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- Title
CONCRETE ABSTRACTION: ON A CRITICAL THEORY OF (NEW) BRUTALISM.
- Authors
RUDOLPH, MATTHIAS; LELLE, NIKOLAS
- Abstract
Between German hip hop tracks celebrating concrete, step-by-step instructions in DIY art magazines for creating your own concrete egg cups, and electronic music labels that employ Brutalist aesthetics, concrete recently has seen an upsurge in (pop) cultural attention. On the other hand, there is the old post-modern cliché that takes buildings made of concrete as ugly and unwelcoming examples of post-WWII urban planning. In this paper we want to develop a third perspective, one that neither understands concrete as the newest en vogue material, nor rejects it and the Brutalist buildings made from it solely on the grounds of an unpleasant first impression. The sensual awkwardness of Brutalist buildings and the rejection of them is the starting point for our alternative reading of Brutalist architecture. This reading understands concrete buildings as reminders that there is something fundamentally wrong with society. It takes New Brutalism as the architectural answer to the catastrophes of the 20th century. Following Hegel one has to say "philosophy must beware of wishing to be edifying," a statement that is all the more true for (post-Shoah) architecture. In this paper we illustrate our arguments through description and analysis of the former headquarters of the German Federal Railway. We focus on two specific elements of Brutalist architecture which we call structural expressionism and irreconcilability: the transparency of materials and structures on the one hand, and a specific relation to society on the other, following and adding to Reyner Banham's distinction of aesthetical and ethical aspects in the discussion of Brutalism.
- Subjects
BRUTALISM (Architecture); ARCHITECTURAL aesthetics; 20TH century architecture; URBAN planning; CRITICAL theory
- Publication
Dialectic, 2016, Vol 4, p59
- ISSN
2333-5440
- Publication type
Article