Architect Dr. Sally Mackereth joins WIRED to answer the internet’s burning questions about architecture. Is Brutalist architecture really ugly? Is there a theoretical limit of how tall a building can be on Earth? Does the climate of a city affect how architecture is built? Answers to these questions and many more await on Architecture Support.
*WIRED recommends:*
Watch more from WIRED | Tech Support:
#Architecture #BurjKhalifa #Brutalism
00:00 – Architecture Support
00:12 – Burj Khalifa, raise the roof
01:03 – The Walkie Scorchie
01:59 – No cutting corners here
03:04 – Let’s be brutally honest…
04:41 – The climate keeps architects on their toes
05:39 – If it ain’t broke, redesign it
06:43 – Honey, I shrunk the building
08:16 – “There are 360 degrees, so why stick to one?”
09:08 – Architect vs. Architectural Designer
09:51 – Draft mode is always on
10:46 – Frank Lloyd Wright, the American GOAT
11:52 – I talk and I draw things…
13:04 – Rome wasn’t built in a day, but your house was
14:16 – Blueprints need a strong foundation
15:00 – Pompidou or Pompidon’t?
15:53 – Concrete jungle where dreams are made of
16:34 – “Architect’s dream is an engineer’s worst nightmare”
17:15 – Louvre: the pyramid polarization
17:53 – An architect’s laboratory
_Sculpture credit: Sphere et cubes, 2014 by Karen Ctorza._
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@LooseNJangleN
May 5, 2026 at 4:34 pm
By my anecdotal experience, I think Brutalist architecture becoming “trendy” is partially based in misinformation. I’ve seen posts online with things like Falling Water and other non-examples in collages labeled “Brutalism”. Is this trolling? Propaganda? I don’t really know, but I do know most real Brutalist buildings seem to be designed with the intention to not require serious maintenance, as if they were industrial buildings, which is why they are so ugly.
Is that really the “no-makeup” look or is it the “no-bathing” look?
@---l---
May 5, 2026 at 4:40 pm
10:49 It launched the careers of thousands of waterproofing professionals?
@---l---
May 5, 2026 at 4:42 pm
12:48 It’s a technical skill and can learned. There are entire architectural drafting degrees.
@smithtorreysmith
May 5, 2026 at 4:45 pm
Yeah so you can absolutely model light reflecting off a curved surface and predict the results.
@psidvicious
May 5, 2026 at 6:56 pm
Same architect on both buildings. It may have been an oversight the first time but it was done purposely the second.
@AlexKarasev
May 5, 2026 at 8:03 pm
For like a few thousand years people have known how the sun moved in the sky. That’s how the sundial works.
@CGEarts
May 5, 2026 at 5:20 pm
Thank you. Detailed answers, a new view into this profession.
@WanderingYoda
May 5, 2026 at 5:22 pm
Penguin architecture!
@rasheedstarlet
May 5, 2026 at 5:26 pm
disappointing that the first question isn’t answered.
@markvwood2007
May 5, 2026 at 5:34 pm
So what is the height limit dictated by elevators. Has anyone worked this out, doctor?
@psidvicious
May 5, 2026 at 6:49 pm
Ultimately it’s actually dictated by strengths of materials, not elevators. If you discard building practicality, you can just keep going until the material can no longer withstand the given stresses. [2 adjacent “columns” that alternate back and forth, vertically, between usable space and elevator shaft every ~30 floors]
@blueprairiedog
May 5, 2026 at 5:52 pm
Painters don’t like how the walls of the Guggenheim tilt paintings downward. It’s not built for its purpose. And Fallingwater is famously poorly planned. It’s more like Fallingapart.
@User-54631
May 5, 2026 at 6:07 pm
I wonder if AI and 3D printers going to take this occupation.
@thehomeschoolinglibrarian
May 5, 2026 at 6:16 pm
Not likely since AI a computer program even a powerful one can’t understand abstract human ideas and can only create thing based on things that have been done before.
@hancfree
May 5, 2026 at 6:17 pm
I want a Chernobyl expert
@thehomeschoolinglibrarian
May 5, 2026 at 6:22 pm
Kyle Hill is who you want and he has his own channel.
@ehlava7331
May 5, 2026 at 6:20 pm
waaaay too many ads, I bailed
@RisoSystems
May 5, 2026 at 6:22 pm
The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles had the same reflectivity problem, solved fairly quickly.
@psidvicious
May 5, 2026 at 6:54 pm
Both buildings were designed by the same architect. They calculated that the fame and popularity achieved by the phenomenon were more than worth the price of the fix.
@thehomeschoolinglibrarian
May 5, 2026 at 6:25 pm
I am guessing because the YouTube Algorithm doesn’t like the word suicide that she didn’t mention what I believe is a University Library that’s design had students commiting suicide
@psidvicious
May 5, 2026 at 6:28 pm
Architect Sally Mackereth PhD – not Dr. (doctor)
Unless you’ve actually gone to medical school (which is entirely possible and then I have no point 🤐) and earned a doctorate in medicine.
A “doctor of architecture” sounds so pretentious. So much to be proud of in your own field. Anyone that matters, knows what “PhD” means and the level of expertise required to achieve it.
@pjanmax5082
May 5, 2026 at 6:42 pm
why was the intro cut off early? was waiting for the end
@kevinstowell6531
May 5, 2026 at 7:22 pm
Wonderful episode! Thanks Wired
@AS-kq7hw
May 5, 2026 at 7:31 pm
I kinda wish this had been more technical. This is Tech Support, after all. Just not as detailed as they usually get.
@ShawnLH88
May 5, 2026 at 8:32 pm
Well architects don’t actually build anything. They’re basically building artists.
Us civil engineers are the tech aspect that actually make architects famous
@jerrywood4508
May 5, 2026 at 7:56 pm
If I could have asked her a question, it would have been: Why is it that a so-called ‘architectural gesture’ is a middle finger to the rest of society? I have a theory.
@KurtFeudaleKing
May 5, 2026 at 8:06 pm
4:28 Comparing a beautiful, and naturally aged Pamala Anderson to Brutalist Architecture is WILD! LoL
I would say Pamala is a beautiful natural wood and stone house / cabin. While Kardashians are a fake marble veneer, and gaudy gold accent house, that isn’t going to age well lol.
@Edgewalker89
May 5, 2026 at 8:14 pm
What complete imbecile moron edited this? Why a cut every 2 seconds? Its educational content, not a action movie.
@ThePacketWhisperer
May 5, 2026 at 8:26 pm
(1:39) What? I’m pretty sure we can predict pretty accurately where the sun will be, at what angle, and how the curvature of the building will reflect all that.
@lowbudgetmic
May 5, 2026 at 8:49 pm
That blur O_O
@flightmasterr231
May 5, 2026 at 9:18 pm
She seems pleasant
@Anson120
May 5, 2026 at 9:22 pm
I can already see what is in her record collection. Lots of jazz and some Apex twin here and there. Is she single? I like architect babes. 🥰🥰🥰😁😁😁
@flapdance
May 6, 2026 at 1:12 am
Must getting a lot of 9/11 questions. I will watch this later…
@mud8g
May 6, 2026 at 1:32 am
which is the project that Dr. Sally visited in India?
@mehVhem
May 6, 2026 at 1:50 am
This was super interesting, have her on again please, really enjoy how she speaks about things.
Her old house sounds awesome too
@pneron2032
May 6, 2026 at 2:22 am
Next time, invite an architect who understands the importance of beauty.
@shinypaintf588
May 6, 2026 at 2:40 am
I understand liking brutalism as a concept, it’s the architectural equivalent to that type of metal music where it’s impossible to understand the lyrics behind the noise, but to someone it expresses their feelings and the way they are even if it seems cheap and unfulfilling to listen to for others.
Expressing oneself as an artist is all well and good, if you like bare concrete and squares that’s nice, but we know that buildings like that, especially huuuge buildings for hundreds of people, well they’re not for everyone, and they mostly get approved, why? Because it’s cheap and easy for the governments/real estate companies who build them. You might like metal, but would you force your grandma to listen to metal all day every day even if just in the background? That level of unpleasant, is what it’s like to live in brutalist apartments as a normal person who sees and acknowledges bare concrete as little more than cheap and quick.
I lived a couple years with my aunt in some appts like that. god if it wasn’t because I’m a country girl fascinated by any tall building I would’ve been even more depressed.
Later on I moved to a little student housing unit on an 1920’s or so Very Extremely art nouveau building, with huge ceilings and a spiral staircase… no elevator lol and that staircase had beautiful ornamentation, even after 100 years of not being well taken care of, that place was a joy and I got very fit walking up and down there every day and to class.
Basically if you wanna live on a minecraft stone/mud 4×4 house, cool! if you just wanna build it? cool! But when normal ppl are forced to live in those out of poverty, we end up like the story of the penguins with the beauuutiful architecture for their zoo exhibit, depressed and wishing we lived somewhere nice and cozy instead of a minecraft first night mud square
@quasinfinity
May 6, 2026 at 8:38 pm
Brava, well said, wholly endorse
@IdkkFacts
May 6, 2026 at 3:03 am
Not a very engaging video. Didn’t get the answers to any questions.
@susanavenir
May 6, 2026 at 8:58 am
And some of her quaint facts were actually wrong. I don’t mean I disagreed with her opinions, I mean she’s making statements that are false. She probably isn’t deliberately lying, just half remembering anecdotes and shaping them to a point she wants to make. Very discouraging, WIRED. You need to fact check the scripts, I guess.
@thechief00
May 6, 2026 at 3:15 am
1:42 you can’t “necessarily” predict the angle of the sun?
@SiphiliSx
May 6, 2026 at 3:26 am
Right? And here I thought we’ve had that pretty much figured out for 5 millennia.
@Roger_Stone_UK
May 6, 2026 at 9:44 am
They managed it for Stonehenge, which is quite a well-established piece of architectural design.
@matthewbrenn8307
May 6, 2026 at 3:55 am
The blur!! cant,,,bye.
@holopaste
May 6, 2026 at 7:08 am
Did not answer the question that gives the video its title.
@simateix6262
May 6, 2026 at 7:19 am
I’m Ted Mosby. An architect.
That’s all I heard the first 5 seconds lol
@SanamSinghKhaneja
May 6, 2026 at 7:29 am
Wow, no charisma at all. Boring video
@Hyunny...
May 6, 2026 at 8:52 am
I love seeing “What is the biggest architectural challenges you ever faced” appear in the software engineering reddit. Some intern or producer definitely did not think about how that’s a different type of architect
@lourenco4329
May 6, 2026 at 10:10 am
I don’t like this lady’s vibe.
@Chilldude-r2j
May 6, 2026 at 5:48 pm
She doesn’t like yours.
@mister-nyc
May 6, 2026 at 12:04 pm
She is not quite answering some of the questions.
@staomruel
May 6, 2026 at 1:01 pm
Please have her back. She must have a lot more to share, and she has a very clear and pleasant way of explaining.
@brokenunibrowfilms2277
May 6, 2026 at 2:17 pm
did not expect the shots fired at the Kardashians
@rikulappi9664
May 6, 2026 at 2:27 pm
A building can be pretty tall if it has no function but to be tall. The theoretical limit depends on the engineering solutions and materials available. Hence, there is no definable theoretical limit. Over 3000m might be too much for today’s technology.
@katjamayrhofer5222
May 6, 2026 at 2:56 pm
😍
@CyrilleParis
May 6, 2026 at 3:51 pm
Brutalism : I love it. Of course if you don’t take care of it, it would decay and become ugly. Like any other kind of buildings. And a lot of brutalist building we see are in a poor state like she says. Brutalism was one of the best kind of buildings of the 20th century.
@correcthoarsebatterystaple
May 6, 2026 at 4:00 pm
Project in a Volcano crater—was that Bezo’s or Zuck’s lair?
@HackSawSees
May 6, 2026 at 4:27 pm
A friend and mentor of mine, John Peterson (U. of Cincy) wouldn’t talk to students unless they had some kind of drawing paper at hand. It made some of the students crazy, but his point was that it’s a visual art, as well as an engineering art. When you were talking about the hand drawn feel, it made me think of gesture drawing. It’s not about the precision, it’s about the flow.
@b0d0p33t3rs
May 6, 2026 at 5:00 pm
FLR was really much more of a mentor. Lautner, Schindler & Neutra. Again of it’s time.
@RyanW1019
May 6, 2026 at 6:22 pm
Real Civil Engineer punching air rn
@Styrophone1
May 7, 2026 at 6:27 am
hello fellow engineers! (my newest passion is architecture)
@InitialDIYmods
May 6, 2026 at 7:52 pm
@2:03 Lol that was not an architectural question for buildings, but for IT infrastructure. The username has script in it and it’s posted in r/SoftwareEngineering… You couldn’t find someone actually asking this question?😂
@SuperShecky
May 6, 2026 at 8:16 pm
This has to be one of the least convincing tech support videos I’ve seen.
@bobthecomputerguy
May 6, 2026 at 10:37 pm
As far as building models go, LEGO made a system in the 60s specifically for architects to use just for that purpose. It was called “Modulex”
@hanifarroisimukhlis5989
May 7, 2026 at 1:03 am
Real Civil Engineer’s archnemesis 😁
@douseenow
May 7, 2026 at 2:55 am
I loooove brutalist architecture! I find it so grounding
@whophd
May 7, 2026 at 3:26 am
Brutalism does have an appeal to a child of the ’70s, which both this host and I share — it means you’re the right age to see the “newness” of something as the hot new thing … in an ocean of everything else that’s older at the time. Older and different.
Brutalism was inevitably going to get severely unpopular 20 years later, and nearly as inevitably get popular with a new crowd about 60 years later. That’s why kids names are never like their grandparents, but great-grandparents? They’re cool again.
Objectively, the brutalist buildings that are torn down won’t be as missed as the Art Deco ones 30 years earlier. But it’s naïve not to expect a parallel process of falling in love and out of love and back in again.
@Petescag
May 7, 2026 at 5:56 am
I’D REPHRASE THE QUESTION: AT WHAT HEIGHT WOULD A TOWER STRUCTURE REACH IT’S LIMIT FOR HABITABILITY.
@likanweeds8501
May 7, 2026 at 7:05 am
It was pretty much informative
@fixedguitar47
May 7, 2026 at 7:10 am
I think VR is going to be a big part of architecture in the not so distant future.
@sarahsumesh6003
May 9, 2026 at 3:24 pm
Already is
@TheSilverFox_
May 7, 2026 at 9:35 am
You can’t really predict the sun reflecting off the building windows and the heat magnifying down to cars, etc. on the ground?? Really? 🤔
@JennyOTheWoods-nz2bc
May 7, 2026 at 9:46 am
Ooof she came across really poorly. Wouldn’t want to be talking to her at a dinner party.
@Randomness5050
May 7, 2026 at 2:35 pm
I wish you had answered the building height question more completely rather than just saying it’s an elevator issue.
@obesia1873
May 7, 2026 at 2:59 pm
She ate
@sebazpereyra9431
May 7, 2026 at 8:31 pm
You should do this again, but with a different architect. She was kinda boring
@Handlemethis385
May 7, 2026 at 9:50 pm
What’s the golden/brown object in the background being blurred?
@SR-mz8nn
May 8, 2026 at 1:54 am
10:18 “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.”
@TinTox
May 8, 2026 at 3:07 am
Las respuestas de esta arquitecta son particularmente limitadas y no representan lo que los arquitectos hacemos. Muy deseocionante!.
@TinTox
May 8, 2026 at 3:20 am
Ni una sola palabra del impacto que tiene la arquitectura en el medio ambiente y el uso de la energía, como si los edificios y la industria de la construcción no causaran el 40% de los gases de invernadero.
@steph1518
May 8, 2026 at 9:21 am
Wow. I didn’t think I’d ever see a Tech Support video where the “expert” manages to answer exactly ZERO questions… why even show any questions if she’s going to talk about something completely different every single time? Can I get my 18:45 minutes back please?
@FarenMonique
May 8, 2026 at 2:26 pm
She was awesome. I learned so much 😎
@visbeenarchitectsinc
May 8, 2026 at 1:23 pm
Love hearing other architects discuss the value of sketching with clients!
@DanKetchum007
May 8, 2026 at 1:35 pm
Change for the sake of change is just pretension.
@DylanVogue
May 8, 2026 at 1:42 pm
I love that she’s an office. I wish all Support providers would be in their areas of expertise. It made me connect to the video more 🙂
@ImpureForce
May 8, 2026 at 2:10 pm
13:24 let’s not forget the exploitation of cheap labour or materials during colonialism.
@Justin_Bailey_NES
May 8, 2026 at 4:51 pm
3:16 She’s quoting Gordon Ramsey.
@petequesada2936
May 8, 2026 at 5:04 pm
I simply do not like or appreciate the pyramid at the louvre.
@zo7034
May 8, 2026 at 7:59 pm
Where is brutalism coming back into fashion?
@FriendxA
May 8, 2026 at 11:32 pm
i may be in the minority…but brutalism is the most attractive style of architecture
@rusope1050
May 9, 2026 at 5:18 am
THE WALKIE SCORCHIE omg i can’t 😂😂😂 love it.
@AidanWigger
May 9, 2026 at 9:33 am
Charisma like burnt toast
@r6n6francis_84
May 17, 2026 at 8:30 am
Kind of like your humility and manners?
@arak2551
May 9, 2026 at 9:36 am
A famous building where scale models were crucial is the Sagrada Família in Barcelona, because of all the complex shapes.
@JasperAkhkharu
May 9, 2026 at 12:07 pm
All modernism has a negative effect on the people who experience it – not just brutalism (which is completely ugly and dehumanizing) and Penguin pools. There is new research just starting to come out about it. It’s a very cutting edge movement in architecture and urban design so most architects don’t recognize it. They’ve been indoctrinated by the institutions and cultures that tell them to build in modernism only.
If anyone wants to know more, go to The Aesthetic City channel.
@charlesarizona
May 10, 2026 at 12:11 am
A British architect, isn’t that an oxymoron?
@stardresser1
May 10, 2026 at 4:52 am
Not selling her POV very well. Unfortunate.
@usmc1379
May 10, 2026 at 7:39 am
So, Architect, Marine biologist or latex salesman? 😂
@Maya-ho7cd
May 10, 2026 at 11:26 am
The weakest Wired episode yet, please don’t bring her back. She claims you can’t predict the angle of the sun? She didn’t realize a helicopter delivering architectural material would be weight restricted? She’s clearly not a very good architect…
@rodrigotolosa590
May 12, 2026 at 5:41 pm
I don’t know if it was cut in editing or if she didn’t go into detail, but the whole penguin thing wasn’t very clear at all. They don’t show the location where penguins thrived (they show a photo of a man feeding the penguins for some reason) and she doesn’t go into any detail as to why the penguins didn’t like the first design nor why she liked it.
@joelbanks8868
May 15, 2026 at 7:30 pm
Why is the trophy in the background blurred?
@r6n6francis_84
May 17, 2026 at 8:28 am
I don’t know anything about architecture, but her insights were fascinating.