A Brief, Wondrous History of Brutalism (FTAO: Beton Brut)

God, The Economist being housed in a Brutalist building was so damn appropriate.
 
Beton Brut said:
Some sad news...

It was my good fortune to shake the man's hand at an exhibition of his drawings at the Wentworth Institute a few years ago.
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Aw, that's too bad. Hopefully City Hall and the The Boston Five Bank won't be going anywhere soon, so we'll have some concrete memorials to him that will last through every apocalypse until the end of time.

So jealous that you got to meet him. I actually saw that exhibit as well during an accepted students day. At that time I was an incoming freshman. Btw, we have been the Wentworth Institute of Technology since 1977. ;-)
 
Heroic? More like the Communist era of architecture.

I swear, it's like architects feel that the city is just a sandbox for them to sculpt their perverted wet dreams, regardless of the human cost.

Le Corbusier, in particular, is responsible for the whole tower-in-the-park disaster which was adopted for countless housing projects and other tragedies of urban renewal. The French laughed him out of Paris, so he came here and did his part to destroy the American city instead. His name deserves nothing but scorn.
 
Would 'towers in the park' have worked if they had been surrounded by real parks, rather than chopped up with parking lots?

(The residential towers at the Prudential Center seem to be successful.)
 
Not in general. They become "semi-private/semi-public" spaces which too easily become unsafe. Too many parks, not enough people to give them life.
 
Ron Newman said:
Would 'towers in the park' have worked if they had been surrounded by real parks, rather than chopped up with parking lots?
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In a utopia, where all humans have been retrained to respect each other and all life needs are taken care of by technology and no one really needs to work but can if they so choose for intellectual pursuits yes, towers in a park work.

Watch Star Trek Next Generation episodes that take place on earth or a colony (that is not being invaded/attacked). Towers in the park work awesome there. Unfortunately this isn't the 24th century.

In real life, they are a terrible disaster and a hallmark of what happens when humans are taken out of the human equation.
 
So why are the Prudential Center plazas not examples of this 'terrible disaster' ? They are the purest local example I can identify of 'towers in the park'.
 
Ron Newman said:
So why are the Prudential Center plazas not examples of this 'terrible disaster' ? They are the purest local example I can identify of 'towers in the park'.
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The Pru Plazas are surrounded by one of the most successful urban malls in the country.

The Charlesgate Apartments at Huntington/Longwood is one of the best examples of the tower in a park. It completely breaks the Huntington streetwall with a fenced off, raised, useless park and gigantic turnaround circle and 2 (TWO!) parking entries for the upper and lower deck of the garage.
 
Matthew said:
Le Corbusier, in particular, is responsible for the whole tower-in-the-park disaster which was adopted for countless housing projects and other tragedies of urban renewal. The French laughed him out of Paris, so he came here and did his part to destroy the American city instead. His name deserves nothing but scorn.
Click to expand...

Though many of Corbu's ideas became design conventions in academic circles, he only built one building in the United States. If you don't like the towers-in-a-park concept (and I'm not a fan either), there's room under the bus for Mies and Gropius as well.
 
FREAKING BEAUTIFUL!!!

THIS is how brutalism and modern architecture can co-exist and THRIVE. Be sure to look through the photos for finish photos, construction photos, plans, and sections!

Claire T. Carney Library Renovation and Addition
designLAB Architects
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth

Wrestling with Rudolph: Changing an important complex by a major (but difficult) architect poses both dangers and the chance to keep his work alive.
By Fred A. Bernstein

Claire-T-Carney-Library-Renovation-13.jpg


Claire-T-Carney-Library-Renovation-8.jpg

All of this area had once been outdoors/buried!

http://archrecord.construction.com/...y-Renovation.asp?bts=AR#.URBnq7_dMaI.facebook
 
Whoa...


whoa...

WHOA....

This is what the State Services and City Hall needs. THEY NEED LOVE!
 
On a much smaller scale, enclosing areas that had been outdoors below overhangs improved the MIT Student Center enormously.
 
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