Brutalismthe architecture

we love to hate

Unite d’Habitation

Le Corbusier

Marseilles

1947-52

John Ruskin, 1819-1900 Le Corbusier, 1887-1965

“The architecture of the North is rude and wild...it is in this

very character that it deserves our profoundest reverence.”

Beton brut + Reyner Banham = “Brutalism”

“...decided to recognise that concrete starts life as a

messy soup of suspended dusts, grits and

slumpy aggregate, mixed and poured under

conditions subject to the vagaries of weather and

human fallibility, and left to harden in formwork

whose carpentry rarely (in France) attained the level of

precision required in the construction of a garden fence.”

Banham

Barbican Estates, London

Chamberlin, Powell and Bon

1965-76

Urban Brutalism

Brutal Urbanism

urban indifference syndrome

HUD plaza landscape

Martha Scwartz

1998

“At the present point in architectural history...one might say

that no other material has the potential for such complete

and convincing fusion between structure,

enclosure, and surface; between architecture and

detail; between the minute great form and the great

small particle.”

Breuer

Architectural Record, April 1966

“...the skin of the building—has again requested new answers to its problems…”

“Massive plasticity and coarse surfaces”

“Massive plasticity and coarse surfaces”

Expressed structure

“Massive plasticity and coarse surfaces”

Expressed structure

“Fusion of structure, enclosure, surface”

“Massive plasticity and coarse surfaces”

Expressed structure

“Fusion of structure, enclosure, surface”

Monolithic material

“Massive plasticity and coarse surfaces”

Expressed structure

“Fusion of structure, enclosure, surface”

Monolithic material

Texture, rather than ornament

Contextual Brutalism

• Gets a plaque

• Restored

• Saved in the nick of time

• Demolished

• Benignly neglected

1940

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

2020

Mid-Century Modern Architecture Index

Brutalismthe architecture

we love...