Brutalist Buildings in Your Region

[photoLith]

You know, I guess Ive really never paid attention to that building while walking around downtown. Ive been to many plays in it and the inside is very beautiful, nothing like that shit outside. But I guess I just didnt pay much attention to the exterior, its quite terrible. Glad Brutalism went out of style.

[burlveneer]

Originally Posted by deja vu

Brutalism interests me greatly as a way of building because of its sculptural and geometric properties . They remind me of massive urban playgorunds made of concrete....

It is precisely that "playground" quality that so attracts me to brutalism. I find it unfortunate that brutalism is so reviled, but I can understand some of the reasons for it. In the UK, where the sky is so often gray, buildings of the same dreary color will probably not garner much affection. The sculptural and geometric properties of brutalist architecture were a celebration of the plasticity of concrete, but in many cases concrete technology was not yet mature enough to create lasting buildings. Then there was the social engineering aspect of many brutalist projects; can low-cost housing ever be beautiful after being used for its intended purpose for any amount of time? Complicating the matter is the emphasis on surface texture; a rough surface is explicit in the French "béton brut" (raw concrete) from which the term "brutalism" is derived. For me the surface texture is secondary to the imaginative arrangement of forms that the better brutalist architects came up with, and I am glad to see so many good examples in this thread (such as the UCSD library-- that's amazing!).

I took a day trip to Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, to see Paul Rudolph's Dana Arts Center building:



It was pretty cool, but Rudolph took the "raw" concept to an extreme with essentially corrugated concrete panels. The interior of the building was a dark warren of passages with a central staircase around a light well. The railings overlooking the well were quite low and probably not to today's code; dark passages and stairways to restrooms are certainly not in line with today's accessibility and safety standards. (I've seen Rudolph's restrooms referred to as "rapestrooms" elsewhere.) I learned from a friend who used to work in this building that the budget for the building construction was reduced after the design had been settled on; so to reduce construction costs, all the building dimensions were reduced by 10%. If the story is not apocryphal, that would explain the cramped interior. As a concrete playground the buidling is a lot of fun; as a functional building it is not so successful.

[Bedhead]

Great first post burlveneer!

Lots of interesting points there. It does seem strange that so many modernist buildings made compromises with the quality of the interior space when structures were being built - considering that was supposed to be at the heart of modernist thinking.

An example of that from the UK is the controversial Robin Hood Gardens, designed by Alison and Peter Smithson. It is now scheduled for demolition, despite a campaign to save it that included support from Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.


http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=3113115
BD Online

One of the things that doomed the project was corner-cutting in the final design. As English Heritage put it:

Firstly, as housing it has serious shortcomings and did have from the start. This judgement isn’t based on its present condition, but on the original design. The Smithsons were forced to amend their designs for structural reasons late in the day, and the resulting compromise is really apparent.

You can see this in the indefensibly narrow, twisting stairwells. There are far too few of them and their tightness is uncomfortable and quite threatening. They have never provided adequate access to those long decks and people’s front doors.

It is true that Britain's tupperware skies don't do concrete buildings any favours. Mind you, there are a lot of other materials used in the UK, including traditional Portland Stone, that hardly do a better job:


http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserR...n_England.html
Trip Advisor, notshy

And contemporary efforts to introduce colour don't always inspire:


my pic

[Nowhereman1280]

^^^ Here in Chicago the Modernists were able to work with our grey skies just fine. Most of the Modern buildings here are solid tones and very bold. The color that seems to work best in a cloudy city is black since it slices right through the clouds on an overcast day and still stands out as a dark outline on a sunny day.

I don't see concrete as looking that bad in overcast areas either. If anything, the rich textures of concrete can actually be made to emphasize what little shadowing and light is available on a cloudy day. That is all in the skill of the architect.

Chicago has very weird lighting most of the year that makes poorly detailed buildings look horrible. Despite that there are many examples of concrete construction that work extremely well in such picky light.

[Bedhead]

Brick, too, is great at holding a deep colour in dim light (no accident that it is really popular in London and Chicago), which must be one reason why some architects used it, whilst keeping the sculptural, monumental approach that is typical of brutalism.

British Library, London:


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ary_london.jpg
Jack 1956 Wiki

Cambridge History Faculty:


http://www.flickr.com/photos/70697819@N00/283829997
joseph beuys hat, flickr

[Nowhereman1280]

^^^ Oh definitely, I really like several of the brick examples of Brutalism.

Here is another Chicago area Brutalist palace:

Crown Center at Northwestern University


northwestern.edu


flickr.com


northwestern.edu


northwestern.edu


HUGE PICTURE: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...own_Center.jpg

[Bedhead]

Cool clock tower!

[Anders Franzén]

Source: Holger Ellgaard, Wikipedia (Link to resized image: http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filarkaden_2009c.jpg. Isn't there any way to resize images in the forum?)

The Parkaden, parking house in downtown Stockholm. The innovative ornaments telling wich floor you're on.

[Busy Bee]

Milner Library at my alma mater—Illinois State University, Normal, IL

Mackey and Murphy, 1968

[burlveneer]

I was glad to see I.M. Pei's East Wing of the National Art Gallery on this thread; while its stone cladding might disqualify it from the brutalist canon, the forms and interior spaces are similar to those in more imaginative brutalist buildings. Pei also designed some unquestionably brutalist buidlings, and I have visited three of them. Here are some pictures I took of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado in June 2009. (This complex was featured as "the city" in Woody Allen's Sleeper.) Pink stones were added to the concrete aggregate to give it color.











The visit had me considering a career change to atmospheric research just so I could work in this fantastic building, with an amazing view of the Front Range of the Rockies on one side and the entire Colorado plain on the other.

[burlveneer]

Here's one more, of the whole complex:

[Dan Denson]

Originally Posted by photolitherland

You know, I guess Ive really never paid attention to that building while walking around downtown. Ive been to many plays in it and the inside is very beautiful, nothing like that shit outside. But I guess I just didnt pay much attention to the exterior, its quite terrible. Glad Brutalism went out of style.

I didn't think it was so bad when it was new. But it's been there forever, it seems, and it needs a good cleaning.

[Prahaboheme]

Orlando Central Library:

[Bedhead]

Originally Posted by burlveneer

Pink stones were added to the concrete aggregate to give it color.

What a great idea - seems to be a much more permanent solution than paint. I wonder why it wasn't done more often.

Anders - that's a fascinating parking garage - and a great excuse to bring decoration back in under the guise of fulfilling a function. It reminds me a bit of the screens you see in Islamic architecture.

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

That shape, with the shorter, upper floor overhanging the taller, first floor seems to be a recurrent shape, especially in American brutalist buildings. Functionally, I guess it offers an area close to the building shelter from the sun and rain, and aesthetically, balancing a wider floor on top of a narrower one gives some poise and lightness.

In the UK, I'm more used to the opposite, pyramid/ziggurat shape, which is a bit more heavy - not as successful IMO.


http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=3063936building.co.uk Tower Hotel, London

[drawarc]

Not a building, but a park incorporating brutalism in Ottawa:

From blogsite: http://urbsite.blogspot.com/search/label/Brutalism (includes more pics and historical info)







http://urbsite.blogspot.com/search/label/Brutalism

[Cirrus]

The NCAR building in Boulder is definitely one of the best brutalist buildings around. The coloring helps a ton, and its context alone atop a mesa with spiky mountains as a backdrop works artistically in a way urban buildings just don't. I hate to admit it, but I kind of like it.

Boulder's other famous brutalist building is the engineering center at the University of Colorado:






source

CU's campus architectural plan has required the use of those red flagstones for decades. The result is a cohesive and distinctive campus aesthetic that is widely regarded as one of America's most beautiful. It doesn't translate well to brutalism.

... I wouldn't bother bringing it up, but in the background of that middle picture you can see Boulder's third most famous example of brutalism. Those yellowish high rises in the distance are part of Williams Village, an off-campus cluster of dorms for the university.

Since they're off campus they aren't beholden to the flagstone requirement. They are the tallest buildings in Boulder, and along with one other residential highrise built about the same time are responsible for Boulder's strict 45-foot height limit. Their ugliness was such that Boulder residents rose up and demanded the city never again be so sullied.

I lived in this complex for one semester. The large windows on the top floor are a study hall. On particularly windy days (of which Boulder has many) you could literally feel the building sway from up there.


source


source

[Mr. Ozo]

Sacramento County Courthouse (1965)

[tuesdaythefifth]

[tuesdaythefifth]

[nequidnimis]

Charles de Gaulle airport:



Photo courtesy Wikipedia commons

It was recently renovated:



Picture copyright LeMoniteur. More pictures available at:

http://www.lemoniteur.fr/157-realisa...ux?3185=602493