> Brutalism is a 1950’s architectural trend that was abandoning all decorations, and creating brutally simple buildings made from concrete. They often weren’t even painted to emphasize their brutal nature. So big, brutal blocks of concrete.
The word "brut" came from French "Béton brut" which means "raw concrete" — has nothing with how "brutal" we perceive it to be.
For architects this is a popular shibboleth. If you imply that "brutalism" is related to "brutal" then you'll be perceived as an outsider that doesn't have any real design knowledge.
This is like implying Java and JavaScript are related.
Of course the real thing to know here on Javascript is that they are related. Eich's crazy scripting language "Livescript" was going to exist independently, but then there was a chance to ride on the coattails of the Java enthusiasm, to do that it needed the inappropriate name, and it needed syntax that looks enough like a semicolon language even though it's a Lisp.
Some of the obvious defects in Javascript are (at least if you believe people who were there) excused because Brendan had a tight deadline to ship this or else Netscape would go with the plan where Sun's Java is more closely integrated instead of Eich's Lisp scripting. Every day spent making Javascript less awful is additional risk an executive says no, we are going with Sun on this, stop work on Javascript.
I don't know if there's an equivalently nuanced story for Brutalism.
You’re missing my point. Perhaps I should’ve said “interchangeable” instead of “related”. My point is that it makes you an outsider. A recruiter that assumes you know JS simply because you know Java is quickly dismissed for good reason—despite any historical merit.
This is similar in architecture circles. If you mix up “brutal” with “brutalism” you’ll be perceived as a clueless outsider. I’m sure there are architects out there that argue they are related, but without addressing this faux pas head on it makes the author seem ignorant.
I’m married to an architect and have seen this dynamic played out a few times. If you want to make an architect cringe: call brutalism “brutal”.
> I’m sure there are architects out there that argue they are related, but without addressing this faux pas head on it makes the author seem ignorant.
That's exactly what I was getting at. Every discipline is like this.
If some nutjob tries to argue with my pathologist friend N that actually the proteins in your food change your DNA, the nutter is going to have a bad time because that's lunacy.
But if N is talking over dinner with another biologist who maybe got her PhD at a different institution, and in the course of conversation the other biologist says she doubts the central dogma (the "central dogma" of molecular biology is that the nucleic acid sequences make proteins, but the proteins don't make nucleic acid sequences, sometimes over-simplified as DNA->RNA->Protein) then N is not going to react the same way, because even though it's apparently the same idea as the nutter, the context is different.
The central dogma seems plausible to me (as a lay person), but popular simplifications are now known to be definitely wrong, so who knows, at least it should have a more defensible name, (apparently Crick did not know what the word "dogma" exactly means and was just looking for synonyms for "hypothesis") as of course if it does fail you can expect the first sort of nutter will feel vindicated.
In the context of "I too have a PhD in this discipline" doubts about the dogma (ignoring for a moment that in its technical sense you can't doubt a dogma that's the whole point) seem rational, while in the context of "A Big Mac can change your DNA" it's insane.
Likewise I'm sure that in the context of basically "I hate all this old concrete crap" pointing out that Brutalism is related to the word "Brutal" just gets you dismissed -- but in the context of arguing about the relative merits of Wyndham Court and the tower block "extension" to South Stoneham House in my city, it doesn't seem so unreasonable to observe that what people didn't like about these two structures wasn't so much their Brutalist architecture as the Brutal reality of living in them...
Technically yes, but I would argue that words “Java” and “JavaScript” have as much to do with one another as “car” and “carpet.” I think most of us have run into a clueless recruiter that assumes the languages are interchangeable or even appropriate for the same applications.
The English word brutal comes from French or medieval Latin brutalis, brutus, meaning dull, stupid. Hence the word "brute". Savagely violent is only one of the meanings of the adjective. It also means "punishingly hard or uncomfortable" or "direct and lacking any attempt to disguise unpleasantness". These latter two meanings of "brutal" seem particularly apt to describe this architectural style; in fact it seems to mirror in the original meaning of "Béton brut" (though I am no speaker of French, so some nuance may be escaping me).
So, I'm really not sure that we've gained anything by this "debunking".
I see it is a common experience for someone learning a new language as an adult to find the new language they're learning beautiful, because of all the new connections between words and roots... "oh, it's neat how this word for 'child' is from an old root word for 'love', oh it's neat that this word for 'afraid' also carries the connotations of 'dark cave'", etc.
It's easy to miss that your birth language has all the same associations. You just learned it and deeply internalized it at a time when you missed that sort of thing. Look at it with fresh eyes and a bit of study and you may be surprised at what similar beauty lies within it.
And this is a good example. Yes, the denotation of the English word "brutal" and the architecture term "brutalism" may not be directly connected. But the words considered as a whole are connected, across a family of related European languages, with rich associations going back centuries. It is far from merely "coincidence" that the words are so related. It can be helpful and informative to know that the denotations aren't as related as they may look, but trying to tell people that they're completely unrelated terms is incorrect. There is a complicated, interesting, and even in its own way, beautiful connection between brutalism as an architectural style and brutal as an adjective.
So "beton brut" or "cidre brut" (dry cider) refer to the concrete's or cider's dullness or stupidity? No, they refer to their rawness and crudeness. The original commentor was spot on.
By the way, a more complete set of the meanings of Latin brūtus is heavy, unwieldy, dull, stupid, brutish.
It's originally a tongue-in-cheek term, first popularized by British Architects Allison and Peter Smithson. The double entendre was not lost on them. Architects have a sense of humour too.
Yes, there is no reason that English speakers would adopt "brutalist" merely because some French speaking people used the word "brut" to describe it. People are thinking too narrowly about how and why words are used, names given and popularized.
Correct, brutalism is concerned with total utilitarianism and a complete lack of artifice (the material is irrelevant, although a lot of brutalist architecture is made from concrete). It contrasts itself with minimalism by taking it to the extreme and creating an almost anti-human aesthetic.
This makes it appropriate for buildings that are looking to evoke anti-human ideals; churches and monasteries (divinity of God over the profanity of man), as well as many governmental buildings of the period (intimidation and hopefully an inhuman/machine-like approach to orderliness and bureaucracy)
>This makes it appropriate for buildings that are looking to evoke anti-human ideals; churches and monasteries
Have you seen an actual monastery? An actual old church (at least 700 years) kept in its original style?
They are as far as you can get from just utilitarian, to the point that they are impractial in many ways.
Nobody needs, or have any use for, a 120 foot ceiling, except to impress visitors by showing them the glory of God. Nobody needs the entire outside of the building having a row of stone Gargoyles hand carved in the smallest details, but they are there.
I'm talking about brutalism as a chosen approach for an architect and where that approach is most appropriate for a building. It doesn't mean that all churches or monasteries should be brutalist (obviously), I'm saying it's one of the use cases for a new piece of architecture where brutalism makes sense.
> brutalism is concerned with total utilitarianism and a complete lack of artifice
That would be functionalism.
> It contrasts itself with minimalism by taking it to the extreme and creating an almost anti-human aesthetic.
Exactly, and this anti-human aesthetic, inhumanity, intimidation implies that the building must have an emotional or aesthetic impact on the visitor, which is in conflict with the proclaimed utilitarianism. So brutalism in this sense is already moving away from purely functional/utilitarian architecture.
They are not unrelated. As I've always understood it, brutalism was definitely about avoiding artifice, and exposing functional elements.
Wikipedia seems to agree. (An encyclopedia is a pretty good place to go for a common starting point when we're talking about what a term like this means!)
> Brutalist buildings are characterised by minimalist constructions that showcase the bare building materials and structural elements over decorative design…
> New Brutalism is not only an architectural style; it is also a philosophical approach to architectural design, a striving to create simple, honest, and functional buildings that accommodate their purpose, inhabitants, and location. Stylistically, Brutalism is a strict, modernistic design language that has been said to be a reaction to the architecture of the 1940s, much of which was characterised by a retrospective nostalgia.[29] Peter Smithson believed that the core of Brutalism was a reverence for materials, expressed honestly…
> A common theme in Brutalist designs is the exposure of the building's inner-workings—ranging from their structure and services to their human use—in the exterior of the building…
An architectural style can do more than one thing, i.e. it can be both utilitarian in its aesthetic and also be anti-human in its output. Philosophically, I'm not sure these are mutually exclusive but I suppose that's debatable.
> it can be both utilitarian in its aesthetic and also be anti-human in its output
What I am trying to say is that its 'anti-human' aesthetic is in conflict with professed utilitarism, because it adds elements that are superfluous to the utility. And I think for a part of brutalist architecture this is pretty clearly a break with functionalism/modernism and a precursor (one of many) to postmodern architecture. But I'll leave this to the experts.
> Correct, brutalism is concerned with total utilitarianism and a complete lack of artifice
but, every brutalist structure i’ve had the displeasure to work in sucked for humans to occupy and interact with. They completely prioritize artifice over functional matters.
There are a number of brutalist academic libraries that I find delightful to be inside of, using them for library purposes. Somehow it's a style suited for libraries?
I went to school here, and this one from the OUTSIDE I don't love, but on the INSIDE it's actually a delightful place to read, browse the stacks, study, or nap. And has been beloved by generations of students. https://www.oberlin.edu/mudd-center
University Library at Northwestern University, I find lovely outside as well as pleasant inside: https://www.library.northwestern.edu/ (There are some alternate entrances and terraces which are closed due to notions of "security" in a facility like this, but which would make it even more pleasant and human-oriented if open. I guess that is then one way it's design ended up incompatible with at least current usage demands. I'm curious if they were open to patrons when the building first opened).
The first modernist architects were implicitly working with a theory that simply highlighting the "raw" use of new, high-tech materials like metal or concrete would result in an enjoyable, decorative look. They weren't necessarily going for a "brutal" appearance, that was more of an unintended consequence that only became clear in retrospect.
But one aspect of brutalist architecture is "showing how it's made", making infrastructure visible, making structural apparatus visible. And making raw materials visible for what they are, not trying to make them look like something they're not. That's part of it's "rawness" too, as I've always understood it -- it's not just about using concrete.
That part does seem to some extent apply to what's being called here "neobrutalism" in the web. Stark obvious borders and shadows, instead of subtle gradients that blend in and don't draw your attention to them, or which give you photographic or realistic effects to imitate something they're not. Emphasizing the "computer-y-ness" of what you're looking at. Skeuomorphic tries to look like something other than it is; minimalist design hopes you don't think about what the thing is made of at all to distract you from the information -- but this design we're talking about instead intentionally reminds you that you are looking at a computer screen. That's an honest similarity to brutalism maybe.
So, as an appreciator of architectural brutalism, from the headline (and not knowing much about the web design 'trend') I came prepared to make your point... by the end I was begrudgingly saying, meh, okay, fine, close enough. It does draw your attention to the "way it's made" similar to what I understand as actually one of the core values of architectural brutalism; as well as being kind of a challenge to more polite notions of aesthetics in a way that's similar to brutalism's effect even if it's not what the word "brutal(ism)" was actually meant for (although in English at least I think the 'misunderstanding' may not have been wholly unknown/unintentional originally). I guess it's close enough, I'll allow it, I don't need to pick this fight. (although I too wish the author had talked a bit more accurately about architectural brutalism). (On the other hand this design stuff also has lots of non-functional even playful decorative elements, which is contrary to architectural brutalism).
I think that context matters. Coming out of the 1940's, where fascism preyed on nostalgia and fear, brutalism brings forward a concept of the future that is both fearless and lacks nostalgia. Not seeing the world through your imagination of how you want to see it, but how it really is. Unlike Albert's Spear's or Mussolini's Roman and Greek inspired pieces (setting EUR aside), a brutalist view is honest, simple, and looking forward. There are, of course, counter-examples like the Eastern European memorials - which sometimes favored a heavy grandeur.
My take on this is that designers look at something like a concrete building and thing "big", "ugly", "no-like" and then make something that rejects the current overly-clean, friendly design of most sites. It's not brutalist in the sense it is trying to move to a vision of the future free from deception and nostalgia, it's more dank basement bar and garage band esthetic. Some of those sites look like they could be the covers of 1980 punk or new-wave albums. I could see some of it on a Dickies album cover or promoting some 1982 art-house film about sadistic chipmunks.
Good points. There's probably no way for any contemporary design to capture that historical contextual element of brutalism (or modernism in general), that was a stance particular to that period of time, you can't have that same stance toward the past/future now with an extra 100 years of past behind us and what has happened in it...
(And of course it should be said that both Italian and German fascist architecture could also be big into modernism, and a "concept of the future that is fearless", and even in some ways "lacks nostalgia". Fascism is nothing if not contradictory.)
I still think there's something notable about the "draw attention to it being a computer screen" that is notable about the designs in OP -- that OP doesn't actually discuss much -- whether or not we call it "brutalism". Interestingly though, I also want to say it kind of wants to draw attention to it's artificiality in a way that seems very contrary to brutalism. Perhaps since the computer screen is such an artificial "simulacrum" kind of environment in the first place, to draw attention to it's true nature is to promote a kind of artificiality, when to draw attention to the true nature of a physical building was in the 20th century thought of as a dismissal of artifice.
Anyway, this is maybe getting pretty far afield, but interesting stuff!
> Coming out of the 1940's, where fascism preyed on nostalgia and fear, brutalism brings forward a concept of the future that is both fearless and lacks nostalgia.
Ah, that explains why brutalist buildings look so much like all those concrete bunkers and flak towers that Germany built during the war. It all makes sense now.
> Stark obvious borders and shadows, instead of subtle gradients that blend in and don't draw your attention to them.
The drawback is that in most cases you'd want to draw attention to the actual content, not the appearance of the page. Starker contrast is sensible for page elements that the user can meaningfully interact with, but ISTM that the "claymorphism" style is more effective at managing that trade-off.
Well, yeah, I don't honestly love the examples on this page of this 'trend'! (I'm also in my mid-40s, I suspect this is a young person's thing).
I'm just saying it's one commonality with architectural brutalism (for better or worse, in either case) that can justify the term. Separate consideration to whether we like the design or think it's effective!
> The term Nybrutalism (New Brutalism)[16] was coined by the Swedish architect Hans Asplund to describe Villa Göth, a modern brick home in Uppsala, designed in January 1950[9] by his contemporaries Bengt Edman and Lennart Holm.[10]
> Asplund's neologism caught on in Stockholm and was picked up by British architectural pilgrims to that city, among them Oliver Cox, Graeme Shankland and Michael Ventris, the decoder of Linear B (an ancient script seen as one of the great linguistic riddles). Although the epithet signified nothing, or maybe because it signified nothing, it was taken up as a slogan of defiance or something by arty young British architects, none artier than Alison and Peter Smithson and their representative on Earth, Reyner Banham, an architectural critic whose prose may cause all but the entirely insentient to wince.
Or Reyner Banham why he chose that name in his 1955 essay:
> They have created the idea of a Modern Movement – this was known even before Basil Taylor took up arms against false historicism – and beyond that they have offered a rough classification of the ‘isms’ which are the thumb-print of Modernity into two main types: One, like Cubism, is a label, a recognition tag, applied by critics and historians to a body of work which appears to have certain consistent principles running through it, whatever the relationship of the artists; the other, like Futurism, is a banner, a slogan, a policy consciously adopted by a group of artists, whatever the apparent similarity or dissimilarity of their products. And it is entirely characteristic of the New Brutalism – our first native art-movement since the New Art-History arrived here-that it should confound these categories and belong to both at once.
The postfix -al in English means "of or pertaining to". It comes from Middle English, from either Latin or French, possibly from Etruscan before that. It's often added to nouns to make an adjective form. The postfix -ism (from Ancient Greek) is a suffix added to the end of a word to indicate that the word represents a specific practice, system, or philosophy, often political ideologies or artistic movements. It suggests the word is related to a belief accepted as an authority by a group or school of thought.
The word brutal comes from Medieval Latin brutalis ("savage, stupid"), from Latin brūtus ("dull, stupid"). The English use of the word has a particular connotation/definition that differs from both the French and original Latin.
The French word brut comes from Middle French, from Old French, from the Latin brūtus (“heavy, dull”). Today it means either "raw", "strong", or "gross" ("big, thick, large, stout", "whole, entire, overall, total, aggregate").
The word brutalism could translate as "a system, belief, or artistic movement, of or relating to, a whole/entire, dull/big/thick stupid/savage aggregate". Doesn't make for a great definition.
However, that's not the whole story.
The word brutalism was coined first by Swedish architect Hans Asplund in 1950 as nybrutalism. It described a home Villa Göth (built by Bengt Edman and Lennart Holm) made using red brick - not concrete. In 1955, British journalist Reyner Banham popularized an essay called “The New Brutalism,” in which he used the brick-and-steel Hunstanton School (by architects Peter and Alison Smithson) as an example of this new form. The point was to stretch Modernism even further, but concrete was not (yet) involved.
In 1966, in French architectural critic Reyner Banham's book "The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic?", he redefined the word by suggesting that brut was a French pun, combining the meanings of "béton brut" and "brutal". 16 years after the coining of nybrutalism, the term's use became linked to concrete.
So really, the word originated as a reference to the the raw edges of an extended Modernist design, and then was reinterpreted as a pun relating to raw concrete, and then the English who weren't aware of this pun simply assumed it related to the brutality of the buildings' aesthetics.
--
ps. brutism would (without a different explicit definition, use, or origin) be the same word as brutaism, just without the "of or pertaining to" postfix. English has thousands of words which have different spellings and the same meaning. You can replace the -al postfix with -ition or -ision and it means the same thing (disposition/disposal=dispose, proposition/proposal=propose, submission/submittal=submit, transmission/transmittal=transmit). But not in all cases, as some forms end up having a different origin (reversion/reversal=revert,reverse).
I'm no expert in architecture history, but I don't think it is so obvious. Le Corbusier's projects such as the Cité Radieuse or the Plan Voisin, which largely defined modernism, seem to me to be quite clearly the starting point of early brutalism, which didn't look all that brutal. Le Corbusier is also the source of the "béton brut" phrase, apparently.
> the Plan Voisin, which largely defined modernism, seem to me to be quite clearly the starting point of early brutalism, which didn't look all that brutal.
“Raze a third of Paris, it is Too Messy!” isn’t “all that brutal”?
Apologies if it was unclear, I meant that Le Corbusier's projects together largely defined modernism, rather than just the Plan Voisin.
The Plan was more or less a marketing scheme. It brought attention to the problems modernism was to solve: it was large-scale, clean, egalitarian, bright, full of greenery, and paid attention to transportation — all things Paris had issues with at the time. (1920s Paris still had slums!)
The word "brut" came from French "Béton brut" which means "raw concrete" — has nothing with how "brutal" we perceive it to be.
There's lots of architecture articles covering this but basically, the author hasn't done their research: https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Brutalism