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Surfing on this social media hype, the German Architecture Museum (DAM) and the Wüstenrot Foundation have started using the hashtag #SOSBrutalism to make these buildings visible worldwide in order to contribute to saving those that are currently threatened.
"Brutalism represents an anti-attitude, an anti-idyll," says campaign co-initiator Philip Kurz, of the Wüstenrot Foundation. [...]
The German Architecture Museum also plans to create an exhibition next year based on its online campaign.
— dw.com
"Some 900 buildings - from London to Abidjan, from Tokyo to Caracas - are already documented on the website sosbrutalism.org. Among the structures featured in the database, some have already been demolished while others are currently endangered."Related stories in the Archinect news:Brutal paper... View full entry
Poland-based studio Zupagrafika has a thing for modernist and Brutalist architecture. And to share that passion, it has created playful illustrated paper cutout models of Brutalist buildings in London; modernist buildings in Warsaw; and a new series, Paris Brut, featuring Brutalist architecture from the 1950s–70s located in the city center and outlying banlieues. — Slate
Cheaper than a train set, more visceral than a video game: Zupagrafika's sets of the Les Choux de Creteil, the Cite des 4000, and the Orgues de Flandre (among others) will keep your fingers busy in assembly and your mind deeply engaged in the thorny issues surrounding the relative success and... View full entry
The greatest work of art at New Haven’s Yale Center for British Art is arguably the landmark building itself—and Louis Kahn’s last structure is due to reopen this month after a 16-month renovation of its public galleries and lecture hall, and an upgrade of its accessibility, security, mechanical and electrical systems. This is the third phase of a $33m conservation project that began in 2008. — theartnewspaper.com
"George Knight of Knight Architecture, who led the conservation work, says: “The thing that kept me up at night was [thinking] how can we preserve the building, which is so architecturally rich, and do all this surgery so as not to disfigure the patient in any way?""All images courtesy of the... View full entry
This week on the podcast, Donna, Ken and I discuss the uncertain future of downtown Atlanta's brutalist Public Library (the last building Marcel Breuer designed), how Shigeru Ban's relief efforts in Ecuador relate to his celebrity, and the emergence of a heavy-hitting lobbyist group for driverless... View full entry
The uncertainty looming over the building’s future is serving as a call to action for preservation groups in Atlanta and around the world who are beginning to mobilize. [...]
Ironically, to gain the Breuer building, Atlanta lost its original Carnegie Library. [...]
As evidenced by the transformation of the former Whitney Museum into the Met Breuer, it is clear that with a careful restoration, Breuer’s works can be an iconic piece of the urban fabric in which they reside
— artsatl.com
The Architecture and Design Center has begun a petition to protect the library, and has since garnered 1,023 signatures of 2,000 needed.The petition states: "We ask that the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System Board of Trustees take actions to protect the Central Library and Library System... View full entry
These buildings aren't from a distant galaxy far, far away. They're here on Planet Earth, specifically in Belgrade, Serbia. Locally based photographer Mirko Nahmijas wanted to give a new perspective to some of his hometown's historically-loaded Brutalist structures in his photo series... View full entry
The East End of London has been associated with many things: the “cockney” sense of humour; colourful criminals; waves of immigration; and poverty. Not many people associate it with architecture. But it was in Poplar in the south eastern corner of the East End that I chose to do my... View full entry
On March 18, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art opens an annex at Madison Avenue and 75th Street in Manhattan, it will be attempting to shrug off the ghost of a museum past.
The specter is the Whitney Museum of American Art, which called the iconic Marcel Breuer building on that corner home for nearly five decades. In an eight-year deal, the Met is leasing the Breuer building from the Whitney— which relocated to its dazzling new Renzo Piano–designed home last year...
— Architectural Record
The Breuer-designed building will house some of the Met's modern and contemporary collection. But shrugging off the association between the Brutalist masterpiece and its former tenant may prove a tough task. For many, nothing say's "the Whitney" more than those protruding windows... For related... View full entry
As last week's episode was taken up by Pritzker-hooplah, this episode takes a look back at the major news items of the last week(ish) and gets you caught up with what's been happening in Archinect news.We discuss: the recent photo exhibition on homelessness at USC (which closes tomorrow!); the... View full entry
The hotel plan by the Procaccianti Group Inc. [...] is being welcomed by construction-trades unions, city officials and surrounding business owners. But Ned Connors, an architect and historian of the Weybosset urban renewal project, says he will miss the Fogarty building.
It’s not ugly, he said, it’s just … different. At about 50 years old, he said the Fogarty building is in the most dangerous time in a structure's life: when it’s too old to be hip but too young to be venerated.
— providencejournal.com
Sadly the architectural design of the proposed extended stay high-rise hotel that has been OKed by Providence City Council last December to replace the Fogarty building could not be any more generic and bland. What do you think, Archinectors? Do we have Providence locals here among our readers... View full entry
Brutalism lost the good fight in 2015. [...]
Demolition on another building by Johansen began late last year as well: Stage Theater, once known as the Mummers Theater, in Oklahoma City. The Oklahoman‘s Steve Lackmeyer called the 1970 project the number-one modernist building in the city that should have been spared. [....] Preservationists had hoped to turn it into a children’s museum. Models of the building show what a delightful museum it might have made [...].
— citylab.com
Brutalike stories in the Archinect news:Orange County legislators fail to save Paul Rudolph's Government CenterArt college professor suggests makeover for brutalist Boston City HallBrutalism: the great architectural polarizerNew movement urges to call Brutalism 'Heroic' instead View full entry
There’s the legacy of Brutalism being such a negative term. It begins the conversation with negativity about these buildings, and this falls into the misreading of them as harsh, Stalinist, or some other kind of monstrous, mean architecture. The name plays into that mischaracterization that’s grown around a lot of them. I think “Heroic’” is a better title for what their actual aspirations were. The architects had a real sense of optimism. They were developing architecture for the civic realm. — citylab.com
Related news on Archinect:Brutalism: the great architectural polarizerArt college professor suggests makeover for brutalist Boston City HallFuture of Paul Rudolph's brutalist Orange County building still uncertain View full entry
These are confusing times in the business of protecting the country’s architectural heritage. [...]
Recently, two large modernist buildings were up for consideration for listing: the British Library in St Pancras, and an East End council estate, Robin Hood Gardens. Both have been controversial [...]
Yet the library has been granted the immortality of a Grade I listing, while the estate has been denied recognition and is set to be demolished.
— theguardian.com
Related on Archinect:Robin Hood Gardens residents dare Lord Rogers to spend a night in the blighted estateRobin Hood Gardens Set For DemolitionPostmodern No 1 Poultry divides architects in debate over recent heritage View full entry
Goldfinger’s [brutalist] buildings were decreed “soulless.” Inhabitants claimed to suffer health problems and depression from spending time inside of them. Some of Goldfinger’s buildings were vacated because occupants found them so ugly. Yet, architects praised Goldfinger’s buildings. [...]
This divide—this hatred from the public and love from designers and architects—tends to be the narrative around buildings like Goldfinger’s. Which is to say, gigantic, imposing buildings made of concrete.
— slate.com
Roman Mars, host of the design-centric podcast "99% Invisible", blogs for Slate on the polarizing quality of brutalist architecture – beloved by architects and hated by pretty much everyone else. Discussing the history of concrete in building architecture, Mars also puts brutalism in perspective... View full entry
“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... View full entry