Should we consider Brutalism as an ethic or an aesthetic?

As stated in the introduction to your question that was exactly what Reyner Banham himself was asking in the book “The New Brutalism”. His book was written 11 year after the article of the same title that introduced the -ism within architectural culture, in the pages of the Architectural Review, December 1955. In his essay, Banham concludes in a very personal note that acknowledges his direct involvement in the debate and titled in fact “Memoirs of a survivor”, that yes the Brutalists were making a moral point.
In 2012, the reflection should understand whether the strength of the moral position of almost 60 years ago is still reverberating through the few remaining buildings, or if instead that ethical urge evaporated, leaving us with the remnants of intentions that can only be recognized today as a style. Aging does not seem to play well with ethics and moral, as these are very circumstantial to specific moments in history. So probably today we cannot not consider Brutalism just as an historical style as the Colonial Baroque or the American Neo-Classicism. But as we are still able to identify the political position underlying the architecture by Thomas Jefferson, and as we consider that some of the values that he tried to incarnate in his design are still valid today, we should be realizing the same effort in going back to the sources of the Brutalist architects, distilling what of their discourse could still be operative today. Their ethics lies more in writings, ideas, debates, and intellectual positions rather than in the built matter. And perhaps preserving their buildings is not the fundamental effort that should be undertaken. In the end architecture should gracefully learn how to disappear sometimes.

Tuesday, October 23 at 4:47pm

Surely most approaches to architecture that start from an oppositional stance are, in their infancy, more about attitude (ethic) than aesthetics. And if a rebellious movement involves attractive, articulate firebrands challenging a once-comfortable establishment at a time of shifting political power, that initial ethic will hold appeal to a broader constituency than any aesthetic might.

In a cruel irony, Reyner Banham’s premature effort to pin Brutalism down likely pushed it’s original ethic into a sham and a style, one too easily imitated. Brutalism’s widely heralded birth involved art movements intertwined across the Atlantic, articles in major professional journals, and a relatively simple set of identifying attributes, eventually summed up in a beautifully illustrated book published internationally (with text that assumed comfort in at least three romance languages). Established power structures were being tested and Brutalism caught the eye of poseurs: bureaucracies wanting to suggest their sympathies with the ordinary man, or art galleries and architecture schools who recognized that cheap concrete construction could seem cutting-edge.

Brutalism became Modernism’s mock “hair shirt” style, penance for the misuse of power only a little earlier.

But it is that original insurrectionary ethic that beguiles, rather than many of Brutalism’s badly treated buildings. Stand us in front of a broad, uninterrupted brick wall and we will likely find little to love. Tell us the story of rugged morality in the Modern Age and any with a heart will swoon. The stories remain embedded in those masonry slabs, encrusted with age. Perhaps our greater task is how, again, to tease them out for others.

Wednesday, October 24 at 11:25am

I think it depends what brand of Brutalism we’re talking about. In Britain and in Europe, the austerity of Brutalism was seen as an appropriate response to a very real post-war challenge: reconstruction. Concrete – especially of the precast variety – was an economically viable and aesthetically acceptable approach to rehousing displaced populations and returning veterans. An ethic.

Across the Atlantic (where the term Brutalism was almost always used with derision), material austerity presented an aesthetic alternative to sleek corporate modernism. Its monumentality carried none of the connotations and pretense of the Classicism used for North American public buildings up until the 1940s, but its weightiness made it apropos. And concrete’s versatility enabled a formal experimentation not seen in the Miesian glass box. An aesthetic.

But of course it’s much more complicated that this. The categories no doubt overlap and coexist in ways we might not be able to appreciate so many years later.

In Adrian Forty’s excellent book “Concrete and Culture” (London: Reaktion Books, 2012) he points out how much our view of concrete has changed since the 1960s. Our eyes have been conditioned by the contemporary use of the material – as a stark but sensuous “material for material’s sake” – whereas mid-century architects saw it as a neutral medium, one that would permit clear reading of expressive architectural form. We should bear this distance in mind in our judgments as well.

Friday, October 26 at 1:29am

To play devil’s advocate, it’s very difficult to argue that Brutalism is more of an ethic than an aesthetic. Perhaps the aforementioned austerity became an excuse for the aesthetic. At the time, there were certainly lighter and cheaper material options, which would have been more austere. Concrete, inseparable from the Brutalist style, was chosen as an aesthetic. It’s Le Corbusier even stripped of white paint. Our guest editor for CLOG : BRUTALISM, Michael Abrahamson, uses tumblr as his tool to define Brutalism – a series of images. So the aesthetic is important, and it’s easier to define the term Brutalism through images than words. Ethics doesn’t factor into it.

Today, we are seeing a large battle between aesthetics and preservationists. There isn’t much more to it than that. The general public thinks that these buildings are “ugly.” Architects tend to like these buildings, even love them, because they are “ugly,” but in a good way. It’s an aesthetic stance. There are few ethical arguments which would support tearing down large concrete buildings. Certainly sustainability is not one. But Brutalism’s largest downfall (besides its aesthetic in the public eye) is its inflexibility. These large buildings typically have low floor to floor heights, poor insulation, plenty of asbestos, and are very costly to upgrade to current standards. The inflexibility of many Brutalist buildings has led to their poor functionality by today’s standards, giving more ammunition to wrecking balls. Perhaps we need to be flexible in how we are using these buildings, instead of trying to modify them to become buildings of today.

Thursday, November 1 at 10:38am

Preservation cannot be for the aesthetically pleasing only, because our architectural history would be stripped bare and left with dispassionate and boring structures. In answering the ethic verse aesthetic debate, one has to ask if Brutalism has been significant to the contribution of our current cultural identity.It might be a stretch to answer yes, but they are without a doubt important markers in our architectural history.

Thursday, November 1 at 12:01pm

What is austerity today? Certainly not the same austerity of the post-world war conditions that led to Brutalism. Today we build cheaply, not austere. If you want to talk about ethics, maybe this is where the conversation should be focused. What’s the difference between cheap and austere? What can we learn from Brutalism today – besides aesthetics?

Friday, November 2 at 2:42pm

From my humble perspective, Brutalism is inexorably linked to a distinct aesthetic DNA. While this aesthetic can certainly be considered one born from an ethical beginning, it’s hard to deny that much of what people either love or hate about Brutalist architecture (or design, or art) has to do with appearances, no matter how deeply rooted they may be in ethics. Similarly, Brutalist buildings aren’t knocked down as a matter of ethics, insofar as I can tell — they are demolished because the average citizen or government can’t stand to see them alongside their beloved crystal castles. In their eyes, Brutalism is a form of visual pollution. As CLOG states, ethics doesn’t enter into it.

I often find myself in the minority in this matter — I love the Brutalist aesthetic, and not in the standard, ironic “because it’s ugly” sense. I truly find the Brutalist object to be one of breath-taking monumentality, unabashed sincerity, and stark, minimalist beauty. There is something incredibly alluring about the way Brutalism describes power, weight and space in visual terms. It is an honesty that is sorely lacking in much of our modern architecture; and in my eyes, it’s a tragedy that future generations may only be able to observe this sort of honesty in the built environment via archived Internet discussions and mouldered old textbooks.

Saturday, November 3 at 8:35am