99% Invisible recently did an episode on brutalism. I'm a fan of concrete, as long as it's used in a provocative / interesting way. A lot of people think it is ugly, but this building on my campus is a freakin' awesome brutalist alien spaceship: 
So... there's "awesome" and there's "livable." And that's why most people hate architects. This building is "awesome." However, it also doesn't have floors, per se, it has this stupid "spiral" where no matter where you are, you're walking down a grade. It also has a 7-story escalator going up and a 6-person elevator going down. If you want to get to the 2nd floor, you "spiral" up. If you want to get to the 3rd floor, you "spiral" up twice. If you want to get to the 4th floor, you take the escalator to the 5th floor then "spiral" down. If you want to get to the 6th floor you take the escalator up to the 7th and spiral down like 3 times because the 6th and 7th floors are actually like two floors each. Which is "awesome." But also unspeakably retarded, particularly if you have any difficulty walking since none of the goddamn floors are level. I have worked on a number of "awesome" buildings. In 2005 my name was on the drawings somewhere for 5 of the AIA's top ten projects. And the more "awesome" a building tends to be, the more hopeless it is to live in.
I'll have to check that out next time I'm not in a public space. Brutalism can be well done, I do have a penchant for Boston's City Hall. And most of my campus was brutalist, though that was brick and not concrete.
