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Word of the Day > Word of the Day: Brutalism (Architecture)

Wikipedia:

Brutalism is an architectural style that spawned from the modernist architectural movement and which flourished from the 1950s to the 1970s. The early style was inspired largely by the work of the Swiss architect Le Corbusier, and in particular his Unité d'Habitation (1952) and the 1953 Secretariat Building in Chandigarh, India.

The term Brutalist Architecture originates from the French béton brut, or "raw concrete", a term used by Le Corbusier to describe his choice of material. In 1954, the English architects Alison and Peter Smithson coined the term, but it gained currency when the British architectural critic Reyner Banham used it in the title of his 1954 book, "New Brutalism", to identify the emerging style.[1]

[The Brutalism (architectural style) and the New Brutalism (architectural and urban theory) are two different movements. The New Brutalism of the English members of Team 10, Alison and Peter Smithson, is more related to the theoretical reform of the CIAM (in architecture and urbanism) than to "béton brut". Reyner Banham formulated this difference in the title of his book: "The New Brutalism - Ethic or Aesthetic?"]

Brutalist buildings usually are formed with striking repetitive angular geometries, and often revealing the textures of the wooden forms used to shape the material, which is normally rough, unadorned poured concrete. Not all Brutalist buildings are formed from concrete. Instead, a building may achieve its Brutalist quality through a rough, blocky appearance, and the expression of its structural materials, forms, and services on its exterior. Many of Alison and Peter Smithson's private houses are built from brick. Brutalist building materials may include brick, glass, steel, rough-hewn stone, and gabion (also known as trapion). 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, Deconstructivism and Structuralism (architecture).

Brutalism as an architectural style also was associated with a social utopian ideology, which tended to be supported by its designers, especially Alison and Peter Smithson, near the height of the style. The failure of positive communities to form early on in some Brutalist structures, possibly due to the larger processes of urban decay that set in after World War II (especially in the United Kingdom), led to the combined unpopularity of both the ideology and the architectural style.

Critics argue that this abstract nature of Brutalism makes the style unfriendly and uncommunicative, instead of being integrating and protective, as its proponents intended. For example, the location of the entrance of a Brutalist structure is rarely obvious to the visitor.

Brutalism also is criticised as disregarding the social, historic, and architectural environment of its surroundings, making the introduction of such structures in existing developed areas appear starkly out of place and alien

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