It’s very possible that no school of design has come under such unwarranted scrutiny, defamation and quite frankly, slander than that of Brutalism.
Brutalism, a school of architectural design that began in the 1950’s, evolving from the early 20th Century modernist movement of design. Large, Concrete and Blocky in nature, Brutalism relies heavily on the use of geometry and rigid forms to create spectacularly monolithic giants that tower over the landscape, standing out from the everyday and taking a firm step into the future.
The term ‘Brutalism’ was coined by the British Architects, Alison and Peter Smithson but was made popular by the architectural historian, Reyner Banham in the mid 1950’s. The word itself is derived from the the French term, ‘Béton brut’ meaning raw concrete. Its first swarey into the world of architecture through French Architect Le Corbusier, the designer of the Cite Radieuse in Marseilles in the late 40’s
A “city within a city”, the iconic l’Unite d’Habitation, commonly known as La Cité Radieuse.
Brutalism sought to change the face of modern architecture by challenging existing ideas of what design projects should look like, how they should be constructed, even how they should be used. Brutalism found firm support in the socially progressive years from the late 50’s through to the late 1970’s before the rise of private enterprises meant that socially conscious housing and design was ditched in favour of high “luxury, financial profit and ultra-modernism. This however was not the end for brutalism, as the socialist ideals of the former USSR and Eastern Bloc allowed brutalism to thrive. Large, high-rise social housing projects like the Barbican Centre in London were a step forward from the traditional block housing estates, in that the goal was to create a self sufficient ‘city within a city’ by including basic amenities such as post offices, doctors surgeries, hairdressers, stores and many other traditionally high street enterprises would now be encapsulated in poured concrete and made into the very foundations of these new brutalist schemes, not only literally but socially too.
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