It's probably a lost cause like a lost trademark like Kleenex, crazy glue, and band aid, but since this is an intellectually-curious crowd, you might like to know that brutalism is not a 1:1 replacement of "visible concrete." It is so much more.
Even in wikipedia, the general definition is there but obscured. Despite nearly every pictorial example in wikipedia featuring exposed concrete (as well as reddit's r/brutalist), any material can be found in a brutalist design. It must merely be exposed and accepted for what it is. e.g. wood shown to be wood and allowed to warp, decay, or even grow, as opposed to being overlaid with drywall. Stones not just in a foundation or a garden, but in a living room. This honesty and connection to materials is in contrast to the "dominating" sense of "brutalism," of which cheap government buildings are often twisted up in.
Though the pictures on wikipedia are misleading, certain quotes from the page are worth reading. Specifically when brutalism is described as "an ethic, not an aesthetic".
And also:
"Peter Smithson believed that the core of brutalism was a reverence for
materials, expressed honestly, stating "Brutalism is not concerned with the material as such but rather the quality of material",[33] and "the seeing of materials for what they were: the woodness of the wood; the sandiness of sand."
Source: wikipedia and have lots of architect friends.
That's very interesting, as a Frenchman I assumed it came from "brutal", like "brutalité", as the raw concrete and abundance of right angles tends to make these buildings feel, well, aggressive (to me at least).
This is how I think of brutalism, and it makes it very hard to talk about with others. I think the word conjures dystopian images for a lot of people, which is really unfortunate. Maybe it should be abandoned in favor of a more positive-sounding term.
There's a truth though in this idea of honesty about materials that transcends a particular architectural fad, and I think brutalism ought to be an element that any design considers: can a structure be inherently beautiful without additional adornment?
I wish for more examples I could point to as brutalism that aren't just exposed concrete. The only one that springs to mind is this[0] redesign of some post-war brutalist (of the exposed concrete variety) playground equipment. It isn't a big step forward, but it's something. I also think that things allowing like good cable management to be seen is a form of brutalism. Actually, given this post's theme of "eco-brutalism", I think something like the earthship[1] might be a better example of brutalism.
I live in a cool old concrete factory in Brooklyn that was haphazardly converted into lofts back in the nineties, and more recently purchased by developers to convert into "luxury" lofts. The conversion consists mostly of throwing a cheap wood veneer over the floors, carpeting in the hallways, newly painted drywall over various surfaces… I had never thought of the building as particularly "brutalist" before, but I lamented the covering of the worn concrete.
"If people didn't want to live in an old factory… why would they move into an old factory?" I keep asking myself.
Fortunately — believing these changes are upgrades — they haven't changed much for the residents that they didn't manage to evict, so my unit is still honest. And since it has an east-facing-window, it's even covered mostly with plants, like these photos :D
I don't think that's a complete definition of brutalism; the elements of mass and scale must be taken into account. Brutalist buildings are bigger and heavier than traditional forms of architecture and they make no attempt to hide it.
Interesting, but wouldn't that make every brick building, like, say, on a street in the UK, "brutalist"? I suppose you could argue there's a lack of brutalist intent, but still.
If said bricks are actual construction bricks and not just decorative and that there is no attempt to hide other structural elements I guess it would count.
Not really answering your question, but in my neighborhood (not in the UK), residents push back against developers asking them to install more brick facades on new homes. In my old house, a previous owner had installed brick veneer on one of the interior walls. So that's sort of the opposite of brutalism, or maybe it's some kind of imitated brutalism.
I love the Barbican conservatory, it's one of my favourite places.
It makes me feel like I'm in some kind of 1960s futuristic space arcology. Looking through the windows it's disappointing to see not the strange, alien landscape of another planet on the other side, but instead the strange alien landscape of central London.
I want to dislike brutalism and generally prefer older European architecture, but after seeing a brutalist library on a sand beach in China I kind of learned to like it. Maybe it was the surrounding nature in combination with it that made it click. It's located in a gated community that has several brutalist structures: https://www.domusweb.it/en/architecture/2018/11/16/china-cha...
That seems to be the majority opinion, at least in my experience, but I've always really liked it. Maybe because it reminds me of so many science fiction settings. I do think blending the buildings with plants goes a long way to making them look more hospitable.
For me the design always comes second, their sheer scale is what makes them amazing. Seeing them from the distance, thinking they're nearby, but then you just keep approaching and approaching and they keep getting bigger.
What this slideshow does perfectly is picture them from a POV perspective, nowadays you mostly see drone shots.
I completely agree with this. Have you ever noticed how very tall but narrow buildings (i.e. skyscrapers) are never as physically imposing as bulky, monolithic buildings that are as nearly as wide as they are tall?
The problem with brutalism is that it is literally inhuman - it creates an environment in which humans do not fit.
So in theory, nature could help, because humans feel that they fit in natural environments. But in practice, at least in the photos in the article, it doesn't work, because the nature doesn't look like it belongs there either. It looks either like weeds growing through cracks, or "tacked on", ineffectively trying to make you ignore the ugliness.
Similar to this is the Weyerhaeuser headquarters building [0] in Federal Way, WA. The campus is also home to the Pacific Bonsai Museum, which is a real gem. Not too far out of the way for anyone visiting Seattle (just a little ways south of the airport).
I have a hypothesis that brutalism is only liked by people who don't have to live in it. Like communism I guess. For the rest, they don't want to have anything in common with brutalism (and communism).
I feel like there should be something in Montreal that would fit in here but I can't come up with a good example. The habitat '67 is close but doesn't have enough vegetation. There's various decaying concrete stuff in that area by Parc Jean Drapeau but again it doesn't quite fit. Any ideas?
The buildings pictured in illustration of the article are almost certainly made out of reinforced concrete, which is really antagonistic to the “eco” qualifier, given how short lived these buildings are due to rebar corrosion.
No I'm not, getting reinforced concrete to last beyond a century requires an increasing high amount of effort, which isn't the case with most other building materials.
Stone, rubble masonry, brick (both fired and mud), wattle and daub or non-reinforced concrete!
As long as you keep a roof on top of them, you'll have mostly local/superficial degradation, but with reinforced concrete you'll eventually end up with concrete cancer everywhere which is harder and harder to fight. See:
None of these come close to the performance of reinforced concrete in highly dense urban areas. They could be used in non supporting walls sure. I live in a statically outstanding building (very important where I live) that is over 50 years old and my apartment has the highest energy efficiency rating possible. The latter is not due directly to use of reinforced concrete but architectural design enabled by it
I see you moving goalposts here, but you can definitely find social housing made out of stone in Paris. Their worst enemy being gentrification more than structural decay.
It is not moving goalposts, but a genuine question. I was surprised that there are buildings higher than 5 stories being constructed today in stone. However it looks very unaffordable for 99% of people (housing affordability like climate concern is also a social question). Plus I would hate to think how our planet would look if cities were made of stone instead of concrete (cities would look nice but the hills around them?).
> I was surprised that there are buildings higher than 5 stories being constructed today in stone.
There aren't being constructed anymore. But that's the point I'm making actually: Paris is mostly made of buildings built in the 19th century, and that's only possible because the said buildings where made out of stone. With reinforced concrete, concrete cancer would be overwhelming.
> However it looks very unaffordable for 99% of people
In a planet where the population is converging, the ability to keep using the same building for more than a century is in fact the most economical way, focusing on short term costs of disposable buildings is already becoming unsustainable (that's exactly what we're talking about when the topic of “high infrastructure costs” is being discussed).
> Plus I would hate to think how our planet would look if cities were made of stone instead of concrete (cities would look nice but the hills around them?).
Where do you think the concrete comes from? You need to have stone quarries as well to make the cement (which is made of ground cooked rocks) as well as sand quarries to take the sand. But you need much more material because the process needs to be repeated every century (if you are using reinforced concrete: the problem always come from the rebar).
> There aren't being constructed anymore. But that's the point I'm making actually: Paris is mostly made of buildings built in the 19th century, and that's only possible because the said buildings where made out of stone. With reinforced concrete, concrete cancer would be overwhelming.
So these buildings were built during the peak of France's imperialist plunder. That's not a very good example then
> In a planet where the population is converging,
Is it?
> the ability to keep using the same building for more than a century is in fact the most economical way,
But so is recyclable materials. Constructing everything in stone actually means you think of your design choices as rather timeless.
> Where do you think the concrete comes from?
Where I live I can actually see the environmental damage of stone quarries every day
> So these buildings were built during the peak of France's imperialist plunder. That's not a very good example then
We're likely past peek US imperial dominance as well or at least close to it, and thinking about 150 years in the future is a good comparison. And there won't be much left because reinforced concrete is not a good material over a long period.
> But so is recyclable materials.
Why not, but concrete isn't recyclable either. It's even less recyclable than stone. So why bring that here?
> Where I live I can actually see the environmental damage of stone quarries every day
> We're likely past peek US imperial dominance as well or at least close to it,
US imperialism is built on capitalist pragmatism.
> but concrete isn't recyclable either
It is
> But concrete comes from quarries too!
Its basic economics. Stone just seems far more costly and unaffordable. I just dont see it as an alternative. Your suggestions seem little more than utopic. I am happy to be proven wrong
> US imperialism is built on capitalist pragmatism.
I'm fascinated by this sentence, sounds like it comes straight from the propaganda machine. It's like meeting a North Korean praising the supreme leader…
> > but concrete isn't recyclable either
> It is
If you know how to recycle concrete to make new cement, you hold a billion-dollar patent idea, because it's not recyclable under existing technology.
> Its basic economics. Stone just seems far more costly and unaffordable.
That doesn't change anything to the fact that talking about the environmental impact of stone makes no sense, since concrete impact is the same when it comes to extraction.
> I just dont see it as an alternative. Your suggestions seem little more than utopic.
I'm not even suggesting anything (and even less that we built every building in stone) I'm just pointing about the fact that reinforced concrete is disposable material on the longer term, and we should stop using it for everything. The main reason we use reinforced concrete isn't economical anyway, as it's much more expensive than plain concrete, for most use-cases it's because it gives freedom to architects to make buildings that look more appealing: it's a fashion driven disaster.
> If you know how to recycle concrete to make new cement, you hold a billion-dollar patent idea, because it's not recyclable under existing technology.
> I'm not even suggesting anything (and even less that we built every building in stone) I'm just pointing about the fact that reinforced concrete is disposable material on the longer term, and we should stop using it for everythin
You suggested that stone can replace reinforced concrete for dense urban housing. I was truly fascinated by that since I love the use of raw materials in architecture. However to me you just seem to be out of touch. Raw stone quarries will be much bigger for the same amount of concrete and that would result in an environmental disaster
> for most use-cases it's because it gives freedom to architects to make buildings that look more appealing: it's a fashion driven disaster.
No. Where I live we use reinforced concrete because we had several earthquake disasters. Vast majority of buildings are quite boring and unimaginative.
The same way plastics somehow being called recyclable, despite being very different from actually recyclable materials like glass or steel. It's greenwashing PR bullshit. Yes you can “recycle” concrete in other use, but you cannot make new cement nor sand from your concrete, which means you still need quarries to make new concrete. With this definition stone would be “recyclable” too, since you can use it to make concrete later on. That's just not what recycling means to most people except the people designing the greenwashing campaigns.
> You suggested that stone can replace reinforced concrete for dense urban housing.
No I did not suggest to replace anything, and I even called you for moving the goalpost when you said so for the first time. My entire argument is that reinforces concrete sucks, stone is just one example because how were I live is built, but mud brick would have worked too in my argumentation, really. The problem lies in the status quo, which implies using reinforced concrete nilly-willy, I'm not suggesting one particular way around this situation, but stop acting as if it was not a garbage building material.
> No. Where I live we use reinforced concrete because we had several earthquake disasters.
Tell that to the Turkish that died in the earthquake this winter, most buildings where reinforced concrete ones, it doesn't solve the earthquake problem in its own. And most places where we use reinforced concrete are not places prone to earthquakes anyway.
> Vast majority of buildings are quite boring and unimaginative.
That's very typical from fashion though so it's not a counterpoint at all, quite the opposite.
In Turkey it is precisely the pooprly reinforced buildings that collapsed.
Much of the damage in Turkey occurred in nonductile concrete buildings constructed under a pre-1998 Turkish building code. Ductile concrete building elements, required by newer building codes, are more flexible, thanks to steel reinforcing bars at critical locations.
No, and you're moving goalpost again! I'm not saying reinforced concrete should never be used, because yes when done properly it can have good seismic properties (but it doesn't come for free, and most reinforced concrete buildings in the world aren't more earthquake-proof than the collapsed Turkish ones), but that doesn't make it a good default, and in fact most of the buildings shown in TFA aren't in a seismic area, so this argument makes no sense in that context.
Reinforced concrete should be the default in every seismic area (there are plenty of them). If however it is forbidden everywhere else it would create an unfair advantage. Also I immagine that unnecessary use of reinforced concrete makes up well under 1% of its global use, and you were whining because the article showed some cool pieces of brutalist architecture. If only 10% of concrete structures were that cool :)
> if however it is forbidden everywhere else it would create an unfair advantage.
Nobody is talking about forbidding anything, and you can't be serious when arguing that living in a seismic area would be an unfair advantage, I mean for real?
> Also I immagine that unnecessary use of reinforced concrete makes up well under 1% of its global use
That's the problem I think, you are giving way to much credit to your imagination.
I live in a 50 year old house and there are a lot of things we wouldn't do today. The walls are not well insulated and hard to retrofit. The attic meets minimum standards only because I added extra myself a couple years back - I wanted to do more than the minimum but the way it is built there isn't room for more. At least I avoided aluminum wiring (which was common a couple years before this house was built) but there is a lot about the wiring that doesn't meet todays standards. It isn't just style that we layout houses differently today. This house has been remodeled at great expense (30 years ago) and there are some things that are still wrong.
Which is to say tearing down and building new to the latest standards is a good thing.
I live in a house that was built in 1840, and none of the issues you're complaining about exists here, since I had everything refurbished when I bought it.
Destroying an entire building to fix the wiring or insulation would be insanely wasteful.
Concrete is one of the most CO2 emissive technology, and it also consumes way more sand than what natural erosion produces, and thinking that all of this will be rotten in a century is heartbreaking.
I also refurbished my 50 year old apartment which is part of a cute concrete monster i wouldn't change for the world. I've had no issues doing this and attained the highest possible energy rating because the architect that designed the building was a genius.
If they are 50 years old, they are already, it may be hidden but the concrete cancer has most definitely kicked in at that point. Don't worry it's not going to have dramatic structural impact for the next 50 years, but at some point the bill will start coming to try and keep the building from falling apart. Until it's not economical to do so…
Brutalism has been very popular in civic architecture due to it's appearance of megalithic permanence but humans find it so ugly that a great deal of brutalist architecture has, ironically, been torn down.
If you're interested in this juxtaposition in game form, check out The Talos Principle 2. Most of the game environments follow this pattern. (And with Unreal Engine 5's lighting effects!)
Even in wikipedia, the general definition is there but obscured. Despite nearly every pictorial example in wikipedia featuring exposed concrete (as well as reddit's r/brutalist), any material can be found in a brutalist design. It must merely be exposed and accepted for what it is. e.g. wood shown to be wood and allowed to warp, decay, or even grow, as opposed to being overlaid with drywall. Stones not just in a foundation or a garden, but in a living room. This honesty and connection to materials is in contrast to the "dominating" sense of "brutalism," of which cheap government buildings are often twisted up in.
Though the pictures on wikipedia are misleading, certain quotes from the page are worth reading. Specifically when brutalism is described as "an ethic, not an aesthetic".
And also: "Peter Smithson believed that the core of brutalism was a reverence for materials, expressed honestly, stating "Brutalism is not concerned with the material as such but rather the quality of material",[33] and "the seeing of materials for what they were: the woodness of the wood; the sandiness of sand."
Source: wikipedia and have lots of architect friends.