BRUTALISM

Brutalism (also called New Brutalism), narrowly defined, was the term used to describe
the theory, ideas, and practice of a small number of young architects in Great Britain
from 1950 to 1960. Broadly conceived, Brutalism came to describe an international
approach to architecture that reflected social ideals, industrial and vernacular means, and
humane goals.
Given the exigencies of building in Europe in the years immediately following World
War II, namely, limited resources and unlimited demand, it was no surprise that the new
generation of postwar architects saw before them not merely opportunity but the
challenge to respond to circumstances that seemed unprecedented in European history.
After World War I, architects seemed to approach the task of rebuilding in Europe with
revolutionary idealism and an optimistic trust in mechanical technology. International
Modernism seemed to represent not only all that was modern but also all that was
valuable in a devalued and degraded world. The generation following World War II had
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less use for idealism, revolutionary or otherwise, and diminished trust in technology. It
was in that context that the Brutalist apothegm “An ethic, not an aesthetic” acquired
significance. The new generation embraced several precepts: first, that architecture
absorbed existential weight; second, that building was the result not of reasoning but of
ethical action; and finally, that International Style modernism was no more than shallow
aestheticism. It was the radicalism of its approach rather than the persuasiveness of its
early monuments that enabled Brutalism to force a transformation of the accepted
conventions of modernism. Despite its short life as an identifiable movement, Brutalism
came to occupy a central position in the redefinition of the history of 20th-century
architecture.
The first built Brutalist work was the Secondary School at Hunstanton in Norfolk,
England (Peter and Alison Smithson, 1954), which employed what seemed at first glance
to be a Miesian aesthetic of pure structural clarity. For a building at that time in Britain to
follow the example of Mies van der Rohe would have been provocative enough, but the
Hunstanton School added another dimension to Miesian clarity: that of the mundane, the
diurnal, the literal. Thereafter, the Smithsons turned their attention to larger questions,
especially the need for a new approach to public housing in post-World War II Europe.
Their new concerns resulted in no built works of their own, but their original ideas
became profoundly influential. The next range of Brutalist buildings were to be the works
of other young British architects; for example, the Terrace Housing (Howell, Howell, and
Amis, Hampstead, 1956), Langham House Development (Stirling and Gowan, Ham
Common, 1958), Architecture School Extension (Wilson and Hardy, Cambridge, 1959),
Park Hill Development (Sheffield City Architect, Sheffield, 1961), and Engineering
School Laboratories (Stirling and Gowan, Leicester, 1963), among others. All of those
examples shared an unyielding emphasis on structural clarity, spatial simplicity, and
material presence, and all contributed to the solidifying of the character of Brutalism in
the general imagination.
The origin of the term Brutalism is not reliably attested, but the most plausible
explanation comes from adaptation of the French phrase beton brut (rough concrete) to describe
the material qualities of many buildings in Europe after World War II, qualities
necessitated by a general lack of the time and resources necessary to obtain finer finishes.
In particular, two works by the Swiss-French architect, Le Corbusier—the Unite
d’Habitation (Marseilles, 1946–52) and the Maisons Jaoul (Neuilly, 1954)—played major
parts in establishing the Brutalist model. In the first case, the Unite d’Habitation
displayed unfinished, boldly concrete surfaces laid out in patterns directly descriptive of
the processes of its fabrication. In Maisons Jaoul, Le Corbusier employed rough
brickwork, tile-surfaced concrete vaults, and raw plywood, mimicking traditional
vernacular building with industrial materials. To be sure, at least one Brutalist building
had appeared in Britain by 1954, but that fact cannot obscure the role of Le Corbusier’s
works as precursors of the new wave. To the smooth white planes and elegantly balanced
compositions of International Style (to whose definition Le Corbusier himself had made
major contributions before 1939), Brutalism contrasted unfinished, natural-colored
surfaces and seemingly awkward arrangements of parts, only too often revealing messy
and formerly hidden mechanical functions. Indeed, even when smoothly finished,
Brutalist buildings appeared crude and ordinary, with what some critics saw as willful
perversity.
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Again, although it was at first essentially a British phenomenon, Brutalism’s reach
soon included such European examples as the Architect’s House (A.Wogenscky, Remyles-
Chevreuses, France, 1957), the Istituto Marchiondi (V.Vigano, Milan, Italy, 1959),
and the Alder House (Rothrist, Switzerland, 1958) and a factory (Thun, Switzerland,
1960), both by Atelier 5. Furthermore, the catalytic role of Le Corbusier endured with his
buildings for the Capitol Complex (Chandigarh, India, 1951–65), together with the
monastery of La Tourette (Eveux-surl’Arbresle, France, 1955), all of which employed beton b ru t
at heroic scale and with great expressiveness. In every case, the effect was of a kind of
peasant or industrial vernacular, using the simplest materials in the simplest ways,
applying them to modern programs at modern scale.
Nonetheless, despite its radical appearance, Brutalism could claim, if not legitimacy,
at least ancestry in pre-World War II modernism. The early work of Hugo Haering (Farm
Building, Garkau, Germany, 1925), and Antonio Sant’Elia (unbuilt Futurist projects,
Italy, c. 1911–14) were acknowledged sources. Before them, the German architects Peter
Behrens, Bruno Taut, and Hans Poelzig could be included as forerunners. Equally, it
would be wrong to ignore the role in the development of Brutalism and the spread of its
ideas played by the contemporary architectural press. On the one hand, Architectural Review, the oldest
continuing architectural periodical in Britain, gave much attention during the 1950s to
vernacular tradition, early industrial monuments, and historic urban environments; on the
other, Architectural Des ign, the newest, gave prominent place to the latest, the most provocative works.
Between them, seen as they were across the world, they contrived both to inspire young
British architects and to spread the message of the new British architecture.
Brutalism, or at least its influence, also traveled to the United States. In the Yale Art
Gallery Extension (Louis Kahn, New Haven, 1949–53), which predated most British
examples, sur faces were selectively coarse or smooth whereas composition was
rigorously classical. A decade later, in the Yale Art and Architecture Building (Paul
Rudolph, New Haven, 1961–63), which depended entirely on European models, surfaces
were uniformly roughened, material choices were entirely aesthetic, and composition was
wholly picturesque. In the Mummers’ Theater (J. Johansen, Oklahoma City, 1970),
surfaces were randomly rough, smooth, or colored; material choices were inconsistent;
and composition was accidental.
Brutalism’s historical origins shed light on the movement’s profound worldwide
influence, despite the fact that it was initiated by a small group of people in a relatively
small place (or of limited geography). Before World War II, monuments of international
modernism, based as it was on the industrialization of building, had been confined largely
to the countries of its origin; namely, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, and the
Netherlands. Although spread had begun before 1939, the years of the war had
interrupted that flow. After 1945 the triumph of international modernism seemed certain,and so it came to pass in the most highly industrialized country in the world, the
United States, and in the work of architects trained in the 1930s. By contrast, the first
post-World War II generation in Britain knew this history but rejected it. In that view, the
war had shown that all those who had bought into the promise of an industrial utopia had
been fatally compromised. What was needed was an architecture that was industrially
based, but not ideological, and especially not political. Soviet Communism, Italian
Fascism, and German National Socialism had each claimed leadership of the modern
world and had employed architecture as demonstration of its claims. In the aftermath of
the most destructive warfare in European, if not world, history, it seemed clear that
architecture should assume a new role in society, a role dissociated from politics as such
and focused on human needs in the simplest sense. It was in response to that perception
that the first practitioners of Brutalism chose to employ exposed materials, rough
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textures, and seemingly awkward compositions, and it was those physical characteristics
that came to typify the movement in the general understanding.
Despite the brevity of the list of genuinely Brutalist buildings, in Britain and
elsewhere, the influence of Brutalism lay far less in the aesthetic concerns demonstrated
in its built works than in the ethical concerns manifested in its challenge to accepted
views. In that respect, Brutalism took its place beside other contemporary phenomena;
namely, literature and film. The writings of Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre and the
films of Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio de Sica were only some of those manifestations
of postwar despair, rejection, and existential rage. In Britain the works of writers such as
John Osborne and John Braine, of painters such as Francis Bacon and John Bratby, and
of sculptors such as Eduardo Paolozzi and Reg Butler displayed a rejection not just of the
war and its seemingly pointless waste of lives and resources but also of the seemingly
meaningless continuation of the attitudes and practices of the past.
At first, Brutalism seemed, even to its most ardent adherents, to be an idea isolated in
time (the 1950s) and place (Britain). Its chronicler, Reyner Banham (The New Brutalism), had little
confidence in Brutalism’s future recognition as more than a minor episode in the history
of 20th-century architecture. In both the senses, ethical and aesthetic, in which Brutalism
came to be viewed, that estimate was too pessimistic. The ethical part of Brutalism
survived because of its continuation of the principle established by A.W.N.Pugin and the
Cambridge Camden Society as far back as 1840: The ultimate test of design is its social
worth. The aesthetic aspect of Brutalism, assuming that the test of social worth has been
met, follows directly from material character—itself, if truthful, socially worthy by
definition. All over the built world today can be seen works that accept or challenge the
issues that Brutalism brought to attention; namely, if building is for the people, should it
not be of the people (vernacular forms)? If building is to invoke virtue, should it not itself
be virtuous (truth in materials)? If building is to be meaningful, should it not embody
meaning in itself (social worth)? The questions put by Brutalism have yet to be answered
with finality, and that is its continuing legacy.