BRUTAL/

/ISM.

Samuel Stancu
Ion Luca Caragiale National College, XII D
Coordonating teachers: Daniella Cotig
Iulia Ionescu

Bucharest, 2017
 Index

I. Foreword.. 3

II. The beginnings. 4

III. The climax 7

IV. The Heritage 10

V. Brutalism in UK.. 12

VI. Conclusion... 15

Foreword
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 Bold, rough and unusual. These are the words that can summarily describe
this architectural movement called Brutalism. The term is applied to a
school of modernist architecture which began during the 1950s but whose
influence still continues today. Often described as geometric, massive,
monolithic and blocky, the brutalist style is frequently associated with
Socialist and Soviet architecture. At first centered in England, the style
spread across the world in the following decades proposing a radical new
form of Modernism.
Even though a lot of people tagged this style as ugly, rough and repulsive
there is an independent public that found beauty in the rawness of Brutalist
buildings. Recently, the movement became popular on the social networks
such as Instagram and Facebook with the help of dozens of photographers
( so called Instagrammers) that created social-communities in which the
Brutalist buildings are in the spotlight. Architectural fashions go in and out
of style with disorienting alacrity. What is one eras style is the next eras
eyesore, and in the midst of a demolition binge, a new generation learns to
appreciate, often too late, what is disappearing.
One of the main reason I chose this topic is the fact that I found this style
truthful and impressive. I was fascinated by the design philosophy of this
style since I first read about it. Another thing that made me to write about
Brutalism is related to my city. I was born and raised in Bucharest, the
capital of a former soviet-occupied country. Here I was surrounded by
Socialist architecture, a style that resembles the Brutalist architectural
philosophy. I tend to consider that due to these circumstances, I have started
to be fond of this style.

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 The beginnings
Brutalist architecture is a movement in architecture that flourished from the
1950s to the mid-1970s, descending from the modernist architectural
movement of the early 20th century. The term originates from the French
word for "raw" in the term used by Le Corbusier to describe his choice of
material bton brut (raw concrete). British architectural critic Reyner
Banham adapted the term into "brutalism" (originally "New Brutalism") to
identify the emerging style.
In its ruggedness and lack of concern to look comfortable or easy, Brutalism
can be seen as a reaction by a younger generation to the lightness, optimism,
and frivolity of some 1930s and 1940s architecture. In one critical appraisal
by Banham, Brutalism was posited not as a style but as the expression of an
atmosphere among architects of moral seriousness. "Brutalism" as an
architectural critical term was not always consistently used by critics;
architects themselves usually avoided using it altogether. More recently,
"brutalism" has become used in popular discourse to refer to buildings of the
late twentieth century that are large or unpopular as a synonym for
"brutal."
The term "brutalism" was originally coined by the Swedish architect Hans
Asplund to describe Villa Gth in Uppsala, designed in 1949 by his
contemporaries Bengt Edman and Lennart Holm. He originally used the
Swedish-language term nybrutalism (new brutalism), which was picked
up by a group of visiting English architects, including Michael Ventris.

Villa Gth

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In England, the term was further adopted by architects Alison and Peter
Smithson. The term gained wide currency when the British architectural
historian Reyner Banham used it in the title of his 1966 book, The New
Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic?, to characterise a somewhat recently
established cluster of architectural approaches, particularly in Europe.
The best known proto Brutalist architecture is the work of the Swiss
architect Le Corbusier, in particular his 1952 Unit d'Habitation and the
1953 Secretariat Building (Palace of Assembly) in Chandigarh, India.
Brutalism gained considerable momentum in the United Kingdom during
the mid-twentieth century, as economically depressed (and World War II-
ravaged) communities sought inexpensive construction and design methods
for low-cost housing, shopping centres, and government buildings.
Nonetheless, many architects chose the Brutalist style even when they had
large budgets, as they appreciated the 'honesty', the sculptural qualities, and
perhaps, the uncompromising, anti-bourgeois, nature of the style.
Combined with the socially progressive intentions behind Brutalist streets in
the sky housings such as Corbusier's Unit, Brutalism was promoted as a
positive option for forward-moving, modern urban housing.

Unit Dhabitation

Brutalist buildings are usually formed with repeated modular elements

forming masses representing specific functional zones, distinctly articulated
and grouped together into a unified whole. Concrete is used for its raw and
unpretentious honesty, contrasting dramatically with the highly refined and
ornamented buildings constructed in the elite Beaux-Arts style. Surfaces of
cast concrete are made to reveal the basic nature of its construction,

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revealing the texture of the wooden planks used for the in-situ casting
forms.
Brutalist building materials also include brick, glass, steel, rough-hewn
stone, and gabions. Conversely, not all buildings exhibiting an exposed
concrete exterior can be considered Brutalist, and may belong to one of a
range of architectural styles including Constructivism, International Style,
Expressionism, Postmodernism, and Deconstructivism.
Another common theme in Brutalist designs is the exposure of the building's
functionsranging from their structure and services to their human usein
the exterior of the building. In the Boston City Hall, designed in 1962, the
strikingly different and projected portions of the building indicate the
special nature of the rooms behind those walls, such as the mayor's office or
the city council chambers. From another perspective, the design of the
Hunstanton School included placing the facility's water tank, normally a
hidden service feature, in a prominent, visible tower.
The use of concrete is explained by the need to rebuild the war-torn
European landscape swiftly after World War Two, at minimal cost to its
economically crushed nation states. But whatever its functional use,
brutalism arguably became as much a philosophy as a style. Furthermore,
its representation of socialist utopian ideology was reflected in the left-wing
zeal of many who designed and commissioned it.
The need to replace bombed-out homes, government buildings and shopping
centres also gave way to the further demolition of many grand buildings
from the 1950s onwards that bad been untouched by the war. This was
particularly evident in the more industrialised northern cities, supporting the
argument of brutalism as political philosophy as well as architectural
discipline. One important example of Brutalist Britain Park Hill flats
has since been earmarked as a historic building.
Initially, these cities in the sky, as they were referred to, were a welcomed
departure for those who had previously lived in squalid Victorian slums.
Great pains were taken to re-home communities together, with neighbours
remaining neighbours and many working folk having hot water and indoor
toilets for the first time. Initially, these huge blocks of flats were well
received.
But critics accuse brutalism of disregarding the social, historic, and
architectural environment of its surroundings, making the introduction of
such structures in existing developed areas appear out of place and alien.
The failure of positive communities to form early on in some Brutalist
structures led to the combined unpopularity of both the ideology and the
architectural style. In addition, many of the buildings constructed in this
style lacked the community-serving features of their forefathers vision,
morphing into claustrophobic, crime-ridden tenements.
As a final statement of the first chapter, Brutalism was an attempt to create
an architectural ethic, rather than an aesthetic. It had less to do with

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materials and more to do with honesty: an uncompromising desire to tell it
like it is, architecturally speaking.

The climax
Bold, brash and confrontational, there can hardly be a more controversial
or misunderstood architectural movement than Brutalism. Its very name is
misleading, causing many to condemn its concrete creations for their
apparent "brutality". Brutalism's etymology actually lies in the French
bton-brut literally "raw concrete" the movement's signature material.
But Brutalism was concerned with far more than materials, emerging in the
early 1950s through dissatisfaction with existing forms of Modernism, from
which it aimed to make a conscious departure while at the same time
recapturing its original heroic spirit.
Today, we use the term Brutalism to refer to both a particular moment in
post-war British architecture given the epithet New Brutalism by the critic
Reyner Banham and the broader phenomenon during the 1960s and 1970s
of an almost sculptural Modernism rendered in raw concrete, which had
manifestations the world over.
For a movement that is synonymous with concrete, it is some surprise that
the building that is often seen as inaugurating the New Brutalism was
mainly made of steel, glass and brick. This was Alison and Peter Smithson's
Hunstanton School in Norfolk (194754), where the architects transposed
the vocabulary of Mies van der Rohe's Illinois Institute of Technology into
an asymmetrical plan with materials left in their raw, unfinished states. This
use of materials "as found" was in deliberate contrast to the elegant curving
roof, neat tiling and timber detailing of Leslie Martin and Robert Matthew's
Scandinavian-influenced Royal Festival Hall the type of Modernism the
Smithsons had in their sights. For Banham, who became something of a
cheerleader for the New Brutalism, Hunstanton was "almost unique among
modern buildings in being made of what it appears to be made of". So stark
was the result, he was moved to suggest that the New Brutalism constituted
an ethical, as much as an aesthetic, proposition.
The movement's most important single influence was undoubtedly Le
Corbusier's Unit d'Habitation in Marseille, both in terms of aesthetics and
social programme. Completed in 1952, the Unit comprised 12 storeys of
generously proportioned apartments accessed from interior "streets", raised
up on pilotis and topped by a roof terrace all built from roughly cast
bton-brut. Although the Unit still reflected the utopian aspirations of pre-
war Modernism then under attack, Brutalists like the Smithsons saw its form
and aesthetic as reflective of the spirit of the present moment and providing
a way forward for a broader regeneration of Modern architecture.
Many ideas from the Unit appeared in the Smithsons' unbuilt 1952 design
for the Golden Lane Estate in London. The interior "streets" of the Unit
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became exterior "street-decks" at every third level forerunners to the
infamous "streets-in-the-sky" that would become ubiquitous in social
housing projects in the 1960s and 1970s. These made the building's
circulation legible, while aiming to facilitate the type of social interactions
one might have on an actual street. The blocks were arranged to work with
the surrounding street layout, rather than standing in isolation as per the
Corbusian model. Though of different building types, the Smithsons' Golden
Lane Estate design developed many of the ideas they had explored at
Hunstanton, "emphasising visible circulation, [and] identifiable units of
habitation," according to Banham.
Rather than presenting their designs through plans, sections and elevations
in the conventional way, the Smithsons created collages, with cut-outs of
people pasted onto their drawings, so, in Banham's words, "the human
presence almost overwhelmed the architecture". While, a generation before,
Le Corbusier had famously taken inspiration from ocean liners and motors
cars, the Smithsons looked towards everyday life advertisements, bric-a-
brac, what they called "the stuff of the urban scene". These concerns were
shared by a number of artists, especially those associated with the
Independent Group centred on London's ICA, with the parallels coming to
public attention in a seminal exhibition, This is Tomorrow, held at the
Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1956.
As the austerity of the 1950s gave way to the energy and renewed national
self-confidence of the 1960s, Brutalism took centre stage, defining British
architecture of that decade. Brutalist social housing began appearing all over
Britain, with notable examples, such as Park Hill in Sheffield (195761) by
Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith and Southampton's Wyndham Court (completed
1966) by Lyons Israel Ellis, ensuring raw concrete and "streets-in-the-sky"
became familiar sights.
Brutalism was by no means confined to social housing. The Smithsons'
Economist Building in London's St James's (196264) showed how
Brutalist ideas could be deployed in sensitive settings. Its cluster of three
towers of different heights with an elegant plaza at ground level allowed the
creation of a deliberately complex relationship to its historic site. Outside
London, the Preston Bus Station (196869) by Keith Ingham and Charles
Wilson of Building Design Partnership saw Brutalism used to give
municipal civic identity to major pieces of infrastructure. This was an idea
also explored by Owen Luder and Rodney Gordon, whose Trinity Square
car park in Gateshead (196267), made famous by the 1971 film Get Carter,
and Tricorn Centre in Portsmouth (196267) were both local landmarks
for better or for worse before their respective demolitions in 2010 and
2004.
Although the theoretical roots of the New Brutalism were decidedly British,
even English, rough sculptural buildings of raw concrete rose all over the
world during the 1960s and 1970s. From Paul Rudolph's Yale Art and
Architecture Building (completed in 1963), to Paulo Mendes de Rocha's
Brazilian Museum of Sculpture in So Paulo (completed 1988) and Kenzo
Tange's Kuwait Embassy in Tokyo (completed 1970), raw concrete became
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a global language. Though emerging from different contexts and theoretical
viewpoints, these various manifestations of Brutalism shared an ambition to
reinvent modernism, to create an architecture that was hard-edged literally
and conceptually that was radical and often confrontational.
In the late 1960s, the Smithsons finally got their chance to put their social
housing ideas into practice with Robin Hood Gardens in London's Poplar,
close to Ern Goldfinger's Brutalist residential building Balfron Tower
(196567). Their scheme comprised two, relatively low-rise blocks arranged
around a garden area, which was landscaped with raised mounds, so that
greenery was visible from the windows of even higher floors. The two
blocks contained both flats and maisonettes, the idea being to encourage a
greater social mix than possible with just one type of dwelling. With cars
banished, residences were accessed via 'streets-in-the-sky', intended as ever
to facilitate the interactions and social ties between neighbours through
which a community might emerge.
Robin Hood Gardens in many ways constituted the ultimate realisation of
the progressive social ideals that informed much of Brutalist thinking, but
by the time it was completed in 1972, the Brutalist moment had passed and
it was an almost immediate failure. The rough idealism of the 1950s no
longer reflected the consumerist realities of the 1970s. The poverty the
estate was meant to alleviate was instead compounded by a high crime rate
and frequent vandalism of communal areas, which were rarely properly
maintained. Rather than presenting an idealistic view of the future, Robin
Hood Gardens came to represent all that was wrong with the intertwining of
architecture and housing policy, and the top-down way those policies were
usually implemented.
Some hailed it as a masterpiece. However, for many others Robin Hood
Gardens was just another "concrete monstrosity" that "brutalised" its
inhabitants, and no different from the usually cheap and uninspiring slab
blocks erected all over Britain during the post-war years. Despite this
frequent lumping together of post-war Modernism, Brutalist buildings
always seem to attract particularly harsh criticism. The architecture which
so epitomised the golden era of the 1960s became widely reviled and
frequent victim to the wrecking ball. For those on the left of the political
spectrum, the destruction of Britain's Brutalist legacy is nothing more than
an attempt to erase that brief moment of socialist housing policy from
collective memory. But this largely belies the fact many that many housing
estates erected in utopian fervour failed on their own terms, revealing the
inherent shortcomings of intertwining architecture and social policy and,
often, of the buildings themselves.
Nevertheless, in recent years Brutalism has undergone something of a
rehabilitation, becoming fashionable in certain architectural circles. It is a
remarkable reversal (albeit with a long way to go), especially when one
realises the most pernicious aspect of Brutalism's legacy the wedge its
bloody-minded and often rather arrogant polemics drove between architects
and the public is still affecting architecture today. At their best, though,

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Brutalist buildings have a sublime and haunting power like few others and
should be preserved for posterity.

The heritage
Although the Brutalist movement was largely dead by the mid-1980s,
having largely given way to Structural Expressionism and
Deconstructivism, it has experienced an updating of sorts in recent years.
Many of the rougher aspects of the style have been softened in newer
buildings, with concrete faades often being sandblasted to create a stone-
like surface, covered in stucco, or composed of patterned, pre-cast elements.
Despite a decade or so of unexpected popularity, at least among architects
and planners, Brutalism went out of favor by the mid-70s. Over the last
three decades, the styles many scattered examples have suffered from age
and neglect, their walls crumbling and leaking, threatened everywhere with
demolition.
But now, like the chevron mustache, Brutalism is undergoing something of a
revival. Despite two generations of abuse (and perhaps a little because of it),
an enthusiasm for Brutalist buildings beyond the febrile, narrow precincts of
architecture criticism has begun to take hold. Preservationists clamor for
their survival, historians laud their ethical origins and an independent public
has found beauty in their rawness. For an aesthetic once praised for its
ruthless logic and bloody-mindedness in the much-quoted phrasing
of critic Reyner Banham it is a surprising turn of events.
The Modern movement in architecture had supposedly been predicated on
truthfulness in materials and forms, as well. But as a dreary stroll down Park
Avenue will remind you, Modernism swiftly became a gutless orthodoxy, its
high ideals devolving into the rote features of the International Style, a
repetitive and predictable series of gestures (curtain walls or ribbon
windows, recessed plinths, decorative piloti, windswept plazas, ornamental
lawns and flat shimmering pools). What was and still is appealing about
Brutalism is that it had a kind of purity to it.
From Latin America to Europe to South Asia, Brutalism became the style
for governments committed to some kind of socialism, the image of the
common good. Still, Brutalism wasnt fully popular with a broad public,
whose members were never convinced that awe-inspiring concrete dourness
was what society was truly missing, and it ultimately depended on the good
will of sympathetic planners. Once politics turned against the welfare state
in the 1980s, Brutalism was doomed. Budgets were gutted; public housing
lost its funding; the market came to dictate development. The delirious,
pink-granite fantasies of postmodernist office towers rose to loom over the
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gray Brutalist housing projects, left to molder and decay. All buildings
require upkeep, and in a sense the deliberate neglect of Brutalism had the
same effect that starving public bureaucracies did.

When theyre treated with care and respect, brutalist buildings can become
treasured by a city in a way that glass-and-steel towers very rarely are. In
London, for instance, locals and tourists alike swarm to the concrete cultural
buildings on the south bank of the Thames at Waterloo Bridge. These
masterpieces the Royal Festival Hall, the Hayward Gallery, Denys
Lasduns National Theatre are a beloved part of the capital, a destination
even for people with no particular reason to go there.
Brutalism is old. If you move into a brutalist building today, theres a very
good chance that it was built 50 years ago.
Brutalism today has developed a unique ability to cut across class divides.
Blue-collar workers and billionaires alike appreciate its charms even if they
are sometimes frustrated by its inflexibility; are attracted to its plainness
while being inspired by its palpable integrity.

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 Brutalism in UK

When you go into a gallery a painting might cause you to stop and look, it
isnt the spectacle but the aesthetics ability to hold the viewer. Concrete
buildings have this ability. They dont fit into the streets and city centres
where they appear (they are by their very nature brutal rather than
accommodating) but there strength and power speak of a time when people
had a belief in architecture as a force for civic good. These structures were
solid spaces to create a solid and strong world emerging from the gloom of
the second world war. The buildings represent what was great about
building a society, universities, hospitals, local governments as opposed to
the steel and glass of contemporary retail and office complexes. These
buildings were about real people and real issues and they wore this realism
brutally on the outside.
Brutalist buildings represent a major movement in British architectural
history, but they are underappreciated and at risk of being demolished. It
was an expression of social progressivism and became a favored style for
public architecture of the time. Often monumental in scale, these structures
symbolize an era when government had both the resources and the political
will to contribute major civic buildings to the public realm. Brutalist
buildings are also an important part of UK architectural heritage, just as
much as a Georgian town house or Tudor manor house they represent the
age in which they were built and should not be wiped from history. Even if
they are 'eyesores' some at the very least should be preserved so that future
generations can experience the brutalist buildings which make up a
important part of the history and evolution of architecture rather than only
being able to experience them by old pictures. Some of these structures are
preserved and protected by the English Heritage.

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 Balfron Tower

Trellick Tower

Barbican Centre

13
 Brunswick Centre
Robin Hood Gardens

Mathematics Tower

14
 Preston Bus Station

Conclusion

Brutalism. It doesnt exactly skip off of the tongue Its be tempting to

attribute the misfortunes of Brutalist architecture to semantics; after all, no
other 20th-century form of architecturethe International style,
Constructivism, Postmodernismdirectly
conjours images of violence and
force, unless you have a particularly paranoiac attitude towards any sort of
contemporary theory. And yet this doesnt quite explain away the recent
difficulties of Brutalist architecture. There are, of course, accurate aesthetic
objectionsbare
concrete, however improperly labeled, doesnt inspire
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 much popular enthusiasm. Look to any list of ugliest buildings or
buildings to demolish now and youre sure to find multiple Brutalist
structures represented. The Trellick Tower in London was said to be the
inspiration for J.G. Ballards novel High Rise, in which society breaks into
conflict, chaos, and dog-eating amidst in a self-contained concrete tower
mass. Ian Fleming titled a villain after that buildings architect, Erno
Goldfinger. That doesnt happen to Frank Gehry. Despite a pronounced lack
of public enthusiasm for Brutalism, its financial and planning concerns, not
aesthetic ones, have saved or at least postponed the destruction of several
recently threatened structures.
Im personally very fond of much Brutalist architecture, and find in its mass
and geometry an unmistakable majesty, but I recognize that this is hardly a
popular proposition. It seems that the style have drawn a hard line between
those who love it and those who hate it. Theres no doubt that Brutalism
remains associated with the very worst of top-down mass-planning
tendencies in American cities, of the sort that bulldozed vibrant
neighborhoods into arid plazas. Many of these structuresnow 40 to 60
years oldare facing uncertain futures as the two opposing viewpoints
battle to decide whether the buildings should be saved or destroyed. All I
hope is that one day the public perception of concrete Brutalist architecture
will change.

Biblography

urbanghostmedia.com/why-we-shoul-love-brutalist-buildings.html
architecture.com/brutalism
wikipedia.com/brutalism
dezeen.com/guide-to-brutalist-buildings
nytimes.com/brutalist-architecture-revival.html (Brutalism is back)
theguardian.com/grey-pride-brutalist-architecture-back-in-style
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 edition.cnn.com/brutalism-this-brutal-world-modern-forms/
treehugger.com/why-brutalist-architecture-so-reviled-2

Sa intelegem arhitectura, Marco Bussagli, Enciclopedia RAO Publishing,

2005, Romanian
Arhitectura si Urbanism in Romania anilor 1944-1960: constrangere si
experiment, Irina Tulbure, Simetria Publishing, 2016, Romanian

Some photos are taken from http://f**kyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/ and may be the

subject of copyright.

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