BRUTALISM

THE UGLIEST BUILDINGS IN THE WORLD.
-1960s BRUTALISM.

Apparently there are two types of responses to Architectural demands:

1. Utilitarian structures built to fit traditional aesthetics.

or

2. Modernist structures which seek to change the criteria or definition of beauty so the building works to fit the demands of technology.

The resultant of #2 is that we have buildings and Architecture of service, utility and function- "lean" buildings, as Simon Thurley, a visiting Lecturer at Gresham College stated. 

These facts help me understand what I want to know;

- What Brutalism is, and how we can define it.

- Why Brutalism was born, and what the circumstances were.

- What the varying opinions on the style are.

- How and why some Brutalist buildings have been destroyed, whilst others have been listed.

Now, research tells me that Brutalism begins with a term "Beton Brute"- meaning raw concrete, and a man called Le Corbusier.

The movement came after the Middle Ages Classicism and the Eclecticism of the Industrial Revolution, and can be dubbed the "Modernism of the Welfare state". Post WW2, Britain required housing; cheaply, effectively, using materials

Shortly after came Peter and Alison Smithson, and their Hunstanton school, where every piece of steel used had to be justified.