Brutalism Resurgent

Abstract

Brutalism had its origins in béton brut – concrete in the raw – and thus in the post-war work of Le Corbusier. The British architects Alison and Peter Smithson used the term "New Brutalism" from 1953, claiming that if their house in Soho had been built, "it would have been the first exponent of the ‘New Brutalism’ in England". Reyner Banham famously gave the movement a series of characteristics, including the clear expression of a building’s structure and services, and the honest use of materials in their "as-found" condition. The Smithsons and Banham promoted the New Brutalism as ethic rather than aesthetic, privileging truth to structure, materials and services and the gritty reality of th..