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people love to hate on brutalism. my take is there something really aesthetic about it, but also that just because something is aesthetic doesn't mean that it would be a good place to live or work every day. in fact, I've unfortunately found that the environments that I find aesthetically pleasing and the environments that make me happy to live/work in diverge quite substantially.
The best example, for my tastes at least, is window-to-building ratio. I like working and living in buildings with high ratio, e.g. glass skyscrapers. But they look bad from outside.
5cubefox
This is also why various artists don't necessarily try to make Tolkien's Orthanc, Barad-dûr, Angband, etc look ugly, but imposing and impressive in some way. Even H.R. Giger's biomechanical landscapes could be described as aesthetic. Or the crooked architecture in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). Architecture is art, and art doesn't have to be beautiful or pleasant, just interesting. But presumably nobody would like to actually live in a Caligari-like environment. (Except perhaps people in the goth subculture?)