In recent years, people started to regain interest in a movement that dates back to the last century; a movement, first introduced during the 1940s and 1950s, through the works of Le Corbusier and Alison and Peter Smithson. With monolithic structures, modular shapes, and impressive massing, Brutalism highlights architectural integrity. This movement is highly characterized by rough, raw, and pure surfaces that underline the essence of the substances in question. Spread across the globe, architects have adopted and developed their own vision of this modern movement, creating contextual variations.
In the midst of all the chaos currently taking place in the city of Beirut, we look back on the Lebanese capital’s hidden Brutalist gems. To shed the light on a movement that's often neglected and forgotten, Architect Hadi Mroue created a series of images that highlight the Lebanese Brutalism movement as well as its evolution as an important part of the Lebanese modern heritage.
Belgian architect Juliaan Lampens has passed away at the age of 93, in Ghent, Belgium. Known for his brutalist houses and his skillful use of concrete, wood and glass structures, the architect has created some of the most famous works from the last decade, including House Juliaan Lampens – Van Hove, House Vandenhaute – Kiebooms, and Kerselare Chapel.
Blue Crow Media has released its latest map exploring brutalist concrete architecture in Seoul, South Korea. The map is edited by Korea University-based architectural historian Professor Hyon-sob Kim, with original photography by Yongjoon Choi. The guide offers a unique look at Seoul’s unsurpassed history of concrete architecture from the 1960s to today.
Rarely does one see brutalist architecture in the city of London. Primarily, these buildings were perceived as rebellious and grotesque, only to become the "go-to" style for commercial and governmental buildings after the Second World War. Nowadays, with the real estate market demands and dominance of contemporary architecture, these monumental grey structures are gradually fading away.
Santiago-based architect and photographer Grégoire Dorthe developed the passion of photography during his military service, when he realized that through his images, he is able to freeze moments and preserve what will be lost with time. In his photographic series titled "Brutal London", the Swiss photographer captures the raw forms and graphic qualities of the city's brutalist architecture, before these buildings meet their end.
Tel Aviv’s architectural heritage has achieved global attention through the UNESCO recognition of the city’s British Mandate-era International style and Bauhaus-influenced buildings. Less known is the city’s Brutalist heritage and historic builds designed in the succeeding decades. Brutalism played a significant role in the Israeli design sphere of the post World War II-era. Concrete’s inexpensive availability and fast construction capabilities were adopted into the early Socialist mentality of the state to accommodate its rapidly expanding population and willingness to portray a muscular exterior.
Post World War II, Brutalism found its way across Europe, redefining modernist architecture and establishing a new style for mass housing and communal buildings. Although most of the light was shed on concrete landmarks in major cities, European suburbs have also housed many exceptional brutalist buildings such as the 'Hammer-shaped Tower Blocks' or the 'Houses on Chicken Legs'.
Two-sided guide featuring a map of Melbourne’s finest concrete and Brutalist buildings. The reverse includes details for fifty buildings, an introduction by Glenn Harper, the editor of Blue Crow Media's Brutalist Sydney Map, and original photography by Clinton Weaver.
Although Brutalist architecture is often criticized for its raw, unfinished look, it has been frequently used in the design of public buildings, with many becoming iconic landmarks. Some architects chose to break away from typical concrete structures and implemented a pop of color on the walls, window frames, and flooring, adding some dynamism to the monotonous palette.
Shot with a Leica M6 film camera, architecture and interior design photographerLuciano Spinelli photographed the Düsseldorf University campus, displaying the contrast between its brutalist architecture and vibrant design features.
Brutalism is merely a basic equation of reinforced concrete + geometry, but while the result of this equation is rather minimal, the architecture movement remains as one of the most debatable styles, ranging between “fascinating structures” and “is it even worth preserving”.
While many perceive Brutalism as “ugly” or “incomplete”, 17 year-old Arhan Vohra found glory in these modernist structures and launched Brutal Delhi, a photography website of New Delhi’s Brutalist buildings, shot through his camera lens.
Architectour Guide London: The Urban Explorer's Guide
The new series of city guides for architects by Architectour brings to life the lost essence of travel and discovery. A compilation of exciting places – known and not so known – arranged in an innovative way: a continuous scenic itinerary, which is fun to follow and is full of quirks and surprises along the way. Hand-drawn sketches by architect and author Virginia Duran are the personal touch of the book, revealing the essential without spoiling what is a traveling delight: our first impression of a place.
‘Sleeping districts’ of Moscow, Plattenbauten of East Berlin, modernist estates of Warsaw, Kyiv`s Brezhnevki: although these are home to the vast majority of city dwellers, post-war suburbs of central and eastern Europe have been invisible for decades.
Northern Ireland-based architect John Donnelly has launched a studio dedicated to the production of finely-detailed plaster-cast architectural models exploring the diverse built environment of Belfast, Northern Ireland. “Model Citizen” was founded to promote public understanding and appreciation of the architecture and craftsmanship present in Irish cities, manifesting as an ongoing series of intricate sculptures.
Model Citizen sees its sculptures, available for closer inspection here, as a “mechanism to emphasize the beauty and significance of our built heritage,” translating art deco, brutalist, and internationalist styles into tangible, tactile sculptural objects that can be held, felt, and explored.
Sculptor and jewelry designer, Cydney Ross explores the architectural passage of time through unconventional ceramics and mixed media. By over-firing, freezing, and thawing her materials, she simulates the swaying, slumping, and even collapsing of structure.
Videos
Miodrag Živković, Monument to the Battle of Sutjeska, 1965-71, Tjentište, Bosnia and Herzegovina. View of the western exposure. Photo: Valentin Jeck, commissioned by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2017.
With the exhibition soon coming to an end, Martino Stierli (Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA) and Vladimir Kulic (Guest Curator and Architecture Historian) have presented a 7-minute-long video guiding viewers through the highlights of the exhibition.
https://www.archdaily.com/908777/an-expert-guide-through-momas-toward-a-concrete-utopia-architecture-in-yugoslavia-1948-nil-1980Niall Patrick Walsh
Omnipresent plattenbau housing estates, monumental hochhäuser, cosmic milk bars; the post-war East Germany was rebuilt on concrete foundations to stand for the new modernity and shape the unique and no less controversial urban landscape of German Democratic Republic.
MODERN EAST: Build Your Own Modernist DDR is the new book by Zupagrafika celebrating socialist modernist and brutalist architecture of the former East Germany and allows you to playfully reconstruct some of the most intriguing edifices erected between early 1950s and late 1980s - from the massive plattenbauten of Rostock, through the icons of DDR-Moderne, like Kino International or Haus des Berliner
High-rise tower blocks, prefab panel housing estates, streets in the sky, new towns; some of the concrete constructions that once shaped the cityscapes of post-war Britain have stood the test of time, while others are long gone.
‘Brutal Britain’ by Zupagrafika (also author of ‘Brutal London’) celebrates the brutalist architecture of the British Isles, inviting readers to explore the Modern past of Great Britain and rebuild some of its most intriguing post-war edifices, from the iconic slabs of Sheffield`s Park Hill and experimental tower blocks at Cotton Gardens in London, to the demolished Birmingham Central Library.
To strip a city of its architecture is to erase its history altogether. Despite a widespread public distaste for Brutalism, the brutalist era in architecture often went hand in hand with political movements promising an egalitarian vision in post-Stalinist Poland. What may now be considered austere and overbearing was originally intended to be anything but; the buildings today carry both an appreciation for their legacy and the burden of unwanted memories.
In a recent article in the New York Times, writer Akash Kapur documents his visit to Poland, bringing readers into his experiences and observations of this complex response to Polish architecture. From sharing its history to short anecdotes from interviews, the piece postulates whether these relics can become alive again.
This article was originally published on September 28, 2013. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.
Hospital buildings, with their high standards of hygiene and efficiency, are a restrictive brief for architects, who all too often end up designing uninspiring corridors of patient rooms constructed from a limited palette of materials. However, this was not the case in Bertrand Goldberg's 1975 Prentice Women's Hospital. The hospital is the best example of a series of Goldberg-designed medical facilities, which all adhere to a similar form: a tower containing rooms for patient care, placed atop a rectilinear plinth containing the hospital's other functions.
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