RCC: A love marriage turning foul?

Samir Shukla; Laurie Baker; Amit Srivastava; Scriver, Peter

It's hard to find a more polarizing architecture-even among scholars it's most likely to be described as "ugly," "unloved," or even "hated." I'm talking about Brutalism, the blocky unfinished concrete style which used to be very common in cities around the world, but is now being demolished at an astounding rate.

Although you may rightly think that Brutalism got its name due to its "brutal"-looking exteriors, it's actually derived from the French term for béton brut, or "raw concrete." This is the material that Swiss-French architect and Brutalism originator Le Corbusier used in his genre-molding work during the 1950s. As a variant on the steel and glass of the Modernist era, these windowless bunkers with chunky facades make them feel like impenetrable, permanent sandcastles on the landscape.

And actually, Brutalism was popular in the 1960s and 70s for that very reason: The affordable, durable style could be easily implemented in places like urban plazas where architects were indeed worried about the possibility of civic unrest. (For more historical context on Brutalism, this guide is very good.)

- In late April, the city of Baltimore issued a certificate of demolition for the Morris A. Mechanic Theater, prevailing in a lengthy quest to destroy one of its most unique buildings. With a character somewhere between a stone-age helmet and a concrete cog, the nearly fifty-year-old building’s assertive structure has earned the affection of a small number of enthusiasts who embrace its almost oppressively functional style of architecture—and almost no one else. The theater, designed by the revered and often imperiled architect John Johansen, will be replaced by a condo. The story of the Mechanic has become overly familiar. Brutalism, a muscular and monumental architectural style known for its unsparing use of cast concrete, has grown old enough since its heyday in the fifties, sixties, and seventies to have aged badly, but not old enough to inspire much sympathy. The austere, domineering artifacts of its philosophies now face widespread enmity; a number of institutions, with varying degrees of exertion, have sought in recent years to replace their Brutalist inheritances with practically anything else.Of the five at-risk Brutalist buildings I wrote about being under threat two years ago, three of them are now gone, or about to be demolished. It’s been a bad year for Johansen in particular: In addition to the Morris A. Mechanic Theater, the delightful Mummers Theaterin Oklahoma City faces imminent destruction, as soon as the proper certificate emerges from the city’s administrative process. The destruction of Bertrand Goldberg’s Prentice Women’s Hospital in Chicago began last fall, after such helpful developments as a Rahm Emanual Chicago Tribune op-ed hailing its replacement as progress. The Third Church of Christ Scientist, a Brutalist church in Washington, D.C., was demolished in March. Five of the buildings in Paul Rudolph’s Shoreline Apartments in Buffalo, New York, are due to be razed.As John Grindrod wrote in the introduction to Concretopia: A Journey Around the Rebuilding of Postwar Britain:There is an accepted narrative to the way we think about our postwar architectural legacy. That narrative is somewhat akin to the plot of a superhero blockbuster: a team of supervillains—planners, architects, academics—have had their corrupt, megalomaniac way with the country for 30 years. Then, at long last, a band of unlikely heroes—a ragbag of poets, environmentalists, and good, honest citizens—rise up against this architectural Goliath and topple it in the name of Prince Charles.”This is, unfortunately, exactly how large numbers of critics conceive of Brutalism today. Those who wish to preserve examples of the the style aren’t simply fighting against indifference, they’re combating avowed foes—antagonists who would gladly take a turn at the wrecking ball—who view sympathy for the style as willful contrarianism of the “Bach or Before, Ives or After” variety, not just divorced from reasonable taste but purposefully set at odds with it.

But unlike midcentury modernism, which has experienced a resounding cultural resurgence, Brutalism has not seen the same swelling of enthusiasm-or maybe it was never really embraced at all. One issue is that these buildings are not conventionally thought of as "beautiful," like a frilly Victorian or Beaux Arts building might be. There's the unfortunate fact that concrete became the material more commonly used for freeways and flood channels. But the problem is also technological: Over time it has been revealed that Brutalism is problematic because unfinished concrete requires exceptional maintenance to help it age well, aesthetically. Many concrete buildings suffer leaks and stains on the exteriors that are not easy to remove.

Anthony Paletta has been chronicling Brutalism's disappearance over at The Awl. By last year three of the five structures he featured in a 2012 piece were already gone, including the Stage Theater in Oklahoma City and the Morris A. Mechanic Theater in Baltimore. Just since I started collecting examples to write this story, the Prentiss Women's Hospital was demolished in Chicago in February.

The most substantial misfortune for Brutalist structures, though, is that they’re so frequently associated with urban decay. The United States doesn’t have nearly as substantial a residential stock of Brutalist buildings as in Europe, but what it does have—plenty of government, educational, and institutional structures—almost universally suffer from a lack of maintenance. The imagery of rundown Brutalist structures—like The Mechanic Theater and Mummers, each abandoned for a decade—is even worse in Europe, where they’re often identified with vast legacies of lower-income residential construction from the council estate to the banlieue to whatever dystopia you’d like to find.1

So it's extremely accurate to say that Brutalism might the one of the most endangered architectural styles on the planet. Here are seven Brutalist buildings with complicated pasts and uncertain futures.