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Brutal Architecture

Brutalist Beauty or 10 Floors of Basement?

On
by Deane

AIA Now

Robert C. Weaver Federal Building (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development)

The architectural significance of the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) cannot be overstated. Designed by Marcel Breuer and his associate Herbert Beckhard along with the firm Nolen-Swinburne, the 1.3 million-square-foot office building was completed in 1968—the same year Breuer won the AIA Gold Medal—and was the first government building completed under the U.S. General Services Administration’s Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture.

The 10-story building rests on tapered, board-formed pilotis that comprise a ground-level Brutalist colonnade, establishing it as the anchor of Washington, D.C.’s Southwest Washington, Urban Renewal Area. Rededicated as the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building in 2000 to honor HUD’s first secretary, the building is remarkable for its expressive modular deployment of precast concrete—another first for a government structure—as both structure and finish material throughout its curvilinear, elongated X-shaped volume. Upon its opening, The New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable praised the building for its “contemporary monumentality,” noting that it was a “Federal demonstration project for better government architecture.”

Civil servants housed in the HUD building, however, told a different story. HUD’s ninth secretary, Jack Kemp, is said to have described the headquarters as “10 floors of basement.” Dim lobby and general lighting made wayfinding difficult amongst the long hallways of similar-looking offices. Mid-’90s landscaping additions made by Martha Schwartz to enliven the main façade and provide outdoor seating via circular concrete planters and plastic shading devices met with mixed reviews.

In recent years, complaints about indoor air quality led HUD to undertake a modernization that earned the building LEED Silver certification in November 2016. In 2008, the building was added to both the DC Inventory of Historic Sites and the National Register of Historic Places, earning landmark status for its pioneering materiality in a government context as well as for its enduring and exceptional formal qualities.

Read the original story via AIArchitect at Architect Magazine. 

On Brutalism

On
by Deane

FBI_Hoover_cropped

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: