Defend the Indefensible - Concrete Architecture

tim h turned me round to the wonders of it. so tim h to thread stat.!

ghastly concrete shopping/ town centre

I only just realised upon re-reading it that it had a whole section on the Brunswick Centre. Which looks REALLY COOL in the architects drawings. Because in the drawings, it is seen from an angle that the actual residents and local people NEVER GET TO SEE.

So this stuff is great if you are an architect, a bird, or god, but otherwise, it takes a certain sense of... imagination to appreciate them.

http://www.digischool.nl/kleioscoop/le%20corbusier.jpg

Okay, this looks great in black and white. Less so on a smokey London morning with forty odd years of urban grime caked to it. Biggest problem with concrete surely - it looks like shit after about a year?

Also that big building next to St James' park that totally ruins the view from one side of the lake.

http://www.albany.edu/geosciences/sunyaovb.jpg

x-post, I was talking about the Tricorn.

The problem is not with the finish of the concrete but with the monolithic, non-human-friendly scale of the place. Either there are huge, ridiculously large and scary spaces, or there are tight, airless, ridiculously cramped corridors where people are forced to live.

I think what you are referring to is known in architectural circles as Brutalsim.

To answer the general point, this building alone justifies the use of concrete in architecture:
http://users.compaqnet.be/cn117945/deconstr/10deconstrgroot.jpg

xpost.

That picture is fucking beautiful.

http://www.runchadrun.com/personal/london/gifs/wall.jpg

And on my walk to work along the South Bank here in London I go by all these dull concrete buildings - Royal Festival Hall, Hayward Gallery, IBM, etc. Awful. And yes, they look worse when the concrete gets wet or dirty over time. Painting it is fruitless - it starts to crack off after a few years anyway.

http://www.djc.com/stories/images/20020502/OldConcrete_Airshot.JPG

oh, well

I will not hear a word agains the National Theatre or UEA either (as you see I am in favour of ziggurats).

There are these low, dark coridors, more like rabbit warrens, intercut with these huge yawning chasms like something out of the Death Star.

Yes, it's beautiful, but I would hate to live in it.

The external face is beautiful, but the bits that people have to live in are small and dark and quite dank. There's no place for social interaction with your neighbours, but lots of places for muggers to lie in wait.

I like boring glass buildings. Minimalist shiny glass architecture = shiny minimal techno. Sprawling concrete complexes = old-skool 70s prog r0x0r.

The only thing I can think that's even edible there is the Japanese place!

http://wiem.onet.pl/wiem/bmp/49486-3744.jpg

http://www.scroll.demon.co.uk/jpg/brazil/brasilia/bra16.jpg

http://www.cendotec.org.br/imagens/alvorada.jpg

I like boring glass buildings. Minimalist shiny glass architecture = shiny minimal techno. Sprawling concrete complexes = old-skool 70s prog r0x0r.

There is so much wrong with this statement. Concrete inhabits the same modernist realm as steel and glass. Concrete architecture is the kraftwerk and idustrial of arhcitecture. Steel and class in more like trance ocassional there is some good but most of the time it's just lazy bad design and no substance.

i have warmed considerably to the Trellick. i used to think it was hideous and perhaps in a way it is, but the actual interior design is superb (not been in but saw a detailed BBC docu piece on it a few months back)

shame we don't have Niemeyer stuff here really

sprawling concrete complexes = 70's old-skool TG/CV

shiny minimal techno = 'secondary moderns'

minimalist shiny glass architecture = philip glass, obv

ihttp://www.archnewsnow.com/features/images/Feature0123_04x.jpg

Dry Falls State Park Visitor Center in Central Washington

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/563675_10151348728846596_304721891_n.jpg

1965

'Concrete architecture inhabits an interzone between the best kind of idealism and the worst kind of pragmatism'?

http://cdn0.lostateminor.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/wotruba-church.jpg

i sometimes think that brutalist concrete architecture is my favorite kind. i'm not speaking primarily of knockout projects that bend concrete to someone's imaginative fancy. my favorites are hivelike, utilitarian buildings that exploit the material's industrial essence.

http://farm1.staticflickr.com/58/190916931_c0990f8806_z.jpg?zz=1

http://ronenews92fm.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/fbi_headquarters.jpeg?w=640&h=458

http://media.lunch.com/d/d7/168197.jpg?2

i like this style, i suppose, because it recalls a particular sort of nerdy, rationalist 70s sci-fi idealism. in the here and now, these building seem seem like remnants of a charmingly crude technological utopia that never happened, antlike worker-citizens ruled over by benevolent univacs the size of city blocks. i find that comforting somehow (no banaka).

contenderizer, I recognize FBI and Boston City Hall, but what's the first of those three images?

I am a huuuuuge fan of everything in this thread that's not a broken link. Holding back the urge to just spam the thread with favorite shots and buildings, there are millions. The recent Brutalism issue of CLOG (http://www.clog-online.com/issues/clog-brutalism/) has a nice smattering of thinkpieces and check-out-this-project essays. Disclosure, I have 500 words in there about Charles Correa and the capacity of Brutalism to, contrary to its reputation, operate linguistically in a sophisticated and complex way. See also fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com (run by an old school friend and doing gangbusters it seems).

Agreed re: the clumsy retro-utopianness, though it always struggles against the just-as-present dystopian qualities of the command-control society, armories and defense posts against insurrection, all of that stuff. But from the perspectives of the architects, they really were following through on the Modernist dream of a saner, rational world ruled by science. It's just that "ruled by science," if it ever sounded good, was certainly starting to sound bad right around the same time.

it's the sheffield town hall extension

In 1977, a new council building in a modern style was added to the east of the Peace Gardens, and was connected to the old Town Hall by way of a glazed flyover. The building was immediately unpopular and was nicknamed The Egg-Box after its appearance. The new building, complete with roof-garden, cost in the region of £9 million and was built with a life-span of about 500 years following concerns about the tenacity of the concrete structures built in the previous decade. It was demolished in 2002 after just 25 years to make way for the Sheffield Winter Gardens, St Paul's Hotel and an office block...

The extension is the setting for much of the 1984 BBC docufiction Threads.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/SheffieldTownHallExt.jpg

Uch! Thanks. Sad but not surprised to learn of its fate.

west coast is especially nice for this. concrete harmonizes surprisingly well w/ wild greenery (actual and simulated):

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Seattle_Freeway_Park_24.jpg

http://www.greatbuildings.com/gbc/images/cid_1112082104_DSCN1047.jpg

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3623/3638416379_6fe00af1a8.jpg

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3570/3639225984_b14fcf0050.jpg

http://media.thenewstribune.com/smedia/2013/06/17/14/11/1gQ9qo.St.5.JPG

Brutalist fountain! Incredible.

Saw a good talk on Denys Lasdun and the National Theatre last year, and how he turned one of the cheapest forms of construction (using wooden forms for pouring the concrete) into one of the most expensive by only using each plank twice (once for each side, after they'd been cut using a special roughened saw blade to emphasise the grain).

national theatre near and far:

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01428/national-theatre_1428543c.jpg

http://blog.lisacoxdesigns.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/National-Theatre-concrete-Lisa-Cox-Garden-Designs.jpg

The Phaidon book on concrete is gorgeous. It's kind of amazing that the Pantheon is a concrete building but people pretty much stopped using it for over a thousand years.

there's a great Facebook group on this that keeps yielding brutalist porn:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2256189436/?hc_location=stream

More great pics, contenderizer! I have long dreamed of frolicking in those Lawrence Halprin landscapes. What are those last three from? Looks like a campus... Vancouver?

penultimate 2 are from the evergreen state college's campus in olympia, wa. i went to school there, probably where my love of this stuff really crystallized (concretized, w/e). last building is the weyerhaeuser headquarters in federal way, wa. looks like some ancient site and houses a nice free bonsai garden. getting all nostalgic for seattle...

http://ryanjhollander.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/terraces-and-pond2.jpg?w=785

http://james.architectureburger.com/roadtrip/roadtrip33.jpg

bonsai garden such a blithely ominous metaphor...

Totally great, thanks for sharing.

np, i love this stuff! it's like architectural meditation. also, this is otm:

...the clumsy retro-utopianness...always struggles against the just-as-present dystopian qualities of the command-control society, armories and defense posts against insurrection, all of that stuff. But from the perspectives of the architects, they really were following through on the Modernist dream of a saner, rational world ruled by science. It's just that "ruled by science," if it ever sounded good, was certainly starting to sound bad right around the same time.

― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, July 16, 2013 8:38 PM (Yesterday)

Downtown Cleveland has a few great Brutalist concrete buildings.

Ameritrust Tower:

http://s3.hubimg.com/u/2476670_f520.jpg

Rhodes Tower (which houses the Cleveland State University library):

http://library.csuohio.edu/graphics/libguides/rhodes-tower.jpg

The student center that used to sit next to that is now gone:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2205/2349942885_4e57b6b69c.jpg?v=0

MetroHealth Medical Center:

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/08/large_MetroHealth-Medical-Center.jpg

Same here. In the UK most new housing developments attempt to look homely and cottagey and fail at this - due to not having the same disciplines and materials that were used in the early 1900s-thru-1930s housing they're trying to emulate. It all looks ersatz. Whereas concrete brutalism is just clear about what it is.

Somewhat relevant Tumblr: http://activator-inhibitor.tumblr.com

Park Hill is up for the RIBA Stirling Prize this year, although possibly becaause they've made it less brutalist

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/jul/18/stirling-prize-2013-shortlist

I remain so totally disappointed in the happiness panels applied to the building, although the other changes do sound reasonable. My pick from that list would probably be the Giant's Causeway center, that looks great.

i like the park hill building. the neighborhood of copenhagen i lived in had a bunch of apartment complexes that looked like that and i thought they were magnificent.

boston city hall is also awesome.

idk, i saw the le corbusier exhibit at MOMA recently and since then view concrete architecture as being very optimistic, and unabashed, about modernity, which i like.

i can't stand boston city hall. it screams inaccessible government bureaucracy to me, like it's on stilts that you can't climb up. like it's not meant for the public. all those offices look unreachable, the way it's narrower on the ground floors and gets wider towards the top, it just tells me that i shouldn't waste me time trying to approach it because i can't. i tried to register my car there once and it took like 15 minutes trying to find the appropriate entrance.

*my time

here's another view

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Boston_City_Hall.JPG

it seems so weird and ugly and unsure of itself, though, especially compared to the more conservative-looking architecture that surrounds it. it's almost the opposite of intimidating to me.

7/8 of the problem with Boston City Hall is the brick hellscape around it, IMO.

Lawrence Halprin - that is how Brutalist landscape is done. Such a fascinating figure, total ILM-bait - him and his wife Ann were tight with Berio, Terry Riley, LaMonte Young, the Fluxus types (and their daughter starred in Zabriskie Point!). But he's somehow also a bridge to Project for Public Spaces colored-pencil-rendering banalitude - one of a few translating Happenings into team-building wilderness exercises.

If his "concrete harmonizes surprisingly well w/ wild greenery" to Contendo, it's not from happy juxtaposition - it's that he was that he figured out how to make those forms (horrors!) mimetic, credibly transporting swimming holes into the urban public realm. Very kitschy guy but somehow a total hero.

http://www.altaplana.be/_media/dossiers/darius/pyramiddatepalms.jpg

If his "concrete harmonizes surprisingly well w/ wild greenery" to Contendo, it's not from happy juxtaposition - it's that he was that he figured out how to make those forms (horrors!) mimetic, credibly transporting swimming holes into the urban public realm.

that's true in the case of halprin, but i was talking about this sort of concrete architecture in general. tbh, i frequently dislike it in an urban environment devoid of greenspace. in that context, as its critics say, it often does seem oppressive, inhumane, and just plain ugly. a green & growing environment gives the forms & material chance to exert contrast and texture, enhancing the style's most idealistic qualities. imo.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7094/7165659014_9bfd890950.jpg

The Clancy Real Estate Group office in Phoenix.

http://joeorman.shutterace.com/Bizarre/bizarre_pyramidoncentral1.jpg

Awesome.

Sunkist building, Sherman Oaks, CA (LA)
http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site200/2013/0331/20130331_123249_do01%20sunkist%20building%20sherman%20oaks.jpg

Soon to be re-purposed, I believe.

Kerr Hall, UCSB

This is the first concrete building I'm aware of experiencing (1975), and I loved it. The surface reminded me or corderoy.

http://farm1.staticflickr.com/30/60577588_2c44f42577_z.jpg?zz=1

http://media7.troverapp.com/T/4e1f50d646dcf12800000020/large_2x.jpg

Pacific Mutual Building (now Pacific Life), Fashion Island/Newport Center, Newport Beach, CA.

http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4087/4964251915_9f177f6cdb_z.jpg

Fashion Island (which we always called Fascist Island) was the nearest shopping mall to home, so I got to see this being built in 1971-72. Semi-scandal for conservative Orange County when it was finished. Cars would stop, people took photographs, etc.

I thought it was fantastic.

beautiful photos, nickn

This is like a bird watching checklist for some folks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_William_Pereira_buildings

xp
Thanks, but I didn't take them. The building has a dramatic acute angle on one of the outside corners (like a wedge) but I couldn't find any pictures of that.

Fendi has bought the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana. Even without the history, it's a strange, sinister building for reasons i've never quite been able to put my finger on.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/11938018/Fendi-unveils-restored-Mussolini-building-as-its-headquarters-in-Rome.html

it looks more like an aquaduct than a building and it gives me the same unsettling sense of emptiness you get in some of giorgio de chirico's paintings. being elevated heightens it

https://zoowithoutanimals.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/de-chirico_melancholia-1916.jpg

http://www.galleryintell.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Giorgio-de-Chirico_cropped.jpg

Used to good effect in Taymor's Titus (1999):

http://youtu.be/t-TC2CxtVgw?t=5m17s

It's a fascinating building - though we should note for the record that Mussolini would not have stood for exposed concrete here! That's all travertine, the new Rome and all that.

New book and museum show explores mid-century Brutalism.

https://hyperallergic.com/427997/a-colossal-compendium-of-brutalist-architecture-argues-for-saving-our-concrete-monsters/

I have a short piece in the catalog and a few photos in that and the affiliated conference proceedings, so I got an advance copy and I can say that it's gorrrrgeous, really well put together and I can't wait to have the time to actually read it all.

Anyone bought this?

https://www.waterstones.com/book/iconicon/john-grindrod/9780571348138