Deane Madsen | Articles

Bernard Tschumi Architects Unveils Designs for Italian Culture Center

On January 30, 2013

by Architect Magazine: Articles by Deane Madsen, Assoc. AIA

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On Brutalism

On March 28, 2012

by Deane

Time for a look to the origins of Brutalism. Brutalism as a concept evolved, according to architectural critic and theorist Reyner Banham, from

“reference[s] to béton brut (raw concrete), which had been one of the most controversial features of Le Corbusier’s recently finished Unité block in Marseilles… and, not least, the art brut of Dubuffet.” [quoted from Reyner Banham’s Historian of the Immediate Future, p 125]

If we’re dealing with a literal French translation, the word brut translates to rough, raw, or unhewn (also, dry, in the sense of champagne). Brut comes from Middle French, so it’s a toss-up as to whether or not this preceded the Latin brutus, meaning heavy (according to Merriam-Webster) or fierce (according to dictionary.com), as both date from the mid-15th century. But thankfully this is less of an etymological discussion than one about Jean Dubuffet’s style, art brut, and Corb’s descriptions of raw concrete, béton brut, so that should help end debate.

Briefly (and according to Wikipedia), “Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut (meaning “raw art,” oftentimes referred to as ‘outsider art’) for art produced by non-professionals working outside aesthetic norms, such as art by psychiatric patients, prisoners, and children.” [quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubuffet]. Le Corbusier, for his part, constructed so many of his projects from raw concrete that a book was later written on the subject, entitled Le Corbusier: Béton Brut and Ineffable Space (1940 – 1965): Surface Materials and Psychophysiology of Vision (Essays in Architecture).

In a continuation of this examination of Brutalist origins, Banham goes on to say,

“The term was first used in public by Alison Smithson to describe a small house project of 1952 for a site in the Soho district of London. The statement which accompanied the design indicates an art brut aesthetic of materials ‘as found’: ‘It was decided to have no finishes at all internally, the building being a combination of shelter and environment. Bare bricks, concrete, and wood…’ The New Brutalist attitude to materials was to present them as fact, the effect of which might be inelegance and even ugliness.” [also quoted from Reyner Banham’s Historian of the Immediate Future, p 125]

For their part, the New Brutalists Alison and Peter Smithson said that “Brutalism tries to face up to a mass production society, and drag a rough poetry out of the confused and powerful forces which are at work” [as quoted in Reyner Banham’s Historian of the Immediate Future, p 117]

Lastly, for a more everyman-friendly read on Brutalism, we can find the following:

The Bauhaus architect Le Corbusier used the French phrase béton brut, or raw concrete, to describe the construction of his rough, concrete buildings. Brutalism grew out of the Bauhaus Movement and the béton brut buildings by Le Corbusier and his followers. Heavy and angular, Brutalist buildings can be constructed quickly and economically. Common features include:

Precast concrete slabs

Rough, unfinished surfaces

Exposed steel beams

Massive, sculptural shapes [quoted from about.com’s Picture Dictionary of Modern Architecture]

Architecture of the Hunger Games

On March 28, 2012

by Deane Madsen

When asked about inspiration for the Capitol of Panem, Hunger Games director Gary Ross said the production team looked at Brutalist architecture:

“It’s set in the future but needs its own past. So the Capitol had to have a sense of history. So we went for architecture that was massive, concrete, monumental. We took our inspiration from mid-20th century Brutalism–and as I was looking at this I realized the power is expressed through open spaces, so that was the first reference point. We looked at great seats of power, like Red Square, and went from there.” [quoted from Empire Magazine, March 2012, p 95]

Mr. Ross has his facts a little twisted, it seems. While it may be that the manner in which punishments get meted out by representatives of the Capitol is brutal, and its ruler, President Snow, encourages the Games–which are brutal enough on their own–as a reinforcement of the Capitol’s power over the other districts, still, saying that the brutal Capitol regime needs to be represented by Brutalism seems like the misguided effort of a publicist to say something seemingly knowledgable about architecture. It would, of course, be easy for the layperson to think about the Brutalist style as being in keeping with a government with brutal tendencies.

Except that 1) Brutalist architecture is not the product of brutal regimes, nor representative of them; and 2) most of the architecture in the movie is not Brutalist.

Here’s what a Hunger Games fan site posted as examples – a collage of Brutalist buildings culled from the Wikipedia entry on Brutalism:

To be fair, those are pictures of Brutalist buildings – well, I’m not so sure about the (uncaptioned) inclusion of Lou Kahn’s library at Philips Exeter Academy–so, mostly pictures of Brutalist buildings. Anyway, looking at those pictures, and remembering stills from the movie, it’s easy to feel a disconnect between the Brutalist buildings of the past and the projections on screen inspired by them.

What was presented in The Hunger Games was not that. The Capitol Terminal, for example, while massive, could hardly be considered rough or unfinished, as it was covered in a glistening white–possibly stone–with various electronic billboards. Until I get permission from Lionsgate to post images of Panem, I’ll refrain from doing so (I thought about posting some screen-captures, but upon reading their legal terms, thought better of it); in the meantime, you’ll have to take the Capitol tour on their website or see the movie to know what I’m talking about. But here’s a quick refresher on Red Square:

[from Wikimedia Commons]I guess the problem is that without showing what I mean, it’ll be hard to prove a point. But the brief panning views of the city revealed repeated boxy structures that, while ponderous, are more in line with antique stone block sets than with Brutalist buildings:

Istanbul Under Wraps

On March 19, 2012

by Deane Madsen

There’s this weird phenomenon I noticed around Istanbul, where several historic buildings are undergoing renovations, of wrapping the construction site in pictures of what the buildings look like. Or will look like. Or, since they’re being reconstructed, what they used to look like. What’s interesting, though, is that the scale of the image doesn’t always match the scale of the building, as seen here:

Also, pictured on the wrapper is a south elevation, though we’re looking at the eastern side of the building. This means that there’s also a disconnect between what’s on the wrapper and what’s behind it, not only spatially, but orientationally as well. Scale seems to be determined by the size of the scaffolding supporting the wrapper, not by any architectural standard. I guess the idea is to make people feel like they’re not missing out on what the buildings should look like, and pristine white line drawings replace the potential eyesores of construction. This resurfacing, however, is only superficial—entries for construction personel that cut into the fake façades bear no perspective line drawing, merely plywood and caution tape:

Here’s the side of that building:

And the side not yet wrapped:

I saw several examples of this type of wrapping, at Topkapi palace (above), the Archaeological Museum (below), and elsewhere around town (subsequent images):

Selçuk

On March 10, 2012

by Deane Madsen

We started in Selçuk, about an hour’s drive from Izmir, and about 2 km from Ephesus (Efes in Turkish). There we stayed in a pleasant and well-decorated hotel appropriately named Bella. Our first day in Selçuk was devoted to the ruins in Ephesus, followed by lunch, a visit to the local farmer’s market, and the Ephesus museum. Ephesus itself was gorgeous: a whole city of ruins, so that one could easily imagine a thriving metropolis whose denizens were obsessed with going to the gym. Not unlike DC, actually. The museum was somewhat lacking however, seemingly separating statues from their heads in an effort to spread the collection over maximum floor space. We spent the evening drinking tea while watching some people we had met play a tile game, obey 101, which was kind of a cross between mahjong and spades, in the sense that two teams of two used combinations of numbered tiles to form multiple sets of three, although after that the rules quickly became confusing. There was a lot of shouting in Turkish when one player either accidentally or not-so-accidentally was found to have an extra tile at the end of a game. It was confusing, but entertaining, and we’d had too much tea either to make sense of it or get a good night’s rest.

Below are my attempts at a) mapping the city and b) drawing the symbol everpresent in our hotel (I believe called a tughra):

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