That we are now starting to get to grips with PoMo architecture’s controversial legacy is welcome, not least because other important buildings have already been destroyed, and others are threatened. [...]
Today the worlds of design and conservation are more closely allied than before. But even as this latest batch of postmodern buildings has won protected status, it is worth noting that important brutalist buildings are still excluded from the roster.
— The Guardian
Commentary by Catherine Croft for The Guardian on Historic England's recent selection of 17 postmodern buildings to be listed as heritage without extending the same love to important examples of the brutalist school.
32 Comments
wow, that judge business school interior...
Brutalism is a branch of PoMo. What is “pomo” here is another branch, pop modern (kitschy, ironic popart era stuff)
Brutalism is a predecessor of and is the antithesis to PoMo.
It is structurally and functional honest vs. PoMo's parody application of decoration. As architectural movements they couldn't be any farther apart.
Post-Modern is self-defined as everything after modernism. If you don't like it, take it up with the weakness of the term and the critic who made it up.
Which of course includes post-postmodernism.
Technically, there’s no such thing as “post-modernism” since we are still living in the modern age (just look around at what’s still being built). as a movement PoMo only makes sense as itself a branch of modernism. Brutalism has more in common with Pop Modernism in that they are reacting to classic modernism. But all modern branches
Also, brutalism isn’t “structurally or functionally honest” (uses expression and monumentality) and neither is classical modernism for that matter. What is Kahn? A brutalist? Pop modernist? Or both and essentially post-Modernist. What’s funny is the earliest modernism (Art Deco, etc) looks a lot like Pop Modernism ...what people think of as modernism is actually classic (international style) modernism which itself has many branches.
I guess you could call suburbs and new urbanism anti-modernist but they are still orbiting around the gravity of the Big Bang (modern cities)
Brutalist structure tends not to be not disguised or decoratively adorned. Brutalism also tends to reflect function in a literal manner.
For me that's honest. Much more so so than chasing architectural sub-styles down semantic rabbit holes.
@$%* iPad
agree with miles
I see brutalism as mo mo than pomo.
I'm calling the popo on you.
Why do people hate brutalist buildings and architects love them?
This is a very important question.
“I hate brutalist buildings” said nobody ever (except fake news)
Try to ask regular folks if they know what brutalism is first. They prob respond more to the word than specific examples — their local library, police station, school or office which they may enjoy
Ask the average Bostonian on the street what they think of the City Hall.
City Hall is (was, at least, before "improvements" that softened the plaza) a near perfect monument to bureaucracy. A fantastic political statement.
What citizens think of it is exactly what they think of government.
We failed the citizenry many years back. Architects should have pushed more brutalist homes and shopping centers and shied away from brutalist govt buildings. Now the style will forever be tied to the negative aspects of bureaucracy.
Here's a fun rendering to 'correct' city hall - https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/07/25/give-boston-city-hall-much-needed-makeover/N9faEcKrpEtJNg3JO6ZgTL/story.html
On Boston, 'til recently I conflated city hall and the surrounding 'plaza' in my mind. But, while of course related, they're not coterminous. You can love that Big Bad Boy yet detest the Hoover vacuum of a space he inhabits.
And that Stirling building in the header image is fantastic.
please...just cause po mo is having a reemergence in academia we gotta start using pink stucco, ceramic tile, and adding a bunch of janky accouterments to buildings again...at least brutalism was pure in its unadorned fuck off concrete. po mo should remain in the grave where it belongs.
I like PoMo (pop modern branch) for what it eventually became when it fused back into classical modernism (Holl, OMA, Morphosis, etc) more than what it was in the 80s—this kitschy early Gehry stuff is mostly ugly in at its most basic architecture value
There’s still plenty of this pop modern PoMo in the parasitic suburbs and McMansions I’d you like it — while most urban centers have a nice collection of classic modern and pre modern goodness. No need to “revive” it
Can you imagine the mentality that kept this effing thing the same shade of hospital corridor green for decades?
Is it Brutalism or is it Hitler's Atlanitik Wall? Is there any difference?
no difference and that is why it is cool.
He definitely put the brute in brutal.
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If that's brutalism, sign me up, but I think it has more to do with Mendelsohn's curves than Corbu's crap.
heh, they always called that the Saarinen style in school... that definitely has to be one form of success as an architect, people defining all your buildings as "insert your name here" style because you're that unique... I suppose Gehry gets that distinction as well, maybe zaha?
By the way, has anyone seen the TWA at Kennedy, compared to the more recent terminal buildings? It looks TINY.
I call that style HeyNo.
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