The Brutalist wins at the Globes – here’s what brutalist architecture constitutes

‘The Brutalist’ won three awards – best film in the drama category, best actor (Brody) and best director (actor-turned-filmmaker Brady Corbet). Brody described the film as “a story about the human capacity for creation”.

Brutalist architecture

Brutalism as an architectural style emerged in the 1950s in the United Kingdom, as the post-World War II reconstruction progressed.

The idea was to keep things basic and affordable – which meant moving away from the ornamentation of neoclassical styles, and giving an almost anonymous face to buildings.

Brutalist architecture has been criticised for being “oppressively heavy”, brooding and serious. While scholars credit the British architectural critic Reyner Banham with coining the term in 1955, ‘brutalism’ is also a play on the French phrase for raw concrete: “béton brut”.

Brutalism in its context

The deadliest war in history had razed much of Europe to the ground, and there was after 1945 an acute need to quickly build homes, schools, and hospitals, and to give traumatised populations a sense of community.

Among the early exponents of the style, the British architects Alison and Peter Smithson, wife and husband, shaped the core ideas of brutalism – low-cost and modular, with material focus and no-fuss interiors.

Other well known brutalists include the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier who designed the city of Chandigarh, the Hungarian-German Marcel Breuer, and the Japanese architect Kenzo Tange.

Characteristics of brutalist style

Buildings would be made simply of poured concrete, which would give them an inherent integrity, outside in. The distinction between materials in the exterior and interior was erased; concrete and brick were the primary architectural vocabulary.

A Global History of Architecture (John Wiley & Sons, 2007), describes brutalism as “simple large-scale repetitive structures… buildings that emphasised material simplicity and secular anonymity”.

PRECAST CONCRETE: The Breuer Building in New York, one of the most iconic buildings of the 1960s in the United States, which until recently housed the Whitney Museum of American Art, is an entirely concrete structure, inside out with a prominent canopy. This “stark, windowless building” has changed hands and now belongs to the auction house Sotheby’s.

Most of Corbusier’s buildings in Chandigarh are in precast concrete.

RAW, UNFINISHED SURFACES: This was another signature style of the movement – the hammered concrete finish of the Barbican Estate in London, one of Europe’s largest performing arts centres designed by Peter Chamberlin, Geoffry Powell and Christoph Bon, is an example.

LARGE-SCALE HOUSING: Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in France is an excellent example of the way brutalism went hand-in-hand with modernism. With its perfect geometry and linearity, brutalism allowed quick scaling up in the post-war urgency, allowing for 1,600 residents.

SCULPTURAL FORMS: Sculptural forms often enhanced the dull and grey exteriors of brutalist buildings. Examples: The Egg Centre designed by Wallace Harrison, the Grand Central Water Tower in Midrand, South Africa, with its conical shape, and the Israeli-Canadian architect Moshe Safdie’s housing complex, Habitat 67.

Brutalism in India

Brutalism came to India through Le Corbusier and continues to influence many architects even today, especially in Delhi and Ahmedabad.

Buildings by Shiv Nath Prasad, such as Tibet House and the Shri Ram Centre, border on brutalist-modern buildings with their raw exterior and sculptural forms.

Another example was the Chanakya cinema by P N Mathur, which has been demolished now.

There is also the NCDC building by Kuldip Singh, with its ziggurat-like wings, and the Polish Embassy by Polish architects Witold Cęckiewicz and Stanisław Deńko, which boast exposed exterior surfaces.