Controversial yet powerful, sometimes a success yet often a failure, brutalism is a style of design that commands attention. Although related to the work of Le Corbusier in his housing projects or in a work like La Tourette, the style’s name was brought to critical attention by Banham in his discussion of the work of the Smithsons; therefore I consider the style to be distinctly English in origin. The style may not have the prominence it once had in new design, yet it brings attention to contemporary questions about monumentality, shadow, and urban housing. I hope to visit major sites of brutalist architecture around the London area to see what can be drawn from both loved and hated projects.
Lunchtime, Barbican, 3/10
Lunchtime, National Theater, 3/11
Brutalism is indeed controversial, but since most of the projects that are consider failures have already be torned away, it’s hard to really experience the negative part of either the building itself and some of brutalists’ claims of how to build a community. For me, the Barbican is quite surprising, as I was not expecting such a well combination of green space and solid concrete building. Another thing that I found might be intersting is question of the treatment of concrete. Correct me if necessary, for what I remembered, the brutalists are popular among government buildings or others that need more serious senses. But when it comes to housing, when they are talking about building communities, wouldn’t the concrete need to be treated differently？ Compare to some of concrete masters nowadays, like Ando Tado, Brutalism seems to be too stubborn with its attitude against the light weight internationalism at that time period and forgot to fully consider the potential of the material.