Depending on who you ask, brutalist buildings like the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C., are little more than misshapen mounds of concrete. But architecture professor Mark Pasnik says the structures were built with a much deeper meaning in mind.
"People think of them as communistic or as alienating," says Pasnik, who came to brutalism's defense in a recent Boston Globe op-ed.
— wbur.org
Architecture professor Mark Pasnik makes the argument for preservation of brutalist buildings in an opinion piece for the Boston Globe. Pasnik's piece was in response to Trumps recent outcry to tear down the FBI headquarters. He explains the style's history of material honesty, along with reasons to preserve brutalist architecture. Even if the style does not appeal to an individual, Pasnik advocates the historic importance and sustainability of renovation over demolition are worth keeping brutalist buildings intact.
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This is really going to confuse donut emoji twitter.
Even the Romans, who invented (or re-invented) concrete often applied veneer of marble or brick over their structures because they couldn't stand to look at it. Ugly is ugly. Brutalism is like post modernism, deconstructionism, and parametricism - post-Bauhaus fad styles among architecture critics and pretty much reviled by the occupants, visitors, and neighbors of those buildings. Mid-century modern and Wright's 'prairie style' have legs and are embraced by the discerning public a fact that drives the architecture critics mad.
Hard to argue that a building named after J. Edgar Hoover is too ugly.
The building was scheduled to be demolished long before Trump. The plans were for the FBI to go to the 'burbs and the DC government-connected real estate jackals to feast on the site by putting up luxury housing. The Trump plan is to build (or rebuild) on the existing site. How much, if any, of the existing building to retain is under discussion.
Covering concrete with a veneer might be construed as dishonest, and honesty of expression was a value (or at least a notion) that Brutalism inherited from Modernists. No wonder Trump dislikes it. (He'd want it coveted with something shiny but fake.)
Brutalism isn't just about exterior finish. It's also about formal composition.
Honesty and dishonesty is not as relevant as sustainability and beauty.
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