This building is less brutalist and more postmodern - notice how it has a less obvious shape (it's not just a tower or a big rectangle or anything) and is instead made up by many different shapes. Postmodernism actually tried to remedy some of the downsides of modernism/brutalism by trying out mixtures of forms and textures.
The SIS still suffers from a limited material palette and needs further break-up to reach the human scale. Especially at the ground level - imagine standing next to that building - it would feel like standing beside a huge wall!
Eh, that sounds like a 'no true scotsman' argument -- if the building doesn't suck, it must not be brutalist!
Some of my favorite brutalist buildings are libraries, somehow it works very well for the kind of very public building a library is. And the best definitely feel human-scale to interact with (often _especially_ in the interior plans, which you can't get from a picture really), and are more visually interesting than a big rectangle. I don't think anyone said if it's not a big rectangle it's not brutalist!
Funny enough, Geisel has many of the same problems that Boston City Hall/ Gov't Ctr. does...two that leap to mind is that the entrances to both are hidden under the concrete superstructure, and that the pedestrian approach to both at ground-level involves crossing a flat, empty concrete plain.
Rarely if ever did I see anyone at UCSD taking advantage of the area underneath the stack tower, even for shade on hot summer days. That said, the view from the stacks, with the floor-to-ceiling glass, was spectacular. Especially looking north, down the slope of pepper canyon. The rest of the library has the sort of issues that are common to Brutalist buildings in La Jolla-for instance, reinforced concrete is not as durable when sitting close to the ocean as you might hope. As was put by a faculty member I worked with "...the windows don't open; but they do leak!"
I prefer the enthusiastic futurist poured-concrete '60s buildings to the craptacular corporate office-park nonsense that so many newer buildings on campus
have.
Fun fact: Pereira did not intend the Geisel Library stacks to look like the concrete & glass banyan tree that got built...it was originally supposed to be a concrete sphere on a single, giant column!
The SIS still suffers from a limited material palette and needs further break-up to reach the human scale. Especially at the ground level - imagine standing next to that building - it would feel like standing beside a huge wall!