DEEP: Brutalist Architecture Explained
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- čas přidán 16. 06. 2017
- We talk to Steve Hodsgon, Brutalism Fan and founder of the @Brutal_Architecture account on Instagram about this form of architecture that has become equally loved and hated around the world. Check out his instagram here: / brutal_architecture
All feedback/suggestions please email: peter@deepchannel.tv or follow me on twitter @petercassidy_ - Krátké a kreslené filmy
I've always been drawn to brutalist architecture, had no idea what it was until recently, now I'm fascinated
The Barbican is a super place. London can be a very disorganized higgledy-piggledy hodgepodge ... and when I used to live there as a Canadian, I used to look for the prominent landmarks like the Barbican et al as way finding / orientation.
Just don't go *into* the place if you want to find your way about.
High Point is actually being saved, it will be converted to flats
I’ve just recently become interested in this architecture, quite suddenly, after years of not liking it at all. This video is a great little tour. Thank you for posting 👍
Brutalism architecture may be loved or hated but Ii is possible to find beauty in this art although some designs may seem cold and lifeless. Great video, I liked it and subscribed to the channel.
If done well and not frequently, there’s definitely the potential to be liked
Brutalist architecture is absolutely fascinating. The intricate shapes many of these buildings have is wonderful. I can definitely say that there are brutalist structures that are an absolute eyesore though. There is a brutalist building near me that I find to be quite welcoming; bare concrete is contrasted with more earthy tones or slightly different materials for its details, and there is lots of natural light as well. The place feels lived in, with the structure emphasising the lives of the people interacting with it rather than doing the opposite. This comes back to the idea of "honesty" as well, reflecting how the building is used. Perhaps this is why I find the human elements like stairwells, balconies and walkways to be the most attractive part of many of these buildings--they invite usage in their stark forms while other elements take a back seat. So in my view, communicating usability is an important part of a good brutalist building.
it just looks interesting, not beautiful.
@@apustajachileno That's not really it. Brutalist buildings can and often do look very interesting, and as you say that doesn't make them beautiful. But they can also be beautiful. And it tends to be the brutalist buildings that make _less_ of a bold architectural statement that are more beautiful, in my experience.
You need to make a compromise at some point between uility and vision. and the best brutalist buildings were designed with utility in mind--that is not just the way the building is laid out, but also that it feels nice to work or live in.
So many are being demolished it gets rarer every year to experience one in person.
there is a good reason for this. may all these examples be consigned to the dustbin of history and remembered no more
Great commentary and fantastic brutalist gems. Thank you! D.A., J.D., NYC (we have some cool Brutalism here, even!)
Perhaps because i was born in 67 and grew up in brutalism I find this style comforting. Thx! I enjoyed the video.
The new Courthouse here in Limerick, Ireland, completed in 2018, has some Brutalist elements to it, in my opinion. It even incorporates old arches and facades from the sites previous structures. Its quite impressive to say the least.
A great exploration of the style
I made a lot of nightmares when I was in this type of building
That one building was exciting. 😀
I took history of architecture at Uni and the professor absolutely loved hammered concrete on brutalist buildings.
I just bought a condo in a high-rise built in the Brutalist style.
After years of living in a "slick" 1950's MCM building I have grown a little bored with the style.
I'm looking forward to the dramatic/ominous design features of Brutalisam. My new place has concrete walls mixed with the floor to ceiling glass. I'm selling my Eames & Saarinen furniture & searching the web for Milo Baughman pieces.
I'm really having a blast designing the interior & learning more about this hauntingly beautiful asthenic.
18:14 - This lycee looks like it should've been part of the sets for "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari". In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the architect actually mimicked the way that film looks, intentionally.
Love this vid! Love IM Pei's Boston City Hall! Go Pats!
University of Canterbury (NZ) has a library that's totally brutalistic. A bit similar to 20:30 building at Leeds Uni. It even has the staining.
I live in Honolulu and our climate is never grey or cold, so our Brutalist buildings don't add to wintertime gloom as can happen elsewhere. You nearly always see them against a blue sky.
Venezuela, and specifically Caracas is a never ending source of Brutalism architecture. Just check the Teresa Carreño Theatre or the twin towers of the complex Parque Central.
I think brutalism is beautiful
Love the content. Ive always loved this style, probably because of the local Braille institute in Los Angeles that I have always liked as a child.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles
i get it, it was the braille institute because the blind could not see that abhorrent pile of concrete
That building in Bradford looks awesome! I like the nuclear look. It looks tuff and futuristic. If I was super rich I would have something similar to live in 🙌
Welbeck Street CP now tragically demolished (2021). A real loss to the fabric of our city.
tragic? you mean the beautiful building that was razed in order to build an effing carpark a CARPARK!!>?!? the fabric of London has been repeatedly tarnished destroyed and brutalised since the 1960s by twats with architecture degrees. god help us perhaps all this shite will be demolished and replaced with their beautiful predecessors
4:38 It's Habitat 67 in Montréal, Québec, Canada on avenue Pierre-Dupuis. It was conceived by a Canadian-Israelite 23 years old McGill Archirecture graduate Moshe Safdie.However the 5000 dwelling was never complete the project us an incredible vision of the usage of precontained Beton block and space appropriation this village in height give the habitant incredible view on the city of Montréal and the majestuous Saint-Lawrence River. An house life in magnificient building however it ain't cheap to live in Habitat 67 . average flat is 2 M$ Canadian. A team of Computer modelist with the oriignal plan of Moshe Safdie was able to create Moshe Safdie virtual vision with the Unreal 3D engine.
I live near the University of East anglia, its a great example of brutalist architecture
Trellick Tower is as 'out of place' in its setting as is High Point in Bradford. In other words, 'out of place' doesn't really mean anything in this context ;)
11:56 This was my favourite one
Is there a missing term for architecture like Expressionist Modern? I think that Saarinen, Rudolph, and many others might fall into more bold and organic forms of modernism.
The best examples are amazing , the mass produced housing estates not so
I love the fact that you either love or hate Brutalism.
its more like you get it or you dont.
@@JJ-ls6el
And when you get it, you hate it even more.
@@Ninjaananas I get it and I love it even more.
Check out the "Vision 80" residence in Courbevoie, France. Beautiful building, built following most of the Le Corbusier principles. I live there right now 😄
Also, check the "UTEC university" and the "Lugar de la Memoria" in Lima. They don't have climate issues over there, and have close to no urbanism restrictions.
My bad, you put the UTEC in the end 😅 but check all the sides of this building, definitly a piece of brutalist art.
Why not show more than one side of the Leeds Univ bldg?
19:00 Can I just add: those crappy high contrast HDR photos are the worst thing that has ever happened to architecture.
brutalist architecture helped make my childhood more depressing
never understood this, brutalism was always the shit that filled me with inspiration and joy - whereas this new plastic/glass-chique shit looks like someone vomited mcdonalds kids meal toy designs all over cityscapes
@@basedmod2139 Squarish concrete block formations fill you with joy?
@@homersimpin664 yeah, many of these buildings in my city are like concrete jungles with lil nooks and crannies, endless canvas for dope ass grafitti, concrete walls where rain drips off the overgrowth & vines, beautiful contrast to the blue sky of the summer. A lot of these buildings too have crazy extreme angles and shit, it's awesome.
@@homersimpin664 so what's your argument then exactly? or do you not have one?
@@basedmod2139 To me, what you just described is a dystopian nightmare. It sounds like something straight out of "All Summer In A Day."
Though I'm a fan of Brutalism, the impression of some of these buildings being 'inhuman' is not a new one; nor of course were all of them (like the Barbican, like Habitat) 'for the people'. As David Hoffman in 1975 said when visiting it:
"the Barbican typified a wider uncaring and absolute power over our environment. Its great weight, the unassailable concreteness of it, the way that it resembled a walled city with whole areas locked and gated against outsiders - all these came together to say “you are no part of this”.[...]"
"It was the very opposite of welcoming, reeking of wealth, only navigable by those who knew the secrets of its confusing mazes and owned the right keys"
Now in the Barbican this may be a good thing for the residents - being in a confusing mazey castle means it's safe, quiet, private; but it's not difficult to imagine how this may be (and turned out to be) a little different when the same effect was caused in social housing estates
Brutalism is beautiful is its simplicity, transparency and functionality. You could say it's a style for the people. At times the structures do look bleak and unemotional, but like the presenter said, if you look into what and why they were built, these structures are filled with life, either from the lives inside them or the lives that they represent(ed).
BUT, if one did want to see these come to life visually, adding color to the various surfaces would make these so striking and bold in a modern world seeking a lighter tone. I do not support this in every case. But it could be interesting. Think Brazilian favelas.
Awesome vid. Thanks!
It was a hideous fad based on a deep misunderstanding of human beings.
favelas are infinitely more humane and lively than these ominous and soul-crushing shits.
I love the old Brutulist buildings. Their fun to draw and paint.
try living in one, not so fun🤣
I thought this style was a reaction to the hippies of the late 60's and early 70's. It's personality is diametrically opposed to what a hippy is.
Interesting. I work near the city building in Manchester. I never considered it ugly. Now Albert bridge House in Manchester... That is one fugly building.
I must be sick in the head, but I actually love the Bradford High Point. I find the contrast with the older buildings somewhat interesting and not so dissimilar. They both showcase the unpainted, bare material and use it to create visual interest by manipulating light and shadow via texture and geometry (for example, the mild rustication of the older buildings parallels the Brutalist fluted concrete). Also, the thin horizontal channels that mark each level of High Point sort of reflect the string courses of the surrounding Victorians.
Anyway, I know that the overarching argument against these buildings is "well, you wouldn't want to live/work in them, yeah?", but I have to disagree. There's no accounting for taste, I guess haha.
I agree 100%. Looks awesome!
It’s fine to be pretentious when you’re specialised in an art form. But architecture is for everyone. Make it beautiful for everyone.
It's so important not to categorize architecture into boxes or labels. Each building should be judged not it's style but what it achieves. There are so many "brutalist" buildings that are exciting and beautiful and functional.
Hmm. Not really very fond of the last choices. They all live up to the Brutalist label but too much perhaps to appreciate. I think these buildings should always be judged from a distance and in context to understand how they participate in their neighborhood.
Manchester? .... I thought the planners had a go at the Georgian Terraces because the Luftwaffe had missed them?
It's the unité d'habitation de Berlin, not Marseille on the photos.
Interesting? Stunning? You would have to be a fan.
Brutalist architecture could look really beautiful, could blend into a landscape, could enhance a city, if it was done right. Problem is, 90% of the time, it is not done right. The other thing is brutalist architecture would look much better with my past points in mind, if it would stay bright white, but it turns colors too quickly after construction and looks like shit in a year or two.
90% of the time? Bruh what kind of exaggerated nonsense is this!? Brutalism is like any other architectural style, it has both good and bad designs depending on the architect, country, and time period since brutalism evolved substantially from simple prefab boxes with windows.
@@Bionickpunk that nullifies my point how?
So basically, brutalism is the architectural equivalent of Cosmic Horror : you might love it, but you don't want it to actually happen to you.
In short, no. Absolutely no comparison at all. What a terribly simplistic take away.
@@smallstudiodesign Let's put it in another way: brutalism is aimed at people who looks at a nice, green, cozy town and think: "you know what would REALLY improve this place? An huge, grey, soulless cube of raw concrete built by the lowest bidder".
“...the first above ground basement.”
@@smallstudiodesign
Brutalism is disgusting.
@@francescosirotti8178
Maybe that's why some people call brutalism architectural psychopathy.
I would not think too much of the demand for flats in Trellick tower and other brutalist buildings in London. Trellick tower is only about a mile from London Paddington station, which is almost about as central as you can get. Given that the "Network effect" is causing main cities all over the world to overheat economically while smaller cities and towns are more likely to be in decline, I suggest that Trellick tower's location is the reason why it is still considered useful, more so than an endorsement of its architectural style.
Of course.
crime against humanity
Different if you had to live there...
And that's the key problem. The people who have to see it day to day suffer from it.
Lived in them and they are far better than modern tripe. It also helps that there is a lot of green space around these constructions, less depressing than crammed city areas with no nature and ton of noise pollution
*Brutalist architecture is B A C K ! Bangkok-Johnnie CarSanook Media THAILAND*
I couldn't find it on the internet,, could you please give me the link for the company's website or the building location?
They’re so depressing looking and that’s why I absolutely love this type of architecture.
I guess some ppl like feeling depressed
@@j.montcliff377 well when you’re depressed depressing things are comforting
@@bladeeshotgf5500 when I'm depressed, depressing things make me even more depressed
@@nikitamalkov6160 that sounds like a personal problem
@@bladeeshotgf5500 I agree
I see no problem with minimalism, but not everything should be minimalist. As for brutalism, I absolutely love it when it's in a fictional dystopian authoritarian or totalitarian society as art. Seriously, these buildings give you a feeling of total power and absolute oppression. They have a very negative energy to them. In my very opinion, this architecture only fits well on prisons and any military infrastructures. Imagine schools with this architecture...
I generally believe that brutalism is not a good thing since mental health is very important for all of us human beings. Poor mental health forms unwanted byproducts in our society. For example, mass shooters. In order to prevent as much poor mental health, I believe that brutalism should also be reduced. We better leave the historic ones alone. They are history. Let's not build more of them.
I do think that some brutalism can look really bad and is poorly done when done. but you get some great things like the paul rudolph burroughs wellcome building, I think it uses the strengths of brutalism and looks nice.
lol i studied in a brutalist building. sometimes u feel like ur in the future but also sometimes it looks absolutely depressing, especially during cold grey weather
Anything that’s needs a description to be beautiful is not beautiful.
This is the views of the middle class that didn't have to live in these hideous buildings. They were horrible to live in and normally smelt weird . The main reason I worked hard in my twenties was so I could buy a house so I didn't have to live in one of these buildings.They were horrible, depressing places that were for the poor, common and unfortunate who I can guarantee never looked at these buildings fondly. Middle-class are the only people who can see beauty in them.
Surely you realise that a good proportion of housing shown in this video are built for and inhabited by the middle/upper-class?
@@haltendehand1 yes, because the upper-middle class are dumb fucks who want to get the communist flavor of the "style"
so basically you don't have taste? that's ok, it's not for you
me and my homies all fuck with brutalism heavy but i guess there's always that one weirdo who wants to live in isolated boujee upscale condos with the life sucked out of them
@Colin Higgins Many places in Italy were truly raped by brutalist architecture, especially State buildings, but not only. When I enter this kind of places my heart accelerates because of anxiety. All around you is grey and when you must be every day in places like this you always ask yourself why all this f*g concrete?? So, I know what you mean..😅
I work in a brutalist building and it is brutally miserable. Those of you flattering yourselves that you appreciate the style of these buildings have lost touch with what they do to the people who live and work in them. The dreary grey spaces make its occupants feel like lab rats waiting for their next injection. The building I have to go to everyday looks like a small mountain of garbage dumpters piled one upon the other. The interior spaces are cold and morose---like being enclosed on all sides by a dirty sidewalk---and the attempts to brighten the dull walls only makes the stark inhumanity of the surroundings more ominous and oppressive. Perhaps the most devasting thing I can say is that people just do not respect these structures---they feel readymade and throw-away. Everything is diminished and sucked dry of significance in the presence of these brutalist forms. They are temples of nihilism and self-abnegation---anti-shrines of the unsacred. Every morning I approach the entryway I find myself imagining people throwing themselves from the rooftop.
Might be time to look for a different job lol
@@ajax54 you got that right! the building and the job are actually a neat fit.
How about Gobekle Tape whose T-shaped columns are brutal, but I regard Brutalism as gentrified Speer Fascist with a touch of survivalist bomb shelters underground brought to the surface.
Being into this aesthetic, to me, is a manifestation of suffering from the Stockholm syndrome.
Agreed.
Hard disagree. Brutalism forever!
The Barbican looks terrible but the planning of it is fine.
I 🟥 Brutalism!
Ok I just can't listen to this.
Its a shame, the conversation isnt uninteresting but the format is just so dull.
Architectural depression
brutalist architecture has always been done incorrectly, which is why people hated them.
This is probably the worst branch of modern architecture. Bare concrete becomes disgusting after a few years, just dirty and decaying appearance. I love modern architecture, but brutalism is horrible.
The reason it becomes disgusting is a lot of people in power also don’t like these concrete structures therefore don’t preserve them as they do for other styles of architecture. Compare City Hall in Boston to the Christian Science building. Which one has been preserved and shown love? The Christian Science building. City hall is neglected and it’s a shame because it doesn’t help the structure. Why give someone you hate love? The only reason they keep up with the Christian Science building is it was fully followed through in terms of design and also it brings Boston a lot of business therefore $$ and we all know government loves financial gain.
Beyond horrible.
I appreciate good brutalist buildings as more like human built cliffs or outcroppings of rock. Just like I don’t expect a granite boulder or mountain side to be clean, I don’t expect a concrete building to be “clean”. With that said, when the style is done poorly, it can go really wrong.
No, the worst was Contemporary International style with glass buildings with no distinguishing characteristics and blandness. At least with brutalism you can play around with the concrete designs and sensibilities of how to arrange the constructions.
These buildings are hideous and something only an engineer could appreciate. Definitely soul destroying settings for the inescapable dystopia.
While I think there are some really brutalist buildings some like the paul rudolph burroughs wellcome building look nice.
no life in these buildings.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life
@grafvonstauffenburg what?
no life in u
@@basedmod2139 brutalism is cringe and blue-pilled
Brutalist buidings are never "exciting"
Yes, they are. A bright, modern future awaits, free of the suffering the natural world brings. We have now risen above it.
@@jakekaywell5972 haaa
The architecture of trauma and dissociation. What could be better for us?
Brutalism is when cubism meets architecture where architecture meets socialism.