Brutalism
Culture
8 rabbit holes · 5 people exploring
Common starting questions
- Why do Soviet apartment blocks all look identical?
Rabbit holes
- brutalism isn't named after being brutal
From béton brut, 'raw concrete', Le Corbusier's phrase. Banham's 'New Brutalism' essay popularized it. The name has done the style no favors.
Kate Lindqvist · 6 sources
- Geisel Library looks like it's from the future
Named after Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss). Pereira's buildings all look like 1960s sci-fi set design. Also did the Transamerica Pyramid.
Anya Petrova · 4 sources
- Habitat 67 was supposed to be the prototype for cheap housing
Prefab concrete boxes stacked so every unit gets a garden on someone else's roof. It was meant to make housing cheap. It ended up as sought-after (not cheap) condos instead.
Yuki Tanabe · 4 sources
- Boston City Hall: the most hated (and defended) building in Boston
Matteo Rossi · 4 sources
- Preston bus station almost got demolished
Designed so 80 buses can park nose-in, with those curved concrete parking-deck edges. The council wanted to tear it down; it got listed instead and restored.
Kate Lindqvist · 3 sources
- Ian Fleming named a Bond villain after a brutalist architect
Fleming supposedly disliked Goldfinger's modernist houses in Hampstead. Goldfinger was not amused. Trellick Tower went from 'tower of terror' to listed building with expensive flats.
Jess Wong · 5 sources
- why every ex-Soviet city has the same apartment blocks
Kate Lindqvist · 6 sources
- the Barbican took 20+ years to build and it shows (positively)
Went for a concert, got lost for 40 minutes (everyone does, there are yellow lines on the floor to help), went home and read about it until 2am.
Anya Petrova · 6 sources