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Brutalist Victory: Concrete Skylines Dominate Radical Retro-Future Cities

13 Jun

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

Architectural trends come and go, but some visions are more persistent than others, and Brutalism could have been among them. This artist asks and answers the question: what if concrete monstrosities of the 1960s and 70s had somehow won the war against the steel-and-glass towers that dominate contemporary skylines?

German digital artist Clemens Gritl has built a virtual world around this retro-futuristic vision, dubbed “A Future City from the Past”, populated with extreme forms of concrete idealism. His “super-brutalist” metropolis extrapolates the revolutionary aesthetic of this harsh material, seen for a time as representing social progress and democratic ideals in architectural form.

Through 3D modeling (exhibited as black-and-white 2D images), this series presents something that could have been seen as utopian but inevitably, with Brutalism in hindsight, feels oppressive and dystopian. His renditions are meant to look like products of a past time, capturing Modernist-worthy views of these giant-sized Brutalist creations.

“All buildings and structures are homogenic,” says the artist. “The differentiations of architectural styles and eras are eliminated and replaced by geometric structures, repetition and absolute materiality.”

“Ballard’s novel paints a dark dystopian picture — the architecture of a single residential tower becomes the driving force for mysterious changes of the tenants behaviour. Can the presence of a high-rise structure truly create such a threatening atmosphere and social tension, culminating in murder, decay, destruction and even anarchy?”

Individually, various structures recall Modernist greats as well, like a towering residential complex arrayed on piloti (columns) as envisioned and realized by Le Corbusier. But, like Corbu’s masonry towers for his idyllic cities, the results do not look particularly livable. Perhaps the portrayal is also a little unfair — after all, Corbu at least envisioned these things surrounded by green landscapes.

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

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These Brutalist Sand Castles Might Be Cooler Than the Real Thing

28 Mar

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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Brutalist architecture is often criticized for seeming cold, impersonal and out of human scale, but the same can’t be said for these structures when they’re miniaturized and ephemeral, destroyed in seconds by the sea. In fact, when they’re crafted out of sand on a beach, outside their usual context, we can appreciate the beauty of their geometry more than ever. Calvin Siebert’s modernist sand castles might just be better than the real thing.

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While staying on Rockaway Beach in Queens during the summer, the professional sculptor and self-described ‘box builder’ crafts amazingly complex architectural structures that remain in place just long enough to photograph them, inevitably washing away. You might say that nature is… brutal.

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While it’s not hard to imagine seeing some of these designs in the hills of Los Angeles, using sand as a medium enables Siebert to get more creative than the average architect in envisioning fantasy structures that could translate to concrete.

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He doesn’t start with sketches, plans or even anything particular in mind, preferring to work intuitively, allowing the forms to take shape. He’s been creating these temporary works of art for the past six years, and has thousands of photos documenting them on his Flickr.

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“Building ‘sandcastles’ is a bit of a test,” he says. “Nature will always be against you and time is always running out. Having to think fast and bring it all together in the end is what I like about it… once I begin building and forms take shape I can start to see where things are going and either follow that road or attempt to contradict it with something unexpected.”

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“In my mind they are always mash-ups of influences and ideas. I see a castle, a fishing village, a modernist sculpture, a stage set for the oscars all at once. When they are successful they don’t feel contained or finished. They become organic machines that might grow and expand. I am always adding just one more bit and if time allowed I wouldn’t stop.”

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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Brutal East: New Scale Models of Brutalist Architecture Made of Paper

28 Feb

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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Hold the most iconic and imposing of Eastern Europe’s Brutalist architecture in the palm of your hand with this new set of paper miniatures by Zupagrafika. The design studio presents ‘Brutal East,’ a kit of seven cut-outs you assemble yourself into tiny towers from Belgrade, Kaliningrad, Prague, St. Petersburg, Wroclaw and more. ‘Build Your Own Brutalist Eastern Bloc,’ the packaging reads, an enticing statement if any architecture nerd ever heard one.

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“From the functionalist panelák estates to the otherworldly concrete grand designs, the charm of the former Eastern Bloc architecture is certainly brutal,” say the designers. “’Brutal East’ by Zupagrafika is a kit of illustrated paper cut-out models celebrating post-war architecture of Central and Eastern Europe that allows you to playfully explore and reconstruct some of the most controversial edificies erected behidn the Iron Curtain.”

“Contains 7 Brutalist buildings to assemble, from omnipresent pre-cast housing estates to mighty Post-Soviet landmarks awaiting renovation or threatened by demolition.”

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The kit is appealingly packaged and beautifully detailed, each building bearing its tiny satellite TV dishes, stains, graffiti and weathering. It’s a neat way to hold on to divisive architecture that may soon be lost to history. While many people think these structures are ugly and depressing, they’re undeniably memorable.

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‘Brutal East’ is just the latest kit of paper Brutalist models from Zupagrafika; the design studio previously released a set of Modernist Architectural Matryoshka it calls ‘Blokoshka’ as well as sets from London, Paris, Katowice and Warsaw. They also offer tiny paper models of Polish street icons like advertising columns, ticket validators and 1980s cars. All kits are available in the studio’s online shop.

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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Architecture of Surveillance: NSA Spy Outpost in Brutalist NYC Building

09 Dec

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

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Like some ancient megalith, an imposing windowless structure in Manhattan may be even more sinister than it appears. The AT&T Long Lines Building at 33 Thomas Street was built for machines, designed to house long-distance phone lines in the 1970s, but reports now suggest it has been used by the National Security Agency as a listening post in the heart of America’s financial capital. Welcome to the home of Project X, both a supposed name of the place (also known as Titanpointe) and title of a short film about it by Henrik Moltke and Laura Poitras.

Aside from its everyday functions, the 29-story, bunker-like building was constructed to house over 1,000 people in a nuclear attack (with its own food, water and generators) — what better place, really, to conceal government agents for indefinite periods of time? The building is located toward the southern tip of Manhattan, just a few blocks from the World Trade Center site. Its proximity to offices and meeting places of the United Nations, International Monetary Fund and World Bank also make it an ideal location from which to spy on such organizations.

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According to reports, NSA and FBI employees and contractors working in the building were given tips on how to avoid standing out when entering and exiting the structure. They were told what clothes to wear and cars to rent to remain inconspicuous.

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Edward Snowden was a major source for the associated links now bringing this all to light. Apparently, there is no direct evidence that government agencies used the actual AT&T equipment on site — it may have just been an ideal staging space for their own technologies and operations. There is, however, a major “gateway switch” on site (routing international calls) which has led some to suspect there may be more to the story. So far, of course, the NSA has declined to comment.

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“This is yet more proof that our communications service providers have become, whether willingly or unwillingly, an arm of the surveillance state,” says Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the liberty and national security program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “The NSA is presumably operating under authorities that enable it to target foreigners, but the fact that it is so deeply embedded in our domestic communications infrastructure should tip people off that the effects of this kind of surveillance cannot be neatly limited to non-Americans.”

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

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Brutalist Reality: Tower Blocks Can Be Dystopia For Real-Life Residents

20 Sep

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

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Architecture enthusiasts might love the cold, harsh lines of Brutalist buildings, but for the people who actually live in the iconic London tower blocks and other modernist complexes for low-income residents, they can be – well – brutal. News that the tower blocks of Thamesmead in the city’s southeast quadrant are due for a pricey facelift drew a backlash from many Brutalist admirers, but it’s important to face the fact that these estates are far from the utopias they were promoted to be back in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

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For many of us, the stark, institutional qualities of Brutalist architecture are part of the appeal. It’s where it gets its name, after all. But the same endless planes of uninterrupted concrete, stilted proportions and labyrinthine layouts that make for a visually interesting museum, monument or even a luxury residence for a well-to-do enthusiast don’t necessarily translate well to low-income apartments. In these environments – as exploited in the recent film High-Rise starring Tom Hiddleston – the gloom of the architecture itself can become oppressive, especially when it’s not properly cared-for.

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In a recent editorial at The Guardian, Rhiannon Lucy Cosslet notes that the dream of modern “concrete utopias” for working-class people broke down quickly once people were actually living in complexes like the Alexandra Road Estate, the Barbican, Trellick Tower and Balfron Tower.

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“The lifts broke down, the stairwells were awash in urine, there was poor lighting and scant green or communal space. A visitor to the Holly Street estate in east London, quoted by Dominic Sandbrook in State of Emergency, wrote of ‘dark passages, blind alleys, gloomy staircases,’ corridors that were a ‘thieve’s highway’ and people who would ‘stick to the lit areas and walk hurriedly.’ No kind of paradise, in other words, and hardly embodying the social progressivism claimed by postwar city planners.”

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But even beyond these issues, which could arguably be ascribed to just about any poorly managed low-income housing, are the sci-fi aesthetics when rendered all too real by daily life within. French photographer Laurent Kronental spent four years capturing the ‘grand ensembles’ housing projects in Paris, which are largely occupied by elderly residents, finding a fascinating juxtaposition of that crumbling modernist utopia and its marginalized occupants (top five images). “There is an unsettling paradox of life and void,” he says.

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Could a middle ground be found with better planning, or converting some of the structures to new uses? It seems possible, but so far developers have been brutal (sorry) in flushing out existing residents to transform structures like Trellick Tower and Balfron Tower to posh residences for higher-income buyers. Both are set to become luxury housing developments, thereby eliminating the egalitarian intentions of their creators, rather than making them more livable for a broader swath of the population.

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

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Using Bullet Holes in Beirut’s Brutalist ‘Egg’ as Camera Obscuras

26 Feb

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

An abandoned concrete building in the heart of Beirut, Lebanon (known as The Egg) has been everything from a movie theater to a bomb shelter to a water tank, but this intervention would fill the gaps in its bullet-ridden shell with a series of lenses, reflecting images of the city into its cavernous void.

After a series of unsuccessful attempts to repurpose or restore the structure, photographer Anthony Saroufim came up with this idea to give it a powerful temporary purpose, in part to tell the harrowing history of this war-torn city.

Scaffolding on the exterior would allow visitors to approach, walk up and around the egg, with circulation routes designed around gaps in the facade as well as civic features and landmarks to be reflected from outside.

The Egg was commissioned 1965 and designed by the Lebanese architect Joseph Philippe Karam, but was intended to be part of a larger downtown tower complex: the Beirut City Center. It was to be surrounded with a mixed-use program malls and office spaces, a small piece of a large puzzle. Indeed, now known variously as The Egg or The Dome, the structure was never officially given a proper name independent of the larger development.

When civil war broke out a decade later, the plans were put on hold and many of the structures in the complex outside The Egg were destroyed in the conflict, partially or entirely. In the decades that followed, the structure was reused in a variety of ways, but always remained a large and monolithic work, much grander in scale relative to its surroundings than it was ever meant to be.

The camera obscura project proposed by Saroufim would involve inserting custom lenses all around the structure in the voids left from wartime impacts. In turn, these would project city scenes from surrounding architecture into the giant empty interior volume.

Local residents are conflicted about the role The Egg should play in the next phase of the areas urban development, debating the merits of destroying or restoring it, leaving it to loom large or letting taller structures grow up around it as was the original plan. For now, this project would give the Brutalist building some meaning in relationship to its historical context, bridging its storied past, unused present and uncertain future.

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

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Brutalist Wonders or Blunders? Architecture by Marcel Breuer

05 Jan

[ By Steph in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

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A master of Modernism whose architectural legacy includes a range of monumental concrete structures around the world, Marcel Breuer remains divisive among Brutalism’s admirers and detractors decades after his death. From the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York to the vaguely dystopian IBM headquarters in Paris, Breuer’s work is alternately described as majestic and depressing; cold and clinical to some, and peacefully minimalist to others. Regardless of how you feel about concrete architecture in general and Brutalism in particular, Breuer’s buildings are emblematic of this architectural style. Here are 14 of his most notable creations, as preserved by Syracuse University’s Marcel Breuer Digital Archive.

St. John’s Abbey, Minnesota

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After completing a series of modernist residential projects in the 1930s and ‘40s, Breuer moved on to work on a far more ambitious and awe-inspiring scale, starting with the stunning St. John’s Abbey and University in Minnesota. The cast-in-place concrete wonder features a towering bell banner shielding the church’s honeycombed facade. Breuer also designed a number of buildings on the St. John’s University campus, including a dormitory hall (bottom photo.)

Whitney Art Museum, New York City

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One critic of Breuer’s 1966 building on the genteel Upper East Side of Manhattan called it “one of the most aggressive, arrogant buildings in New York.” An inverted ziggurat, the structure is undeniably bold. The Hungarian-born, Bauhaus-trained architect “believed that modern architecture needed to reintroduce monumentality and symbolism, age-old characteristics that had been disregarded by modernists earlier in the 20th century.”

UNESCO Headquarters, Paris

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As far as surviving Brutalist structures go, the UNESCO headquarters are nothing short of spectacular. Completed in 1958, the Y-shaped administrative building features a sculptural canopy and spiraling fire escape stairs that reach all the way to the roof. The whole building stands on 72 concrete piles.

The Lost El Parador Ariston, Argentina

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Among Breuer’s classics is the Ariston Hotel in Argentina, a curving clover-shaped building that has been abandoned and left to deteriorate despite its status as one of Argentina’s modern architectural landmarks. Architecture faculty and students at the University of Buenos Aires are currently flighting to preserve and restore it.

The Pirelli Tire Building, New Haven, Connecticut

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Originally built as the headquarters for Armstrong Rubber, what’s now known as the Pirelli Tire Building in New Haven, Connecticut stands out as one of America’s foremost surviving Brutalist structures. Testing of the tires on the ground floor research and development facility would be noisy, so Breuer elevated the administrative spaces. The result is imposing and authoritative; it’s easy to imagine it standing in as the headquarters of a villainous corporation or classified government agency in a movie.

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Brutalist Wonders Or Blunders Architecture By Marcel Breuer

[ By Steph in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

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Concrete Wonders: 13 Brutalist Buildings in the USA & Britain

26 Oct

[ By Steph in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

brutalism US brunel 2

While the most theatrical Brutalist buildings remain in the former USSR, there are plenty more of these controversial concrete complexes around the world, and they draw both admiration and ire in Britain and the United States. While Prince Charles of Wales likes to call them ‘monstrous carbuncles,’ and sloppy Brutalist blunders certainly exist, many modernist concrete structures built between the 1950s and ‘80s are striking in their minimalism and solidity.

Geisel Library, San Diego, California

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The Geisel Library at the University of California, San Diego (named for the author best known as Dr. Seuss) was made of reinforced concrete to save money, which enabled a more sculptural design. The 8-story structure by William Pereira has two subterranean levels and was “deliberately designed to be subordinated to the strong, geometrical form of the existing library” on the campus.

Tricorn Center, Portsmouth, England

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This weird building called the Tricorn Center was a retail, nightclub and parking garage complex completed in the mid-1960s and so named because it resembles a tricorn hat from above. It was voted the third ugliest building in the UK in the ‘80s, and demolished in 2004. Charles, Prince of Wales famously called it “a mildewed lump of elephant droppings.”

Barbican Estate, London, England

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This residential complex built in the ‘60s and ’70s stands right in the financial district of London, one of the few examples of British brutalist architecture that’s still mostly intact. There are three tower blocks and 13 terrace blocks positioned around a lake and green squares; the towers are each 404 feet tall.

Brunel University, London, England

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Built in the ‘60s and designed by Richard Sheppard, Robson & Partners, the Brunel University Lecture Center was one of two ‘high Brutalist’ structures prominently featured in Stanley Kubrick’s film A Clockwork Orange.

Brownfield Estate, East London

Balfron Tower at the Brownfield Estate, an area of social housing in East London, is often considered the sister building of Trellick Tower. Designed by Erno Goldfinger in 1963, it contains 146 residences and features a separate elevator shaft with skybridge connections on every third floor.

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Concrete Wonders 13 Brutalist Buildings In The Usa Britain

[ By Steph in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

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Brutalist but Beautiful: 12 Spacey Sci-Fi Soviet Structures

20 Oct

[ By Steph in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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The single most divisive architectural movement, Brutalism is harsh, jagged and geometric, calling to mind massive concrete spaceships – and nobody did it better (or stranger) than the Soviets. Some people say that these stark structures, which were most popular in communist countries, are too cold to be beautiful, but they often manage to be both sculptural and unapologetically utilitarian at once.

Abandoned Circus, Chisinau, Moldova

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(images: abandoned journey)

This incredible abandoned circus in Moldova’s capital city remains surprisingly intact inside, decades after a revolution and political upheaval destroyed the small nation’s economy and rendered such structures unusable. Hank Snaffler of Abandoned Journey traveled to Chisinau and got inside, taking a striking series of photographs that give us an idea of just how magnificent the building must have been at its prime.

Palace of Ceremonies, Tbilisi, Georgia

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(images: frederic chaubin)

Crowning a hilltop in Tbilisi, Georgia, the Palace of Ceremonies could easily stand in for a mythical castle in a futuristic fantasy movie made in the 1970s. It was built as a secular wedding venue by the Soviets, and still performs that function today. The Palace of Ceremonies is one of dozens of stunning Soviet Brutalist buildings captured on film by French photographer Frédéric Chain for his book ‘CCCP: Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed.’ Chaubin began traveling throughout the former Soviet Union in 2003, ultimately photographing 90 buildings in fourteen former Soviet Republics.

Druzhba Holiday Center Hal, Yalta

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(image: frederic chaubin)

When this joint creation of the Russians and the Czechs was built in 1984 to pay tribute to space exploration, Czechoslovakia was the only nation that had sent a man to space with a Russian launcher. Rising from the ground on pillars, the circular Druzhba Holiday Center was so strange, the United States Department of Defense was worried it was some kind of functioning rocket launcher. In reality, it was just a summer camp.

Georgia Ministry of Highways, Tbilisi

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(image: frederic chaubin)

A Jenga-like stack of concrete rectangles looms rather ominously on the outskirts of Tbilisi in Georgia, bringing together Brutalism and Russian constructivism into one strange structure. The 18-story building is lifted off the ground to enable nature to proliferate below it. Built as the headquarters for the Georgian Ministry of Highways, it was abandoned for a while before being renovated by the Bank of Georgia in 2007.

Shumen Monument, Bulgaria

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(images: yomadic)

The sheer scale of the Monument to 1300 Years of Bulgaria, especially with all of the harsh lines on those statues embedded into the walls, arguably makes it one of the most impressive Soviet structures and one that will likely still stand as imposing as it looks today many centuries into the future. Towering 230 feet into the air, it’s officially the heaviest Communist monument and has been well maintained. It’s captured here by the blog Yomadic.

Het Poplakov Cafe, Ukraine

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(image: frederic chaubin)

Built in 1976, the Het Ppoplakov Cafe in Ukraine seems to hover above the surface of the water, perfectly doubled in its reflection, looking like nothing more than a flying saucer that has remained stationary and earthbound for decades.

Polytechnic Institute of Minsk, Belarus

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(image: frederic chaubin)

A series of stacked lecture theaters call to mind the decks of a cruise ship in the long and narrow Polytechnic Institute of Minsk in Belarus, built in 1983.

Monument of the Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship, Varna, Bulgaria

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(images: yomadic, bohemian blog)

The Monument of the Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship in Varna is actually a nuclear bunker and is made of over 10,000 tons of concrete and 1000 tons of armature wire. Standing atop a mass grave of soldiers lost to the Russian-Ottoman War, it was built at the end of a grand boulevard designed to run through the city for Communist parades and other celebrations, though this boulevard was never completed. The Bohemian Blog has a haunting series of images of this structure in its abandoned and vandalized state.

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Brutalist Playgrounds: Sharp Surfaces + Unforgiving Drops

16 Jun

[ By Steph in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

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The phrase ‘brutalist playground’ kind of sounds like a joke, emphasizing the great potential for injury that would seem inherent to a sharp, harsh play structure where kids are encouraged to roughhouse. But the very same rawness, heavy materials and stark shapes seen in the architecture that was built in this style after World War II was extended to quite a few playgrounds. Today, there are all sorts of laws about kids’ safety that would nix these designs before they were ever built, but as we all know, the ’70s were a different time.

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The actual Brutalist playgrounds were demolished long ago, but a new installation at RIBA in collaboration with artist Simon Terrill and architecture firm Assemble brings them back in the form of full-scale replicas. Housed within the RIBA headquarters in London, these recreations look just like the real thing.

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Being that they’re inside a museum – and meant for kids to actually play on – the replicas were made not of the original concrete, but of foam. The installation “encourages visitors to look at the materiality and visual language of now lost Brutalist landscapes in new ways through an immersive and conceptual landscape.”

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“Although the value of brutalist residential buildings today is much debated, this exhibition shifts the focus to the equally important playgrounds found at the feet of these structures, offering a renewed understanding and critique of the architects’ original designs and intentions.”

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The installation will be in place through August 2015, and the photographs of the originals are just as fun to look at. Like all Brutalist structures, they’re not exactly inviting. Says Terrill of the Churchill Gardens playground in Pimlico, London (pictured top in 1978,) “Before these postwar playgrounds were built, children would have been playing in the bomb sites left after the war. It’s possible the architects were referencing that in their design.”

Posts Tagged ‘Brutalist’

Want More? Click for Great Related Content on WebUrbanist:

Brutalist but Beautiful: 12 Spacey Sci-Fi Soviet Structures

Concrete Wonders: 13 Brutalist Buildings in the USA & Britain

Brutalist Playgrounds: Sharp Surfaces + Unforgiving Drops

St. John’s Abbey, Minnesota

Whitney Art Museum, New York City

UNESCO Headquarters, Paris

The Lost El Parador Ariston, Argentina

The Pirelli Tire Building, New Haven, Connecticut

Next Page – Click Below to Read More: Brutalist Wonders Or Blunders Architecture By Marcel Breuer

Want More? Click for Great Related Content on WebUrbanist:

Concrete Wonders: 13 Brutalist Buildings in the USA & Britain

Cruelty of Concrete: Harsh Architecture in Berlin & Beyond

Brutalist Playgrounds: Sharp Surfaces + Unforgiving Drops

Geisel Library, San Diego, California

Tricorn Center, Portsmouth, England

Barbican Estate, London, England

Brunel University, London, England

Brownfield Estate, East London

Next Page – Click Below to Read More: Concrete Wonders 13 Brutalist Buildings In The Usa Britain

Want More? Click for Great Related Content on WebUrbanist:

Brutalist Playgrounds: Sharp Surfaces + Unforgiving Drops

Brutal London: Paper Miniatures of Concrete Architecture

Brutalist but Beautiful: 12 Spacey Sci-Fi Soviet Structures

Abandoned Circus, Chisinau, Moldova

(images: abandoned journey)

Palace of Ceremonies, Tbilisi, Georgia

(images: frederic chaubin)

Druzhba Holiday Center Hal, Yalta

(image: frederic chaubin)

Georgia Ministry of Highways, Tbilisi

(image: frederic chaubin)

Shumen Monument, Bulgaria

(images: yomadic)

Het Poplakov Cafe, Ukraine

(image: frederic chaubin)

Polytechnic Institute of Minsk, Belarus

(image: frederic chaubin)

Monument of the Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship, Varna, Bulgaria

(images: yomadic, bohemian blog)

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Brutalist Wonders Or Blunders Architecture By Marcel Breuer

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Concrete Wonders 13 Brutalist Buildings In The Usa Britain