Defend the Indefensible - Concrete Architecture

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