Brutalism as Found

Brutalism as Found
Author: Nicholas Thoburn
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2024-03-19
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1913380033

A critical appropriation of Brutalism in the crisis conditions of today. The Robin Hood Gardens public-housing estate in East London, completed in 1972, was designed by Alison and Peter Smithson as an ethical and aesthetic encounter with the flux and crises of the social world. Now demolished by the forces of speculative development, this Brutalist estate has been the subject of much dispute. But the clichéd terms of debate—a “concrete monstrosity” or a “modernist masterpiece”—have marginalized the estate’s residents and obscured its architectural originality. Recovering the social in the architectural, this book centers the estate’s lived experience of a multiracial working class, not to displace the architecture’s sensory qualities of matter and form, but to radicalize them for our present. Immersed in the materials, atmospheres, social forms and afterlives of this experimental estate, Robin Hood Gardens is reconstructed here as a socio-architectural expression of our times out of joint.

As Found

As Found
Author: Claude Lichtenstein
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2001
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9783907078433

British art and architecture of the 1950s are little known but extraordinarily topical today. Of particular relevance are the activities of the Independent Group, a loosely structured organization whose members included artists Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi, and Magda Cordell, More...photographer Nigel Henderson, critics Reyner Banham and Lawrence Alloway, and architects Alison and Peter Smithson, James Stirling, and Colin St. John Wilson, who sought the essence of the everyday through a sensitivity to the hardships and charm of life in the raw. As Found encounters the transdisciplinary relationship between the constructed environment as it is visually perceived and verbally expressed. Edited by Claude Lichtenstein & Thomas Schregenberger. Artists include: Magda Cordell, Richard Hamilton, Nigel Henderson and Eduardo Paolozzi. Architects include: Alison & Peter Smithson, James Stirling and Colin St. John Wilson.

Simon Phipps

Simon Phipps
Author: Catherine Ince
Publisher: Park Publishing (WI)
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: Architectural photography
ISBN: 9783038600633

For more than thirty years, British photographer Simon Phipps has been documenting the rebuilding of Britain after the Second World War through the work of architects. His archive documents Britain?s post-war modernism and new brutalism in architecture and recognizes the architects? enormous contribution to the transformation of the political and social landscape of the country in the aftermath of WW II. Significant building on a mass scale was realized and new building techniques were pioneered alongside innovative layouts, resulting in buildings of outstanding quality, displaying radical new forms. The construction ranged from public and private housing, to schools and universities, churches, museums, galleries, commercial and, ultimately, entire new towns.0This new book features around 200 of Simon Phipps?s photographs of some 160 buildings in all parts of England completed between the 1950s until the 1980s. They create a confrontation of buildings and architectural fragments, evoking a distinct atmosphere of brutalism. The essays and a conversation with architect Kate Macintosh contextualize brutalism in architecture from a British perspective.00Exhibition: Museum im Bellpark Kriens, Switzerland (26.08.-05.11.2017).

Brutalism

Brutalism
Author: Alexander Clement
Publisher: The Crowood Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2018-06-25
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1785004247

The term 'Brutalism' is used to describe a form of architecture that appeared, mainly in Europe, from around 1945-75. Uncomprimisingly modern, this trend in architecture was both striking and arresting and, perhaps like no other style before or since, aroused extremes of emotion and debate. Some regarded Brutalist buildings as monstrous soulless structures of concrete, steel and glass, whereas others saw the genre as a logical progression, having its own grace and balance. In this revised second edition, Alexander Clement continues the debate of Brutalism in post-war Britain to the modern day, studying a number of key buildings and developments in the fields of civic, educational, commercial, leisure, private and ecclesiastical architecture. With new and improved illustrations, fresh case studies and profiles of the most influential architects, this new edition affords greater attention to iconic buildings and structures. Now that the age of Brutalism is a generation behind us, it is possible to view the movement with a degree of rational reappraisal, study how the style evolved and gauge its effect on Britain's urban landscape. This book will be of interest to architecture students, design students and anyone interested in post-war architecture. Fully illustrated with 160 colour and 4 black & white photographs.

Atlas of Brutalist Architecture

Atlas of Brutalist Architecture
Author: Virginia McLeod
Publisher: Phaidon
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9781838661908

The Brutalist aesthetic is enjoying a renaissance - and this book documents Brutalism as never before. In the most wide-ranging investigation ever undertaken into one of architecture's most powerful movements, more than 850 Brutalist buildings - existing and demolished, classic and contemporary - are organized geographically into nine continental regions. Much-loved masterpieces in the UK and USA sit alongside lesser-known examples in Europe, Asia, Australia, and beyond - 102 countries in all, proving that Brutalism was, and continues to be, a truly international architectural phenomenon.

Heroic

Heroic
Author: Mark Pasnik
Publisher: The Monacelli Press, LLC
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2015-10-27
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1580934242

Often problematically labeled as “Brutalist” architecture, the concrete buildings that transformed Boston during 1960s and 1970s were conceived with progressive-minded intentions by some of the world’s most influential designers, including Marcel Breuer, Le Corbusier, I. M. Pei, Henry Cobb, Araldo Cossutta, Gerhard Kallmann and Michael McKinnell, Paul Rudolph, Josep Lluís Sert, and The Architects Collaborative. As a worldwide phenomenon, building with concrete represents one of the major architectural movements of the postwar years, but in Boston it was deployed in more numerous and diverse civic, cultural, and academic projects than in any other major U.S. city. After decades of stagnation and corrupt leadership, public investment in Boston in the 1960s catalyzed enormous growth, resulting in a generation of bold buildings that shared a vocabulary of concrete modernism. The period from the 1960 arrival of Edward J. Logue as the powerful and often controversial director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority to the reopening of Quincy Market in 1976 saw Boston as an urban laboratory for the exploration of concrete’s structural and sculptural qualities. What emerged was a vision for the city’s widespread revitalization often referred to as the “New Boston.” Today, when concrete buildings across the nation are in danger of insensitive renovation or demolition, Heroic presents the concrete structures that defined Boston during this remarkable period—from the well-known (Boston City Hall, New England Aquarium, and cornerstones of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University) to the already lost (Mary Otis Stevens and Thomas F. McNulty’s concrete Lincoln House and Studio; Sert, Jackson & Associates’ Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School)—with hundreds of images; essays by architectural historians Joan Ockman, Lizabeth Cohen, Keith N. Morgan, and Douglass Shand-Tucci; and interviews with a number of the architects themselves. The product of 8 years of research and advocacy, Heroic surveys the intentions and aspirations of this period and considers anew its legacies—both troubled and inspired.

Brutalism Resurgent

Brutalism Resurgent
Author: Julia Gatley
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2018-02-02
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1317228278

Brutalism had its origins in béton brut – concrete in the raw – and thus in the post-war work of Le Corbusier. The British architects Alison and Peter Smithson used the term "New Brutalism" from 1953, claiming that if their house in Soho had been built, "it would have been the first exponent of the ‘New Brutalism’ in England". Reyner Banham famously gave the movement a series of characteristics, including the clear expression of a building’s structure and services, and the honest use of materials in their "as-found" condition. The Smithsons and Banham promoted the New Brutalism as ethic rather than aesthetic, privileging truth to structure, materials and services and the gritty reality of the working classes over the concerns of the bourgeoisie. But Brutalist architecture changed as it was taken up by others, giving rise to more sculptural buildings flaunting their raw materials, including off-form concrete, often in conjunction with bold structural members. While Brutalism fell out of vogue in the 1980s, recent years have seen renewed admiration for it. This volume is consistent with this broader resurgence, presenting new scholarship on Brutalist architects and projects from Skopje to Sydney, and from Harvard to Haringey. It will appeal to readers interested in twentieth-century architecture, and modern and post-war heritage. This book was originally published as a special issue of Fabrications: the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand.

How to Love Brutalism

How to Love Brutalism
Author: John Grindrod
Publisher: Batsford Books
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2018-10-26
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1849945179

A passionate and personal book about the writer's own love for a controversial architectural style. Whether you love or hate brutalist buildings, this book will explain what it is about them that elicits such strong feeling. You will understand the true power of concrete and of mammoth-sized buildings, but also some of the more subtle aspects of brutalist buildings that you may not have known or considered. Brutalist architecture, which flourished in the 1950s to mid-1970s, gained its name from the term ' Béton-brut', or raw concrete – the material of choice for the movement. British architectural critic Reyner Banham adapted the term into 'brutalism' (originally 'New Brutalism') to identify the emerging style. The architectural style – typified by buildings such as Trellick Tower in London and Unité D'Habitation in Marseille – is controversial but has an enthusiastic fan base, including the author who is on a mission to explain his passion. John Grindrod's book will be enlightening for those new to the subject, bringing humour, insight and honesty to the subject but will also interest those already immersed in built culture. Illustrated with striking drawings by The Brutal Artist, the book is divided up into a series of mini essays that explains the brutalist world from a human aspect, as well as an architectural, historical and even pop cultural angle. The book journeys from the UK to discover brutalism and its influence around the world – from Le Corbusier's designs in Chandigarh, India, to Lina Bo Bardi's buildings in Brazil.

Brutal London

Brutal London
Author: Simon Phipps
Publisher: September Publishing
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2017-01-30
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1910463647

A photographic exploration of the post-war modernist architecture of London. This collection of unique and evocative photography of Brutalist architecture by Simon Phipps casts the city in a new light. Arranged by inner London Borough, BRUTAL LONDON takes in famous examples such as the Trellick Tower, the Brunswick Centre and the Alexandra Road Estate, as well as lesser known housing and municipal spaces. It serves as an introduction to buildings the reader may see every day, an invitation to look differently, a challenge to look up afresh, or to seek out celebrated Brutalism across the capital. The book's portable size and maps for each borough make it useful and practical; while the design, by leading agency A Practice for Everyday Life, echoes the aesthetic of Brutalist architecture with rough textured edges and fonts inspired by the site maps of modernist estates. The hardback was finalist for the British Book Design and Production Awards 2017, Photographic Books, Art / Architecture Monographs. Please note this is a fixed-format ebook with some coloured pages and may not be well-suited for older e-readers.