Ugly. Depressing. A cross between a giant square box and a federal penitentiary.
These are all ways that people have described this building behind me. It's Evans Hall at the University of California, Berkeley. It's built in a style of architecture called brutalism.
And when you look at college campuses around the US. . .
you'll see brutalist architecture like this everywhere. Why are there so many brutalist buildings on campuses? And what about this style of architecture makes it so divisive?
Okay. Just to start with, the name Brutalism doesn't actually have anything to do with the brutality of the architecture per se. Although some may argue that it’s quite harsh in appearance.
It's actually derived from a French phrase. Béton brut. The raw concrete in French.
This is Timothy Rohan. He's a professor of architectural history at UMass Amherst. A campus known for its stunning, brutalist architecture.
It's also the home of UMass Brut. . .
a campus organization that raises awareness of the school's collection of buildings. Some architects. .
. in conversations about Brutalism and its origins come up a lot. One of them is the Swiss-born French architect Le Corbusier.
He built an enormous building in Marseilles, an apartment building. The Unité d’Habitation. This really became a model for the use of concrete.
. . and a model for what became brutalism.
Concrete was widely used but sometimes before this, you would maybe sand the surface, paint the surface. . .
clean it up in a groundbreaking fashion. He left the concrete surface raw. Le Corbusier continued to build on the motifs he used in Unité d’Habitation in his later work.
Other architects of the day played in the Brutalist sandbox as well. . .
such as Marcel Breuer, Paul Rudolph. . .
Högna Sigurdardóttir and Louis Kahn. Brutalism became not just a style of architecture. .
. ` but an entire esthetic ethos. In what became a manifesto of sorts for the movement.
. . architecture, writer, and critic Reyner Banham decreed that new brutalist structures should have the following qualities: One: Memorability as an image.
Two: Clear exhibition of structure. And three: Valuation of materials “as found. ” Modernist architecture up to this point was dominated by people like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
. . who built sleek glass corporate skyscrapers.
. . which featured what are called curtain walls: Non load-bearing veneers that were meant to hide the construction.
Some architects say if you have a whole city like this it's going to become banal, monotonous. Modernist architects called these buildings fish bowls. And they were lampooned for their resemblance to graph paper.
In contrast, brutalist buildings strove for honesty in their materials and structure. They showed you how they were constructed. At the end of World War II.
. . College attendance shot up.
There was the veterans returning from the war who were eligible for government benefits that allowed them to go to college and pay for it. This necessitated that universities build new facilities to handle ballooning admissions. And with so many new buildings being needed.
. . what did architects of the day turn to?
Brutalism. Sorry. Schools like Yale had entire campuses of brutalist architecture spring up Which received glowing marquee reviews in the New York Times.
Campuses across the country erected some pretty spectacular buildings. . .
that typified the challenging and idealistic, brutalist esthetic. Schools like Harvard, UMass Dartmouth, UC San Diego. .
. the University of Chicago, and of course, Berkeley. Some of the colleges like Yale University they wanted to part from the old models of the Gothic and the Georgian.
A campus that was like Oxford or Cambridge for elite gentlemen. Now they want to show that they are becoming a world class research university. A university like mine, University of Massachusetts.
. . expanded at this time from an agricultural college.
. . and it becomes a research university.
A flagship campus of Massachusetts. And so they start to become the hosts for modern architecture. .
. to show their progress. During the 1970s, the US economy took a downturn.
New construction on campuses ground to a virtual halt. . .
and maintenance of existing facilities was neglected. . .
leaving many buildings brutalist and otherwise. . .
dingy and in need of renovation. And there's real cutbacks in maintenance during the 70s. It's noticeable.
And there's even a policy that many campuses had called deferred maintenance. We're not going to do repairs. We're not going to unstop the gutter.
We're not going to put in air conditioning that was never installed. It's deferred for a future date. When will this day come?
I think it's maybe today. The 1980s swept in a new era of construction that was a definite change of pace. Architects like Robert Venturi designed university buildings that featured brighter colors.
. . asymmetrical shapes and playful design elements.
Instead of attempts to preserve or renovate brutalist buildings in need of repair numerous campuses across the country opted to tear them down and build something shiny and new. And that is what it seems like will be the fate for poor Evans Hall here in Berkeley. Although a campus spokesperson told me that there is, quote, “No project in the works, or approved to demolish Evans Hall.
. . ” They went on to say that they're in the process of relocating all classrooms and offices out of the building.
And will then construct new buildings to house them, at which point they will propose a project to demolish Evans. Which sounds to me like they're going to tear it down. The reason for all of this is a study that showed that its seismic rating against earthquakes is poor.
So why is there no talk about tearing down this building? Or this one? Or this one?
These buildings and over 22 others on campus. . .
share the same seismic rating as Evans. So why set your sights on just Evans? It's often about a number of other considerations, like real estate.
The fact that these sites are valuable space on college campuses is at a premium. The real reason may be buried further in the report which says that, quote, “Due to its massing height. .
. scale and materiality, Evans Hall which obstructs views to San Francisco and beyond. .
. is considered incongruous with the Beaux Arts Buildings in the Classical Core. ” And that, quote, “the ad-hoc placement” of the new buildings “lacked sensitivity.
” My council is, be patient. Just because you find something unfashionable at the moment. .
. doesn't mean you should eradicate it. But while Brutalism hasn't been seen in a positive light for a few generations.
. . all hope is not necessarily lost.
There does seem to be a bit of a renaissance happening. Dr Rohan hopes to spread the gospel of Brutalism to a new generation by doing tours of the brutalist buildings on the campus of his university. And Zillow has even named Brutalism as one of the top trends to watch in 2024.
When you look around, Brutalism influence has actually made its way into many corners of our culture. There are $1,000 concrete West Elm coffee tables. .
. and Jay-Z and Beyoncé paid $200 million for a brutalist inspired house on the ocean. I think it has seeped into popular culture.
. . through Instagram, through Pinterest.
All these things. It is a very expressive architecture. It photographs really well; it's like cats on the Internet.
It just spreads.
