“Musings about a Brutalist building’s friendliness quotient are a distraction” - Anthony Carfello, artist — LA Forum Architecture / Urban Design
Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design Summer 2015 Newsletter surveys and critiques LA's own collection of high-quality brutalist buildings in a 'must be collected" issue that grew out of its own google map “Brutalism Los Angeles” and other resources.
The Newsletter features a collection of articles, interviews and an op-ed by architects, historians, and critics.
You can write to LA Forum and request your free copy with an optional membership that goes a long way with many benefits and preferred access to events and publications.
4 Comments
Thanks for posting, Orhan. I can't wait to take a look.
That shot of the CNA building takes me back to the first week of architecture school, and everyone's required visit for arch. supplies to HG Daniels, across the street from this glass box.
I also love Piper Tech Center, though not for its soul-killing interiors. It's vast (so much bigger in scale than photos indicate) and is a bizarre combination of medieval castle and municipal complex, but with helicopters coming and going from the roof. Brutal and bureaucratic!
citizen, I picked the CNA building because I spent many hours in LaFayette Park when I used to work in Granada Building across the street next to Dworsky's (?) office. Downstairs was Carlos Diniz's office in Granada Bldg. I too frequently shopped at HG Daniels. They also sold great books on architecture. I particularly liked CNA building also for its sitting on NW corner of the park and sitting on four beautifully skirted columns. It is now decayed beyond belief as superior court building with some glass panels failing from years of neglect and I really dislike how they fenced the LaFayette Park.
No way is the superior court building brutalist....you could maybe make an argument for the base forms, but even that would be a stretch...classic bastardized miesian modernism.
“Musings about a Brutalist building’s friendliness quotient are a distraction”
I repeat this because it is a brilliant quote that might help to look at the definition more broadly in a cultural context. Apparently it is a widening and, semi humorously, "developing" situation as to meaning and interpretation beyond the brute concrete as the name generally incorporated.
Could urban condition, building siting, surface articulation, impact on the viewer/user, design principals/concepts/typology, circulation, even parking condition be also contributed to the definition?
Brutalism, as associated with "beton brut", might be a narrower term at this point and time that does not capture the essences of the more contemporary conditions and cultural connections, the generative possibilities of its architectural discourse.
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