If one of them has to be kept for historical reasons, it should be made into a Smithsonian museum devoted to idiotic fads that were indulged for much too long.

Rich Lowry is editor of the National Review.

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