Modernism has largely shaped todays built environment. The buildings inhabited, the furniture used, the surrounding graphic design, has all been influenced by the aesthetics and the ideology of Modernist design. The Modernists believed in technology as the key means to achieve social improvement and in the machine as a symbol of that aspiration. They fostered a utopian desire to create a better world. These principles were frequently combined with social and largely left-leaning political beliefs which held that design and art could, and should, transform society. The central image of the new architecture was not that of the single building, but that of the Utopian town plan.
Philip Johnson, who along with Henry Russell Hitchcock, gave the …show more content…
It introduced the world to raw concrete - béton brut - with its texture defined by the wooden planks shaping it when it was poured. This inadvertent prototype for the New Brutalism to follow came from necessity: not only was there insufficient steel in post-war France for a steel construction, but there was insufficient skilled labor for consistent, precise construction. Le Corbusier made a virtue of this necessity:
'...I have decided to make beauty by contrast. I will find its complement and establish a play between crudity and finesse, between the dull and the intense, between precision and accident. I will make people think and reflect, this is the reason for the violent, clamorous, triumphant polychromy of the facades.'
A materialistic implementation aimed at characterizing the conditional state of life after the war – rough, worn, unforgiving. It is this typology, which provided an answer to the Post-War housing shortage, and was further adapted around the world in countless housing projects, not least in Britain. …show more content…
Today, we use the term Brutalism to refer to both a particular moment in post-war British architecture – given the epithet New Brutalism by the critic Reyner Banham – and the broader phenomenon during the 1960s and 1970s of an almost sculptural Modernism rendered in raw concrete, which had manifestations the world over.
Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation was easily the most important influence on the New Brutalism, both in terms of aesthetics and social programme. Although the Unité still reflected the utopian aspirations of pre-war Modernism then under attack, Brutalists like English architects Alison and Peter Smithson saw its form and aesthetic as reflective of the spirit of the present moment and providing a way forward for a broader regeneration of Modern architecture.
The rough-cast concrete, béton brut which Le Corbusier used in Unité d’habitation, encouraged the Smithsons and other young architects to dispense with smooth surfaces and finishes, and to use other materials such as wood and metal in their raw form. To associate their Brutalism with the brut of Le Corbusier was to give it an impeccable modernist
Philip Johnson, who along with Henry Russell Hitchcock, gave the …show more content…
It introduced the world to raw concrete - béton brut - with its texture defined by the wooden planks shaping it when it was poured. This inadvertent prototype for the New Brutalism to follow came from necessity: not only was there insufficient steel in post-war France for a steel construction, but there was insufficient skilled labor for consistent, precise construction. Le Corbusier made a virtue of this necessity:
'...I have decided to make beauty by contrast. I will find its complement and establish a play between crudity and finesse, between the dull and the intense, between precision and accident. I will make people think and reflect, this is the reason for the violent, clamorous, triumphant polychromy of the facades.'
A materialistic implementation aimed at characterizing the conditional state of life after the war – rough, worn, unforgiving. It is this typology, which provided an answer to the Post-War housing shortage, and was further adapted around the world in countless housing projects, not least in Britain. …show more content…
Today, we use the term Brutalism to refer to both a particular moment in post-war British architecture – given the epithet New Brutalism by the critic Reyner Banham – and the broader phenomenon during the 1960s and 1970s of an almost sculptural Modernism rendered in raw concrete, which had manifestations the world over.
Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation was easily the most important influence on the New Brutalism, both in terms of aesthetics and social programme. Although the Unité still reflected the utopian aspirations of pre-war Modernism then under attack, Brutalists like English architects Alison and Peter Smithson saw its form and aesthetic as reflective of the spirit of the present moment and providing a way forward for a broader regeneration of Modern architecture.
The rough-cast concrete, béton brut which Le Corbusier used in Unité d’habitation, encouraged the Smithsons and other young architects to dispense with smooth surfaces and finishes, and to use other materials such as wood and metal in their raw form. To associate their Brutalism with the brut of Le Corbusier was to give it an impeccable modernist