Comment by diydsp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by diydsp | Hacker News Reader

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It's probably a lost cause like a lost trademark like Kleenex, crazy glue, and band aid, but since this is an intellectually-curious crowd, you might like to know that brutalism is not a 1:1 replacement of "visible concrete." It is so much more.

Even in wikipedia, the general definition is there but obscured. Despite nearly every pictorial example in wikipedia featuring exposed concrete (as well as reddit's r/brutalist), any material can be found in a brutalist design. It must merely be exposed and accepted for what it is. e.g. wood shown to be wood and allowed to warp, decay, or even grow, as opposed to being overlaid with drywall. Stones not just in a foundation or a garden, but in a living room. This honesty and connection to materials is in contrast to the "dominating" sense of "brutalism," of which cheap government buildings are often twisted up in.

Though the pictures on wikipedia are misleading, certain quotes from the page are worth reading. Specifically when brutalism is described as "an ethic, not an aesthetic".

And also: "Peter Smithson believed that the core of brutalism was a reverence for materials, expressed honestly, stating "Brutalism is not concerned with the material as such but rather the quality of material",[33] and "the seeing of materials for what they were: the woodness of the wood; the sandiness of sand."

Source: wikipedia and have lots of architect friends.

It's also worth noting that the term "brutalism" is derived from the french word "brut", meaning "raw", "unrefined", "crude" -- e.g. champagne brut.

That's very interesting, as a Frenchman I assumed it came from "brutal", like "brutalité", as the raw concrete and abundance of right angles tends to make these buildings feel, well, aggressive (to me at least).

It is a tounge-in-cheek term derived by english speakers who were well aware of the double entendre. Sometimes even architects have a sense of humour.

This is how I think of brutalism, and it makes it very hard to talk about with others. I think the word conjures dystopian images for a lot of people, which is really unfortunate. Maybe it should be abandoned in favor of a more positive-sounding term.

There's a truth though in this idea of honesty about materials that transcends a particular architectural fad, and I think brutalism ought to be an element that any design considers: can a structure be inherently beautiful without additional adornment?

I wish for more examples I could point to as brutalism that aren't just exposed concrete. The only one that springs to mind is this[0] redesign of some post-war brutalist (of the exposed concrete variety) playground equipment. It isn't a big step forward, but it's something. I also think that things allowing like good cable management to be seen is a form of brutalism. Actually, given this post's theme of "eco-brutalism", I think something like the earthship[1] might be a better example of brutalism.

[0]: https://www.assemblestudio.co.uk/projects/the-brutalist-play... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship

huh. I had no idea.

I live in a cool old concrete factory in Brooklyn that was haphazardly converted into lofts back in the nineties, and more recently purchased by developers to convert into "luxury" lofts. The conversion consists mostly of throwing a cheap wood veneer over the floors, carpeting in the hallways, newly painted drywall over various surfaces… I had never thought of the building as particularly "brutalist" before, but I lamented the covering of the worn concrete.

"If people didn't want to live in an old factory… why would they move into an old factory?" I keep asking myself.

Fortunately — believing these changes are upgrades — they haven't changed much for the residents that they didn't manage to evict, so my unit is still honest. And since it has an east-facing-window, it's even covered mostly with plants, like these photos :D

I don't think that's a complete definition of brutalism; the elements of mass and scale must be taken into account. Brutalist buildings are bigger and heavier than traditional forms of architecture and they make no attempt to hide it.

Isn't there also an aspect of non-human scale to Brutalist architecture?

Yes, exactly. There typically is.

Interesting, but wouldn't that make every brick building, like, say, on a street in the UK, "brutalist"? I suppose you could argue there's a lack of brutalist intent, but still.

If said bricks are actual construction bricks and not just decorative and that there is no attempt to hide other structural elements I guess it would count.

There is an example of a "brutalist" brick house in the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_G%C3%B6th

Not really answering your question, but in my neighborhood (not in the UK), residents push back against developers asking them to install more brick facades on new homes. In my old house, a previous owner had installed brick veneer on one of the interior walls. So that's sort of the opposite of brutalism, or maybe it's some kind of imitated brutalism.

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