The Spectator<\/a>, identifies Brutalism with a postmodern hatred of beauty and \u201cthe sublime\u201d.<\/p>\nThis impression has gained some force from the context in which Brutalism emerged in Britain. All too often, it is linked to poorly maintained social housing, and the desecration of British city centres by post-war planners, which saw motorways ploughed through traditional towns, and bombed out cities doubly damaged.<\/p>\n
Birmingham\u2019s post-war planner, the British-Italian civil engineer Herbet Manzoni, encapsulates this kind of philosophy at its most psychopathic: \u201cI have never been very certain as to the value of tangible links with the past,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Yet this confusion of brutalism with brutal ideas is based on a misapprehension. Take Manzoni and Birmingham. He was a technocrat, not a socialist firebrand, and his devastation of the city\u2019s Victorian past was signed off by a Tory council. Those looking for a culprit might also point to the automobile industry, which had good reason to want to turn Birmingham into a \u201cMotor City\u201d.<\/p>\n
We remember the most unpleasant and ideological of the British Brutalists, from the self-indulgent Alison and Peter Smithson, to the famously nasty Ern\u0151 Goldfinger, who gave his name to a Bond villain. But we too often forget the ebullient Denys Lasdun, or the romanticism of Sir Basil Spence, who rebuilt Coventry Cathedral after the war, and was a student of Edward Lutyens.<\/p>\n
The best Brutalist architects were careful craftsmen who were attentive to the needs and tastes of the individual, not cold auteurs\u00a0imposing their vision on an unwilling public. Lasdun would sit down for lunch with the working class families whose new homes he was designing. When planning the National Theatre, he worked tirelessly alongside Laurence Olivier, who described the theatre, now an iconic part of the Southbank, as \u201cthe finest-looking theatre, the finest-working theatre in the world.\u201d Conservationist and champion of Victorian architecture John Betjeman \u201cgasped with delight\u201d upon first seeing the National Theatre.\u00a0Lasdun himself described planning a theatre as a \u201cspiritual\u201d endeavour.<\/p>\n
Brutalism bears more than a slight resemblance to earlier reforming architectural projects, like the Victorian embrace of the Gothic Revival and the later Arts and Crafts movement. It sees the design of buildings as serving a moral, rather than just utilitarian or consumeristic purpose.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What makes Brutalism disturbing is what makes it sublime. It is an architecture that, in its seriousness, scale and simplicity, provokes awe \u2013 whether that means wonder, horror or both. Awe, as anyone who has ever sat in a great cathedral knows, can be the handmaid of comfort and consolation. Like the interior of a great nave, the Southbank is a radically public space. Its exterior, described as a \u201cfourth theatre\u201d by Lasdun, is somewhere that feels public as few other parts of London do. You can sit and wander at ease for hours around the Southbank and never feel unwelcome, hurried or pushed to move on. The interweaving bridges, stairs and platforms create a sense of simultaneous openness and interiority; it\u2019s a space sometimes dubbed \u201cthe nation\u2019s sitting room\u201d.<\/p>\n
What makes Brutalism disturbing is what makes it sublime<\/p>\n
Its \u201caweful\u201d qualities may make Brutalism divisive, but it also ensures that Brutalist buildings are meaningful, and public-spirited. It is a form that shocks and awakens, provoking discussion, debate and a sense of common ownership. Sadly, the buildings we now construct have quite the opposite message. These range from the bland \u201cnothing\u201d architecture of the international style, all privatised plate glass, boxes and grids, to the nihilistic arbitrariness of postmodern architecture.<\/p>\n
Brutalism was, at least, an architecture for grown-ups; one that reflected an ambitious, inventive culture that posed serious questions of itself. Our current built environment is aimed at infantilised consumers, rather than a shared civilisational grammar. Where once we pursued justice and the divine through what we built, we now look only for comfort and convenience. Love or hate Brutalism, at least it makes us actually feel something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is a concrete Brutalist complex as worthy of commemoration and preservation as a medieval cathedral or neoclassical stately…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-465337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}