From "Towards an appreciation of Brutalism: Or, the Humanities Building is very good/Madison's most-maligned structure embodies a misunderstood, utopian school of architecture" by Mary Dahlman Begley (Tone).
Here's the "look great on Instagram" link, so judge for yourself if Brutalism looks great in Instagram's glossy little squares. I've experienced walking-around life with that Humanities Building for more than 30 years, and it's pretty horrible, but maybe I'm just a creature of the age group that hates it. I've walked by and through it many times, and I've done figure drawing sessions in the gloomy top floor where (I seem to remember) the windows are at ankle level. It will be very disruptive to tear it down, and maybe it is wrong to tear down a monument, even if you believe it's a monument to ugliness.
Thanks to our regular commenter David Begley for sending me that link. I don't know if I'd ever noticed Tone before. Here's another article there: "Madison dodged a monorail grift and barely even noticed" by Scott Gordon. We talked about that crazy thing a few days ago — here. Gordon writes:
In most of Transit X's renderings, and a hilariously bad video the company produced, the pods seem to be about 15 feet above ground and improbably tiny, looking more like weird oblong suitcases than passenger cars holding multiple people. The sense of scale here is severely off. City staff, perhaps fearing decapitation by massive black jellybeans, have wisely advised that we stick to the plan to bring bus rapid transit to Madison.The video, at the link, is indeed hilarious.
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93 comments:
Or: why true architectural Brutalism has never been tried.
I am Laslo.
The building in that image of the pod stop is part of Suffolk University in Boston. Down the street you can see a peek of one of the finest examples of craptacular brutalist architecture, Government Center.
These things definitely go together.
The renaissance is fueled by the enjoyment people experience inflicting misery on others. Like dropping an anvil on your head.
Mary is in architectural school. She’s also a very talented and creative person and a bit of a contrarian. I wonder where she got this from?
Boston's City Hall is pretty brutal.
Pretty. Brutal.
The real miss isn't the architecture of the building, it's the layout of the Plaza. It's too big and too isolated from the city's actual foot traffic to be useful for anything other than special events. (Circuses. Football Victories.)
This is a pervasive flaw of the '60s towers-in-the-park redevelopment violence.
One thing I learned from her essay is that the term Brutalism is derived from the French words for raw concrete. Mary knows French.
I was hoping the video would show the massive and obtrusive solar panel farm needed to power the transit pods, but that would have harshed everyone's mellows...
I can't imagine George L. Mosse would have been pleased to have that monstrosity bear his name.
Sometimes the brutality derives from designs which move the majority of the load-bearing structure from the interior to the exterior of the building, which benefits the users with more space generally and more flexible interior enclosures at the expense of the beholders who see the naked bones of the design rather than the often surprisingly airy innards. In this respect, much post-modern architecture borrows at least thematically from lessons learned in the High Gothic period. The difference is the cathedral builders of the 12th century, men who most left-of-center Westerners would reflexively prejudge as brutal, warmongering abusers of women and the poor were probably possessed of more refined aesthetics than the best architects working today.
The monorail idea looks like fun. Somewhat similar in concept to Hyperloop: use existing right-of-ways, use lots of vehicles instead of a few big ones. I don't care about the production values of their video. Can they provide an engineering plan that produces a workable system for not too much money?
Hmmmmm...brutalism.
For those going to London this summer, take a good, hard look at the South Bank Centre, which includes the National Theatre and Queen Elizabeth II Hall. Now THAT is brutalism. Then go to the Barbican.
They are both ugly and impractical--just try to find your way around Barbican Centre without asking for directions--you can't do it. Try to find your way to the Olivier Theatre and the Lyttelton without having to reverse your tracks at least once.
Prince Charles called the National "a clever way of building a nuclear power station in the middle of London without anyone objecting."
The bombing in London stopped too soon. Brutalism continues to oppress all who cower in its shadows.
Ugh. How?
That Instagram link has some great Soviet architecture.
Mary is named after her maternal grandmother.
She’s also good at creating controversy as an advocate.
The real miss isn't the architecture of the building, it's the layout of the Plaza. It's too big and too isolated from the city's actual foot traffic to be useful for anything other than special events. (Circuses. Football Victories.)
That's what its used for now but the original intent of the large plaza was as a forum for public protest. Problem is if you have your protest in a designated space only protesters go there to see it, so now the trend is to poop in the street.
I'm not a great fan of Humanities -- but I do like that it has a distinct look. Not every building should look the same, and boy, Humanities looks different.
UW Madison has some bland buildings, as is typical for low-bid builds. It's okay for something to stand out.
It really does evoke the sense of a boot stamping on a human face, doesn't it?
I don't hate the Brutalist buildings, exactly. They are interesting to look at, and at least the best-executed examples should be preserved as historical.
Part of me thinks that all government buildings should be done in this style, as a reminder of what government is. Neoclassical architecture like the US Capitol associates the government with prestige and beauty; whereas Brutalist architecture associates it with impersonal thuggishness.
The 1x1 inch thumbnail to the right of the Carte Montréal Béton is a residential structure made of self-contained (I'm just getting myself ready for the day and I've used that phrase twice!) housing units stacked like the interlocking pieces of a Lego set. It was designed for the Montreal World Exposition and was touted as THE COMING THING in urban living. My parents took me to Expo when I was a tyke, third grade I think, and it made a skeptic of me far too early in a normal childhood. It was shit, and so was Montreal's ball club.
Then again, maybe we don't want to invoke a feeling of impersonal thuggishness in the people who go to work in government buildings every day.
Yep, the "Oh the Humanities" building deserves the scorn heaped upon it. However, given what is taught within those walls the design is a sham, a deception — instead, it should look like this.
"The monorail idea looks like fun... Can they provide an engineering plan that produces a workable system for not too much money?"
Sure, they can provide a PLAN that "works" for a cheap price.
An actual system, up and operating? Not a prayer.
[Plus there are no, zero, zip mass transit systems that do not require substantial subsidies to operate.... Eventually the numbers of tax dollars grow to the point where maintenance suffers and the system spirals down in quality. See BART, the Atlanta MARTA of the D.C. Metro system.]
It's not as though the more recent buildings here on campus are beautiful. Some are okay. There's a recent fascination with curved shapes (I think trying to resonate with the football stadium).
The oldest buildings are best, especially the red ones — Science Hall and the Red Gym.
Tom Wolfe covered this well in From Bauhaus to Our House. Decoration and beauty are decadent, reactionary and right wing.
Brutalism is horrible.
Now, there are some examples that are less horrible -- the FBI building in D.C., for example. Usually these less-horrible structures feature a lot of glass which breaks up the expanses of concrete.
There's a reason, of course, that nearly all brutalist buildings the world over have been built by government entities. Very, very few individuals would spend their own money on one.
the term Brutalism is derived from the French words for raw concrete
Actually, you can drop the "concrete." The French word for "raw" (as in crude or unrefined) is "brut."
Mark knows Google translate.
And I would have thought that the term was from the Soviet for "progressive, Marxist style."
How does it compare to ImpSec aka Cockroach Central on Barrayar?
Maybe one of you can answer this: Why does it seem that so many academic writings are entitled 'Towards ______ (fill in the blank)"?
Clearly it's overused. Even the most famous of the faux papers was entitled, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity"
Ann? You're the wordsmith here. What up with Towards use in academia?
Maybe one of you can answer this: Why does it seem that so many academic writings are entitled 'Towards ______ (fill in the blank)"?
While you're at it, why must the title always include a colon?
What up with Towards use in academia?
=
I'm pulling your leg. Stick the other towards me
Maybe one of you can answer this: Why does it seem that so many academic writings are entitled 'Towards ______ (fill in the blank)"?
That is the essence of "progressivism." Always in a state of constant change, of always being in a state of "becoming," always leaving behind the backward and moving "forward" to a paradise that we will never come to because "progress" is never satiated.
Mary's take on the Red Gym, "the building is declaring its presence and strength, not unlike the nearby Red Gym's chunky, Romanesque, fortress-like architecture...."
I like Creighton's Old Gym better. The windows in it are so iconic that they were replicated in the New Gym a/k/a The Championship Center.
To be clear, Mary is not a Brutalism apologist; more of an analyst.
I never thought much of Humanities either, thank God for the CLEP test. University Humanities is for those who slept through Secondary School.
My son’s high school building resembled a jail. Turned out that’s the main thing that the architect had been designing before he got the commission for a high school.
I've been on lots of college tours recently with my two kids. On virtually every tour, the student guide has apologized for the Brutalist building on campus (usually the library).
So no, I don't think the present generation is going to lead a new appreciation for Brutalism.
Bernie Sanders architecture.
Perhaps this is the most maligned building. But surely everyone agrees that the worst architectural eyesore is the McCardle Cancer Research Building.
It's the perfect Nazi-Progressive architecture. They imagine deplorables getting de-programmed there.
The beginning of that video reminds me of the "educational" ones they used to show in school.
The pods look fun, but I don't think that 3x the speed of a car = as fast as flying.
I can't help but think about how the pods will be full of the last rider's garbage and god-knows-what bodily fluids that get left behind. Some people will think that privacy, or the illusion of privacy, will mean they don't have to be considerate of others.
If measles can make a comeback, why not Brutalism?
I always believed that post-modern architecture main focus was to assault beauty. They have succeeded.
About 40 years ago Atlanta tore down its old Carnegie library - a classic design with an all marble exterior, emblematic of many late 19th and early 20th century public buildings - for this Marcel Breuer designed monstrosity. Today it is considered a Breuer masterpiece but to me it is still one of the ugliest buildings in the city. I have been in it only once and hated it.
But the progressive, utopian, often socialist ideals that Brutalism also represents are back in vogue
Remember, across the last century the progressive, utopian, often socialist ideals the Brutalism also represents stacked up dead bodies like cord wood.
Brutal. Never did an architectural style more aptly express the true nature of its underlying ideology.
It's the perfect Nazi-Progressive architecture.
Staatliches Bauhaus. It's probably no accident that Bauhaus preceded the Nazi state. It got the Germans in the correct frame of mind before the exploiter of that mindset took over.
If measles can make a comeback, why not Brutalism?
Measles? How about bubonic plague?
Ugh. How?
Privileged white male no speakum like Elizabeth Warren.
You people are crazy, Brutalism is totally cool.
Look at this:
https://www.tcd.ie/library/berkeley/
Amazing.
Vicki from Pasadena
Reinforced concrete is a good material. Well finished it can be decorative and very durable. Manila still has many 1920's-30's reinforced concrete buildings that have survived earthquakes and bombardments. And it is ubiquitous in new construction. It's a city of bomb shelters.
The key is finishing the #$%&$$ stuff, both for beauty and durability. Its easy enough to make it look like stone, to take classical forms, to include ornament, to be colorful. Brutalism was about deliberately making it look like it was done rapidly, on the cheap, like some sort of military fortification. Indeed, some of the instagram examples are obviously inspired by German artillery bunkers. Why that is supposed to be beautiful I can't understand. And moldy, dirty greenish grey that is the typical result of rough porous finish is always extremely ugly.
I prefer the effect produced by the buildings at MIT, where wind tunnel experiments and computational dynamics studies have been used to understand why the wind off the Charles River can make the doors on the Green Building so hard to open that an art installation was added to help ameliorate the problem.
Mere appearance is as nothing compared to meteorological affects.
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1310/1310.3538.pdf
Re the Berkeley bunker, yuk.
What they should aspire to, for a university in this climate, is something more like Salamanca. Which can be done in concrete.
Obersturmbannführer Vicky wrote: Amazing.
Yes. Amazingly reminiscent of the works of Organisation Todt.
A local college library has some "Brutalist" architecture. It could double as a concrete bunker if we were ever invaded. I suppose it was cheap and functional, given its lack of any other positive quality.
buwaya wrote: The key is finishing the #$%&$$ stuff, both for beauty and durability. Its easy enough to make it look like stone, to take classical forms, to include ornament, to be colorful.
Quite a lot of Roman architecture, including the Flavian Amphitheatre, the Pantheon, and many aqueducts that are commonly thought of as stone constructions are in fact made largely of concrete, sometimes with decorative facings of limestone or marble.
I suppose when it was built in the 60s everyone was tired of the "Ivy and Brick" look and wanted something different. But different doesn't have to be ugly. I've met anyone who liked it. Of course, most people don't notice things.
True, if they are going to make artillery bunkers they could at least put in the cannon, the most interesting bits. The Berkeley one could do with a 280mm German coastal defense job, plus a few flak guns to catch the eye.
Its funny how people are labeling it Nazi but its actually Soviet in origin and the Eastern Communist Bloc was famous for its "Brutalist" architecture.
The first step toward rehabilitating Brutalism is to assert that there's "good Brutalism" as well as "Bad Brutalism," i.e., it's not all bad.
Bad Brutalism is Soviet housing blocks. Good Brutalism is whatever is seen as having some redeeming features. It's not as if anyone's calling for a Brutalist revival.
If only they could keep the dang reinforced concrete from weeping rustsicles.
"embodies a misunderstood, utopian school of architecture"
We deplorables understood brutalism perfectly well: it was the architectural expression of progressivism, another attempt to force people to fit prog designs, squeezing faulty human nature into the enlightened utopian mold, damage be damned.
Progressivism is political brutalism.
UC San Diego’s Geisel Library is a beautiful example of Brutalist design. Maybe it’s the spaceshippy look or the nice weather that makes it look cool.
Its funny how people are labeling it Nazi but its actually Soviet in origin and the Eastern Communist Bloc was famous for its "Brutalist" architecture.
The origins lay in the Bauhaus movement, which inspired the "look and feel" of both systems, which are just different flavors of socialism. Modern brutalism is just Bauhaus stripped of much of its glass.
Brutalism is always misunderstood, always just never properly implemented, always going to be loved and appreciated by later, more discerning generations, always only rejected by tasteless rubes who prefer kitsch and don't understand architecture...and always getting shoved down our throats regardless of being widely hated.
In its defense, brutalism gets a bad rap as Satan's own architectural ideology. Other forms of modern architecture can be just as hostile to humane social and civic life.
Perhaps Schit congress and Goggle and Youtube can force us to like Nazi-Proggy Brutalist architecture?
Art in LA: UC San Diego’s Geisel Library is a beautiful example of Brutalist design. Maybe it’s the spaceshippy look or the nice weather that makes it look cool.
Link fix.
@Angle-Dyne, thanks for the link fix! I messed up the href ...
There are several ( I hope they've been torn down) buildings at Harvard and BU that are equally ugly, built about the same time. It's amazing how ugly a fashionable thing can be.
Some of these buildings make me think that they will have to be taken with satchel charges and flamethrowers. And there will be photographs of their filthy, dingy survivors being marched out of the blackened portals.
Narayanan, you're right, ImpSec headquarters is Brutalist with gargoyles.
I almost bought a Brutalist apartment in the 80s. While attractive, I felt it could have been built by bees, and I didn't want to be part of a huge mind.
The San Diego Geisel building looks like it would have done well as a radar installation, or a modestly au courant flak tower.
Wally Netsch (Dawn Clark Netsch's husband) designed the UIC campus in Brutalist fashion, in the early 1960's.
The UIC campus was one of the most miserable places on earth in the early 1970's, particularly in the winter. You had to be emotionally tough to survive and physically agile to dodge ice falling from the concrete walkways (which were almost always shut down).
They started to get rid of many Brutalist features in the 1990's and the campus felt much more open and inviting. I have not seen it in 25 years, but I suspect that Wally would not recognize his creation.
University of Washington went through a similar phase, mostly in the dorms, with all exposed concrete. Then in the 1970s they made some horrible metal and glass things (see here and here).
Most of the newer ones are decent although the new computer science building is, IMO, kind of hideous.
Part of me thinks that all government buildings should be done in this style
I would wager that most Brutalist buildings are government-sponsored or paid for. Public housing projects and the like. Very few people would spend their own money on that.
Very Teutonic. Like the Atlantic Wall and East German apartment blocks.
The Brutalism of the Future is Brittleism
In Toronto Sidewalk Labs, a Google sister company and the city government are building "the City of the Future" on the waterfront. The buildings are the opposite of Brutalism, they look like 3-D architectural drawings using the fine line filter. It will have walks and parks and everything will be networked so as to respond to changing conditions. "Sidewalk sketches out a picture of a neighborhood where intelligent “pay-as-you-throw” garbage chutes separate out recyclables and charge households by waste output; where hyperlocal weather sensors could detect a coming squall and heat up a snow-melting sidewalk. Apps would tell residents when the Adirondack chairs on the waterfront are open, and neighbors would crowdsource approvals for block-party permits, giving a thumbs-up or thumbs-down based on the noise the gathering was expected to produce. Traffic signals could auto-calibrate to ease pedestrian congestion during public events, or to ensure a smooth rush hour. The data from such systems would feed back into the city, which would constantly learn, optimizing its own operations from month to month, year to year. Sidewalk promises “the most measurable community in the world.”
But I've lived in Toronto and I'll tell you what - the lake front is brutal in the winter. Low temperatures, high winds and humidity made the place tough. Then they built skyscrapers near the lake which created a wind tunnel effect and tremendous winds began to blow around and near the buildings. The wind combines with icy sidewalks into a brutalist weather condition such that burly men stand at the doors of the downtown buildings and rush intrepidly out into sidewalks and plazas to rescue tourists and others being dragged across the ground by the wind. Real Torontonians use a system of underground tunnels all winter. Winter is of course November to May, unless you are from a warm climate, California, let's say, in which case the Toronto winter is from October to mid-June. I loved Trawna - its pubs, China town, the Island and the Lake in summer (both July and August) and for its sake, I hope this Google company never googles Google to find out any basic facts about the city and that it pours money in. The new style could be called Brittleism after the effects of the cold on switches, rollers, glass and attitudes.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/06/29/google-city-technology-toronto-canada-218841
Tom Wolfe's From Bauhaus to Our House was all over this topic almost 40 years ago.
"The Geisel Library would look 1000 times better with" - missile launchers.
surprisingly airy inside (not invested enough to make sure that's an exact quote)
My high school, which has been reno'd in the intervening decades since my graduation, definitely fit the model, to hilariously bad effect. It was the time of "open classrooms" and the moveable "walls" between most class spaces were ineffective at both noise and space management. I didn't realize until now that the experiment was relatively new when I got there. As a student, I thought it sucked because it was getting old and worn out.
I vividly recall the gray carpet throughout the classroom and hallway spaces. If you wore dark jeans or pants, you'd have gray fuzz up to your knees by lunch time. It was the weirdest thing, a visual metaphor for the attempt the education establishment was making to assimilate us into itself.
Government Center/Boston City Hall perfectly encapsulates the "brutal" of Brutalism, especially in February. Walking across that plaza is literally punishing. And mikee, Calder's Big Sail is a spectacular piece but as a windbreak, it ain't all that. There were plenty of times I struggled to open the doors on Building 10 (aka the Green Building, but no students called it that back in my day [you kids get off my lawn!]). I've heard that Boston is windier than Chicago. I can't speak to that, never having been to Chicago, but architects who fail to take into the account the near-constant winds off the Charles River shouldn't get those building contracts!
The Lubyanka Prison was Brutalist, but in a different way .
Is and archway if it has a flat roof?
tcrosse said...
Maybe one of you can answer this: Why does it seem that so many academic writings are entitled 'Towards ______ (fill in the blank)"?
While you're at it, why must the title always include a colon?
****
That's to help you excrete them after reading.
Personally, I've always liked Humanities.
I haven't thought about that building in decades. I didn't think it was awful, but it certainly isn't beautiful. I too prefer the brick of the gym and science buildings. To be fair, though, if you can't do weird architecture on a college campus, where can you do it?
The Geisel Library would look 1000 times better with smaller, steel supports rather than the concrete ones. It looks like an underground concrete monster is clawing at the rest of the building to drag it back to earth.
I liked it until I read that. You're right.
Kind of looks like the underpass where I used to live before I got my shit together.
Defenders of brutalism fall into three categories:
1) People who have no taste.
2) People who have never outgrown the adolescent desire to épater les bourgeois.
3) Political obsessives who suppress their own sense of aesthetics for conformity with their ideological tribe.
People in the first category should be pitied. Those in the second should be scorned for their immaturity. Those in the third should be watched very carefully; they're dangerous fanatics.
There's no such thing as good brutalism. It can occasionally rise to merely mediocre, but even then it can be improved very simply, by getting rid of the "brut" in favor of some sort of finishing.
ts funny how people are labeling it Nazi but its actually Soviet in origin
Yes, we know the joke, the difference between the two is that the Nazis had better tailors.
Not only is humanities ugly but it’s also not functional inside. At least as I recall from thankfully just one class 20+years ago. I mean I e lived in ugly (from the outside) houses with great interior functionality and layout but they can’t even get that right.
Bauhaus artists weren’t nazis. They were were more likely communists who were driven out of Eastern Europe by Hitler who considered their art to be ‘degenerate’
Easily hosed down, and cleaned with a pressure washer.......so there's that.
"Oh, the humanity" --Herbert Morrison, Lakehurst, N.J. 1937.
Easily hosed down, and cleaned with a pressure washer.......so there's that.
The concrete is not stable.
Steven said...
Defenders of brutalism fall into three categories:
1) People who have no taste.
2) People who have never outgrown the adolescent desire to épater les bourgeois.
3) Political obsessives who suppress their own sense of aesthetics for conformity with their ideological tribe.
People in the first category should be pitied. Those in the second should be scorned for their immaturity. Those in the third should be watched very carefully; they're dangerous fanatics.
Ah, but which is Ann?
is it an
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