A Few Thoughts on Brutalism

Whether I’m teaching architectural history here in Wyoming, or in the summer when I travel to Europe with students, it’s becoming more and more important to help them understand Brutalism. Why is Brutalism of interest right now? A few reasons. Many buildings of that type are reaching 50 years old and therefore they are potentially historic. Many are threatened due to the need for major maintenance. And, these buildings are aesthetically challenging. Is it fair to say that people generally hate Brutalist buildings?

As a historian, here are a few points on Brutalism that I think are important.

1) For starters, the term Brutalism is derived from the French beton brut, meaning “raw concrete.” The name of the style celebrates its materiality.

2) Brutalism is an extension of modernism. Although the classic International-Style modernism of the 1920s was concerned with lightness and transparency, and Brutalism was not, these are the consistencies: regular, expressed structure; an ‘honesty’ in the use of materials; the free plan; and of course the absence of applied ornament.  

3) Brutalism, it seems to me, is principally about the expression of permanence. If Le Corbusier's use of breton brut at the Unite D’Habitation is accepted as the genesis of the style, then it was born immediately after World War II. Its appeal in London then corresponds to the fact that London was bombed. In the US its appeal was probably more strongly aligned with the Cold War and the fear of nuclear attack. In short, Brutalism expresses the record of 20th century history.  

4) Brutalism was accompanied by its twin, the high-tech architecture of the space age. In art history, this is the famous Flintstones-Jetsons dichotomy; a time when art looked to the prehistoric past and the simulated future. The Brutalists are the Flintstones and Richard Rogers (at the Pompidou and Lloyd's) is the Jetsons. In times of great anxiety, people tend to want to escape to another time.

5) In the US, Brutalism was also used as tool of institutional authority.  For example, some college campuses built after 1968 were designed to deter student protests. Storke Plaza at UC-Santa Barbara (1969) is an excellent example in my opinion. In cases like Boston City Hall, the placement and scale of the building in an open monotlithic hardscape puts its citizen-subjects in a vulnerable position of surveillance and control.

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London is surely the best city to study Brutalism. Here is the classic Brutalist itinerary for London:

• Royal National Theatre, Denys Lasdun (1967–76), shown above

• Barbican Estate, Chamberlin, Powell & Bon (1965-76)

• St. Giles Hotel, Ellworth Sykes (1977)

• University of London buildings, Denys Lasdun (1970s)

• The Economist Building, Alison and Peter Smithson (1959–65)

• Robin Hood Gardens, Alison and Peter Smithson (1966-72) --- demolition pending

• United States Embassy, Eero Saarinen (1955-60)

See also: A Perfect Map For Exploring London's Brutalist Buildings

In America, these are the canonical Brutalist buildings in my opinion:

• Boston City Hall, Kallmann McKinnell & Knowles (1962-68), shown above
  note: fans of this building must watch Scorsese’s The Departed, shown below

• Buildings at Saint John’s University, Marcel Breuer (1955-75)

• Yale Art and Architecture Building, Paul Rudolph (1958-63)

• Salk Institute, Louis Kahn (1960-63)

• Wurster Hall at UC-Berkeley, Vernon DeMars, Donald Olsen, and Joseph Esherick (1958-64)

• Robarts Library, Mathers & Haldenby Architects (1968-73)

The "flawed texture" of history

In 1965, James Marston Fitch surveyed the architectural literature from 1929‒39, and concluded:

“The period seems to me a pregnant one, a very rich and stimulating one, despite the fact that, if you look closely at its actual accomplishments, they may seem pathetic in their scarcity, their small scale, their inability to go beyond the schematic and the hypothetical. (But many great periods of history reveal the same flawed texture when examined closely: reading the daily accounts of the Civil War, you would never guess that the Union would win and the nation be preserved.)”*

This is a remarkable passage for a couple of reasons. First, the phrase “pathetic scarcity” leaps off the page. Although architectural historians who focus on the 20th century (like me) surely agree that architecture suffered in the 30s due to the Great Depression, I would not depict it this way. Think of Frank Lloyd Wright's activities in that decade—Fallingwater, Taliesin West, Johnson Wax. Moreover, from my own studies, Gregory Ain produced some of his finest work in the 30s, the passive solar house was developed by Fred Keck, and the canonical Lake County Tuberculosis Sanatorium was built in this period as well. (Apart from an offhand reference to Broadacre City, Fitch did not discuss Wright, Ain, Keck, or Pereira, and this is only to mention a few of the achievements he seemingly overlooked.) I think we've developed a richer view of the 30s since Fitch’s time.

His reference to the “inability to go beyond the schematic and the hypothetical” seems to have been directed at Buckminster Fuller and Frederick Kiesler. They were discussed in some detail in the article.

More importantly, I find this notion of “flawed texture” to be immensely thought-provoking and useful. As architectural historians we typically build larger stories out of small pieces of evidence, like a detective. As (fictional character) Sherlock Holmes said: “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” I like to approach my work with something of this attitude.

But I think Fitch would not subscribe to the Holmes method. He suggests discrete bits of evidence, taken at face value, may point to the wrong conclusion. Historical interpretation is not quite like detective work. We know that historical distance is required. By extension, what is also required is a kind of impressionistic imagination, and perhaps—unless I am reading Fitch too liberally—a willingness to twist facts, at least a little bit.

*Fitch’s article, “The Rise of Technology: 1929-1939,” was published in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians in 1965. Fitch should be recognized as a towering figure; for a time at mid-century, he was the only architectural historian alert and sensitive to environmental issues. (I also mentioned him here.)

See also: Problems and Paradoxes of Architectural History

Help Wanted: The Solar Decathlon

The US Department of Energy has announced it doesn't want to run the Solar Decathlon anymore, and the agency is seeking an appropriate group, or more likely a consortium of groups, to take charge and administer the solar house contest.  More information is here.

The 2009 Solar Decathlon on the National Mall in Washington. Public domain.

Of interest is the fact that DOE will award $3,000,000-4,000,000 to the winning Administrator, plus the winner is required to provide a 50% cost share.  This reveals what it costs to put on the contest. 

In The Solar House I detailed some of the exciting contributions of the Decathlon, and some of the criticism.  I admire the creativity and hard work of the students.  And I admire that the contest requires student-architects and student-engineers to work together*.  I am critical of the contest for a number of reasons.  First, because the projects (one-bedroom and about 800-square feet) generally cost $2,000,000 or more; this isn't a good lesson for any student and a huge burden on the universities (see: Too Expensive: The Solar Decathlon).  Second, the requirement that the houses be transportable is basically wrong, because a solar house with any kind of passive aspirations needs to be heavy, with lots of thermal mass.  And here on the blog I've complained that holding the contest in the mild climate of Southern California in October isn't very challenging.  See: The Solar Decathlon: Back to Irvine. 

What does it mean that the DOE doesn't want to run the Solar Decathlon anymore?  It certainly could mean the beginning of an exciting new era.  It will be interesting to see who will be willing to commit such a large amount of resources to take on this job.  Hopefully some group (USGBC?) will step forward with a bunch of bold new ideas to reinvent the contest and reinvigorate the solar house movement.  I have some suggestions for the future of the contest:

• Set reasonable spending limits based on Norwich University's: "The Most Affordable Solar Decathlon House. Ever." (pdf)
• Build a permanent neighborhood each time, and donate the houses to real people in need. Alternatively, schools could build a permanent home in their home location.
• Hold the contest in challenging weather conditions (maybe Minneapolis in November as I mentioned in the link above) in order to emphasize passive solar heating and superinsulation.
• Measure the homes' energy use with real occupants.  Ask the students to address user behavior, which is a huge difference-maker in home energy use.
• Measure carbon footprint, including embodied energy.
• Promote multi-family housing rather than detached homes.

These are bigger ideas, and most of them are not workable within the DOE's solicitation, which specifies that future Decathlons occur, like the previous ones, at a common park-like location, with 20 temporary freestanding houses.  Still, I offer these ideas with the hope that others may be thinking about how to breathe new life into the Decathlon by transforming it.

I fear, however, that the DOE announcement simply means that the Solar Decathlon has jumped the shark.  Suppose a for-profit industry group wins the contract administer the contest.  Earlier I asked why so many top universities want to participate in such a naked promotional effort for the PV industry, and why students are willing to donate their labor to such an effort.  In this scenario, you might argue that the true character of the endeavor would be more clearly revealed.  They could hire the students as PV salespeople.

A quick rough estimate says that the overall cost of the Decathlon is somewhere between $40-50 million, including the costs to the schools.  Since the purpose is to promote the residential use of PV, one must ask: what would be the highest and best use of that amount of money?  For instance, at a rough estimate of $30,000 per installation, $40 million could give solar to 1333 families in their existing homes.  What kind of publicity and education could that produce?

*In 2006 I was told that my own school, the University of Wyoming, couldn't compete in the Solar Decathlon because we do not have architecture students, only engineering, and therefore we would not have an interdisciplinary design team.  Though I wanted my students to compete, I accepted that decision because the rationale was noble.

Too Expensive: The Solar Decathlon

Competing in the Solar Decathlon is now so expensive that Yale University can't afford it. Yale has withdrawn from the 2015 competition, just weeks away, citing problems with fundraising. The total budget for a Solar Decathlon house often exceeds $2 million.* I included a discussion of Decathlon, and the cost issues, in The Solar House.

Of course Yale can afford it; the school's endowment is $23.9 billion (link). Apparently the decision-makers at Yale don't think the Solar Decathlon is a worthy use of that money. I can imagine those conversations, and I can imagine that it's a reasonable decision. In any case, this is certainly a black eye for the Decathlon.

Design for the Yale Solar House (2015) which will apparently remain unbuilt. Public domain.

The 2015 Solar Decathlon occurs October 8-18 at the Orange County Great Park, in Irvine, California. 16 other teams will compete.

As of now, the Yale team's website is still active.

*Counterpoint: Norwich University built "The Most Affordable Solar Decathlon House. Ever." (pdf)

See also:
#SD2015
The Solar Decathlon: Back to Irvine
The “Shading Decathlon”?

Preservation Today: The Big Question

Like most architectural historians, I am a big supporter of the preservation of historic buildings.  I understand the history of preservation, and how the loss of important buildings like Penn Station forged a grass-roots social movement which properly fights against top-down planning and backroom redevelopment deals.

However, there is a growing concern that attitudes (and rules) about preservation may become too strong in the future and crowd out the possibility for new heritage to be created.  In Europe, there is now a discourse about "museumification," which is concerned with cities becoming frozen in time due to preservation restrictions.

Consider Vienna in the 19th century as an example which might shed some light on these issues.  When Vienna developed the famous Ringstrasse in the 1850s-80s, it immediately became a great modern city, "on a par with Paris," as Mark Girouard describes in his classic book Cities and People (1985).

Vienna's Rigstrasse in 1900.  Public Domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

To create the Ringstrasse, Vienna destroyed its medieval city walls, ramparts, and gates.  In other words, in order to modernize and to achieve the high design quality that makes the city so special, Vienna needed to demolish a very important piece of its heritage.  To some extent, Vienna imitated Paris, where Haussmann removed many of the city's medieval neighborhoods.

Could a project like the Ringstrasse be accomplished today?  Probably not.  If it were proposed today, there would be organized protest.  There would be multiple levels of public review and regulatory controls, probably culminating in legal action and years of delay awaiting court proceedings.  In all likelihood, the wall would become a museum of medieval history, or a museum of Vienna's history.  (To be fair, there are some some examples of large-scale urban renewal occurring.  I think of London, in the Docklands, and New York in Atlantic Yards.  Industrial areas seem to evade the scrutiny of preservationists, perhaps because these histories are not quite important enough, or perhaps the overriding value is to clean up pollution.)

Of course we should not wantonly discard historic buildings, structures, or landscapes.  But we should acknowledge and debate the fact that we have evolved a set of attitudes and policies that make it practically impossible to engage in grandiose developments that might make a city great all-at-once, as happened in Vienna in the 19th century. 

Your thoughts?  Please comment!