Recall Louis Sullivan (1856-1924) as the "Father of Skyscrapers" and the "Father of Modernism" who was also a mentor to a number of US architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright and other influential architects that impacted future architects and designers.
Writing produced by Sullivan in 1896 ...
It is the pervading law of all
things organic and inorganic,
things organic and inorganic,
of all things physical and metaphysical,
of all things human and all things superhuman,
of all true manifestations of the head,
of the heart, of the soul,
that the life is recognizable in its expression.
That form ever follows function.
This is the law.
This is the law.
- Louis Sullivan, 1896
Sullivan's ideas connect strongly to Brutalist architecture, considered both an aesthetic and a philosophy.
VIDEO 2:07 Beton Brut: Examples of Brutalist architecture
B R U T A L I A S T ARCHITECTURE
- The term itself has numerous stories of how it's name was derived
- The term originates from the use, by the pioneer modern architect and painter Le Corbusier "Béton brut" = raw concrete in French -> A house is a machine for living in (Le Corbusier’s Modernist mantra)
- Modernist architect Le Corbusier and his project for Unité d’Habitation in 1952 inaugurates the proto-Brutalist architecture
- First used in an architectural context by Swedish architect Hans Aspulund in 1950 who referred to the style as nybrutalism (New Brutalism).
- British architectural historian Reyner Banham described it as both an ethic and aesthetic style in his 1955 essay, The New Brutalism, and in his 1966 book, The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic? to characterize a recently established cluster of architectural approaches, particularly in Europe
Hans Aspulund describe Villa Göth, a modern brick home in Uppsala, Sweden, designed in 1949 by his contemporaries Bengt Edman and Lennart Holm.
- He went on to describe the approach to building particularly associated with the architects Peter and Alison Smithson in the 1950s and 1960s
1950s British couple Alison and Peter Smithson, enthusiastically took up Brutalism as the name for their movement with a kind of pride, as if to say:
That’s right, we are brutal.
We do want to shove your face in cement.
For a world still climbing gingerly out of the ruins of World War II, in need of plain dealing and powerful messages, this brand of architectural honesty was refreshing.
The Upper Lawn Pavilion also known as the Solar Pavilion, was the Smithsons' weekend home in the countryside in Wiltshire, South West England.
Another version of the story of how Brutalism got its name is Peter Smithson's nickname is Brutus, was the one to decide the movement's name
Brutalist architecture flourished from 1951 - 1979, having descended from the Modernist architectural movement earlier predecessors: Bauhaus, International Style, etc.
The title sometimes describes artists influenced of Art Brut, also called "raw art" or "rough art" --> Jean Dubuffet, Jean Paulhan, Andre Breton, Michel Tapie, others often considered Outsider artists (outside the academy), grafitti art, etc.
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| Jean Dubuffet |
Béton brut is a french term that translates in English to “raw concrete”. It descibes how concrete is left unfinished after being cast, displaying the patterns and seams imprinted on it by the formwork.
Béton brut is not material itself, but rather an architectural expression of concrete.
- Not just based in aesthetics, but as a philosophy
- Anti-bourgeois, anti-Beaux-Art architecture (19th c. followed principles of French neoclassicism of the 18th c.) characteristics of heavily adorned exterior facades that have nothing to do with the function of the interior spaces; having a strong symbolic message of corporate and civic pride, personal wealth
- Against the Bauhaus designed glass boxed buildings
- Against shiny buildings like Mies Van der Rohe's Seagrams Building that visually represented the glitz of the rich
Brutalism was an attempt to create an architectural ethic, rather than an aesthetic. It had less to do with materials and more to do with honesty: an uncompromising desire to tell it like it is, architecturally speaking.
Its philosophy was based on the idea of social equality and hope.
The idea of unity and shared space, it was believed, was best transformed by suburban Brutalist blocks, with lots of open space and moderately tall buildings to accommodate many people.
Unlike many other popular forms we have seen of Modernism, Brutalism was not as universal as the earlier movements.
The style was used for institutional buildings: university campuses, libraries, museums, theatres, governmental buildings, and social housing.
Characteristics of Brutalism:
- Large scale buildings
- Usually exposed concrete, although some are exposed brick
- Made of concrete, which was easily accessible and economical sensible, bare building materials
- Style prevalent during the 1950s and 1970s
- Use of raw, cast unfinished concrete
- Simple, block-like geometric forms - utilitarian forms
- Visual forms attempt to speak about the building's functionality
- Truthfulness to the material
- Originated in England first following the devastation of WWII
- Followed by western EU (Germany, Italy, France), spreading to Eastern EU, North America, Israel, Japan and Australia, the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries, Israel, India, Brazil and the Phillippines
- Continues the utopian dream we've seen of social progressivism
- Achieving Formalist attitudes towards the art form
- Celebrated the internal function of buildings
- Had limited glass = assisted in keeping the buildings cool
- Exposed the building's structural materials inside and out
- Celebrated the rugged monumentality of architecture as a sculptural form
- Utilitarian designs; form over function with raw construction and the mundane workings of the building left exposed
- Constructed with repeated modular elements forming clusters of functioning zones
- Surfaces often times, left the texture of wooden planks that were used in the casting process of concrete
- Buildings are unpretentious and honest
- The word "style" is often avoided, since the general term somehow downgrades the initial endeavor of Brutalist ideology
- Materials including brick, glass, steel, rough-hewn stone and gabions (seen below)
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| The old Whitney Museum of American Art 1966 - Manhattan’s Upper East Side
Exterior protusions were often designed to note
different functional areas of Brutalist interiors.
Ada Louise Huxtable, architectural critic, lover of cities and great preservationist.
She also won the Pulitzer Prize-winner in 1970.
Before Ada Louise Huxtable, architecture was not a part of the public dialogue.
As remared by Paul Goldberger, architectural critic (Pulitzer Prize winner of 1984) said in 1996
Huxtable once called the Whitney:
"The most disliked building in the city," however would later praise it by saying that it had "thoughtful planning and sensitive artistry in the use of its materials. A museum raised to the level of architectural art."
Today, the building pays tribute to the building's Bauhaus trained architect Marchel Breuer calling it The Met Breuer (owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art).
 1927 - 28 |
Brutalist architects also aimed to connect the building with the local and geographical context. The form of the buildings often emphasized the context the buildings were raised geographically, and socially. Many times the long stepped plazas infront of Brutalist buildings aimed to connect the public space with the interior atrium space as in The Everson Museum in Syracuse, NY
I.M. Pei architect of the Everson Museum of Art completed in 1968, he thought of it as a grand sculptural object sitting in a plaza surrounded by the forms of a modern city. Forward looking with confident forms.
Boston's City Hall
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Gerhard Kallmann architect of Boston's City Hall built in 1968 says:
"We distrust and have reacted against an architecture that is absolute, uninvolved and abstract. We have moved towards an architecture that is specific and concrete, involving itself with the social and geographic context, the program, and methods of construction, in order to produce a building that exists strongly and irrevocably, rather than an uncommitted abstract structure that could be any place and, therefore, like modern man— without identity or presence."
Harvard Graduate School of Design: Gerhard Kallmann, Joseph Zalewski and Charles Correa each had made an enormous impact on their students in designing with philosophical underpinnings.
Hayward Gallery, London, UK designed by Dan Graham, Ron Herron, Dennis Cropmton, Norman Engleback
MAXXI Museum by Zaha Hadid Architects was completed in 2009 in Rome, Italy.
Lina Bo Bardi's Museu de Arte de
São Paulo below...
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| Lina Bo Bardi’s Museu de Arte de São Paulo |
Brutalism went out of favor by the mid-’70s. Shared spaces became hazardous grounds. "Honest" buidings became concrete, cold, enormous monstrosities as we saw last week.
Used in futuristic dystopic films such as “A Clockwork Orange” (1971) and "Bladerunner"(1982).
Such pop-cultural fims turned Brutalist masterpieces into symbols of future dystopia.
Brutalism was associated with violence.
Brutalism was associated with violence.
Toronto's Roparts Library was used in "Resident Evil: Afterlife" (2010)
Over the last three decades, the style's many buildings have suffered from age and neglect, wall crumbling and leaking. Some buildings are seen as cultural icons, while others as an 'eye soar' and have gone under the wrecking ball.
Brutalism is undergoing something of a revival. It can be said that Brutalism comes as a crossover between Modernism and Postmodernism.
I don't design nice buildings - I don't like them...
I like architecture to have some raw, vital, earthy quality.
-- Zaha Hadid
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Beinecke Rare Book Library
Yale University
Gordon Bunshaft, 1963
The facade is built with thin pieces of Vermont marble framed within granite and concrete clad steel trusses, allowing a filtered natural light through the stone and into the interior spaces
* * * *
Into the 1960s Modernism architecture continued
American Robert Venturi adopts principles from vernacular architecture and encouraged commercial urban landscapes.
Kahn and Venturi's developments gave rise to the Postmodernist architecture of the 1980s which spreads worldwide and becomes the dominant style.
Now American architectural forms influence the rest of the world.