Buchanan Tower looms over campus and scares the living shit out of all who walk past it. In my humble opinion, I believe this makes for the perfectly brutal building that campus needs to keep everyone feeling a bit of doom.
Oscar Wilde and other aestheticists believe that art is more about aesthetics than anything. “Art for art’s sake” is what he would say. However, the art of architecture has shown us time and time again that art’s socio-political purposes, such as scaring the living shit out of everyone constantly to control the masses, still hold as much importance as pretty pictures of dogs.
Every time I walk past Buchanan Tower, I start fucking sobbing.
I feel my heart being clenched by the concrete walls, I ponder intensely and deeply whether or not the windows even open enough to get fresh air inside. I think about every single professor who spends countless hours in this fortress of doom, waiting for a single student to stop by and break the curse of brutalism and ask a simple question about the assignment that was answered in class a week ago. I start screaming and I drop down to my knees and wail, “Why, oh why must I endure this horror?” until someone calls the police on me because I’m ‘causing a disturbance’ and ‘scaring all the first years.’
For this reason, I believe that Buchanan Tower is brutal in all the right ways. It grips us, makes us feel scared, sends me into a frantic episode and controls us in an authoritarian way without ever saying a single word. Buchanan Tower is what keeps us on our toes.