Robbie Whelan, WSJ

Well it looks like Paul Rudolph’s brutalist Orange County Government Centre has been given a stay of execution. The Wall Street Journal has reported that the Orange County Legislature voted against the demolition. But the numbers are telling – 11 to 10. Not an overwhelming amount of support. It’s a divisive building, one which will remain highly unpopular I’m sure. I managed to attract a bit of criticism on this blog for my suggestion that this is a notable building worthy of saving, and perhaps rightly so. Who am I as someone on the other side of the world to comment on the value of a building that I have nothing to do with? In doing so, I’ve reduced it to merely a sculptural object. A building must have it’s users, it must contribute positively to it’s community, and it’s value must be more than just the name of its architect.

I still like it, and I’m still glad that it isn’t being demolished. I just hope that in choosing to save it that Orange County can make it a useful and positive space for it’s community.

Yeah, I mean any time you’re doing a design based movie, I mean a lot of your first iterations you just cringe at. That happened all the way through. Then you begin to refine it and you begin to come up with… I will say that Phil Messina, my production designer, has such wonderful tastes that he and I wisely began with a lot of reference and we looked at a lot and we wandered into this area of architecture that I talked to you yesterday about, called “Brutalism,” which uses, like, massive concrete form. It’s very imposing. It’s very stark. It’s very authoritarian. That was tremendously helpful. So we began from a place of reference, but I mean if I showed you early hovercrafts… They were like bad FLASH GORDON and also early Cornucopias until we sort of settled on this.

Yeah, on this kind of abstraction, this deconstructed cornucopia, which may or may not resemble the work of a famous architect.

Guess which word caught my eye…

Any architects out there who’ve seen the film and care to comment on the use of architecture to create this fantasy world?

Fuck Yeah Brutalism

Modernism in Metro-Land

Betonbabe

Architecture of Doom

Beton Brute

BrutalisT eXile

If you know of any others, please let me know in the comments below. And if you’re on tumblr yourself, let me know where to find you. You can check out my rather random tumblr (the latest posts to which appear on the right of this page) at dayaal.tumblr.com

you know how to take the attention of the readers with such good ideas.

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Aw shucks, thanks everyone. Unfortunately my spam filter stopped your comments from being approved, but I appreciate the time it took for you to programme your bot to spam me. May your penis never be short nor flaccid, and long may you earn billions of dollars from the comfort of your own home.

photo by John Levett

Maybe i haven’t been paying close enough attention. I know there’s been a bunch of brutalist building under threat of demolition over the last few years, but I guess it hits home when one I’m reading about is slated for destruction. In fact my next post on the topic [spoiler alert] is going to be about the Smithsons.

From BDOnline

Tower Hamlets council has approved plans to demolish Robin Hood Gardens in east London.

The Smithson-designed estate will be razed to the ground to make way for up to 1,575 new homes on a wider 7.7ha site as part of the £500 million Blackwall Reach regeneration scheme.

According to the masterplan drawn up by Horden Cherry Lee, working with Swan Housing and Countryside Properties and architect Aedas, this will include two towers, 40 and 35 storeys high.

Wow. I’ve never been a particularly passionate architectural conservationist, but I find this pretty tragic. Especially when one considers the planned replacement (as with the Paul Rudolph building I mentioned a little while ago) is not that impressive. In this case it’s not as horrible, but is it that much of an improvement over the exisiting? I guess I’m not really in a position to comment on that.

There’s 2 things in particular in this situation and in the many other related to the demolition of modernist buildings that I consider to be, at least in part, failures on the part of architects the world over.

The first is that we haven’t communicated (or perhaps even cared about) the environmental impact of demolition and replacement of exisiting buildings. Carbon outputs and other impacts are simply not mentioned in discussions on this topic. We don’t seem to have let enough people know what the impacts are.

The second is not a new issue. We haven’t given people an understanding of modernism that allows them to see for themselves the value of this work. I have no idea about how we might do this, but in any conversation I’ve had with people who aren’t formally trained in architecture, modernism is either hated, or valued only for its aesthetic appeal.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the notion of the Starchitect is in part to blame. If you ask the average layperson to name an architect, you’re bound to hear the names Wright, Zaha, Gehry, Foster, Mies, Le Corbusier and so on. (It’s Mies’ birthday today, and anyone with an iota of curiosity wo goes onto Google will discover who he is thanks to their Google Doodle for the day.) If you ask an architecture student, they’ll probably mention a few more, including Koolhaas, Liebeskind, and various Pritzker winners. But if you were to ask people to name artists, more often than not they’ll have a long list, ranging from the Renaissance (or even earlier) to at least the 20th century. But people won’t know who the Smithsons are. Which I find a little sad.

With that in mind, I’ll get on with my next post, devoted to them, as soon as I can.

photo by John Levett

photo by James Field

I think I may have peaked too soon. But I’m still pretty chuffed.

This week I was awarded the Student Prize for the Advancement of Architecture by the Australian Institute of Architects. I’ve been receiving a steady stream of congratulatory messages, in every form of communication currently known to humankind. It’s been a very gratifying experience.

At the Australian Advancement of Architecture Awards held here in Adelaide this week, I was able to thank a few people, but really there weren’t that many people there to hear those thanks. On top of that I was unprepared and therefore didn’t really do a good job of it. Thanks to the wonders of the internet I’m creating my own little forum right here on this blog in which I can do a little better. Hopefully.

Before I do that though, I thought I’d try and explain what this prize actually means. For a start, I should make it clear that it’s not for doing good architecture. That prize, the Colorbond Steel Student Biennale, went to Adrian Kenyon, whom I can proudly say is also a graduate of UniSA. Another of my fellow alumni, Christopher Trotta, was given a commendation in this section. Great work guys. These are the guys who are doing great architecture.

The SPAA is for other stuff. The guidelines for the awards say this:

This prize is for a most outstanding contribution by an individual or group of SONA members to the advancement of architecture in one or more of the following areas:

• Providing leadership amongst fellow students and/or within the profession
• Promoting the appreciation and advancement of architecture
• Providing a forum for discourse and networking
• Promoting architects in the community
• Advancing the education of Australian architecture students

The student(s) should demonstrate high achievement in one or preferably more of the following categories (but not limited to):

• Leadership
• Publication
• Community
• Education

Actually, it says a whole lot more than that, but I guess I want people to understand that I’m not being awarded for great design or academic achievement, rather I’ve been given an award which I understand to be for leadership within the profession.

And I’m more than OK with that.

You see, I’ve been in leadership and even management roles of one form or another since I was about 16 (that’s more than 20 years) and this is the first time that what I’ve been able to do has been acknowledged like this. It’s pretty awesome, and makes a lot of things feel worthwhile. Things that I thought I was stupid for bothering to do sometimes.

But as with all such things, they’re not all things that a person can do by themselves, or at least without the enabling and empowering of others. Which is why I have so many people to thank.

First and foremost is my wonderful wife, Rebecca. For me to be able to give up a career in dentistry to return to university to pursue a new course was only possible with her support. And she has done far more than simply support me. She encouraged me to make the change, and made a lot of sacrifices to make it possible. And given that I haven’t been able to earn a whole lot of money while I’ve been studying, she’s also supported us financially through the last few years. She’s put up with my various moods, my strange hours, my annoying expenses, my long absences from home and so much more that I’m increasingly convinced that she is beyond human. Thanks Bec, I love you heaps. The end is in sight luvvo.

Of course I’ve had the support of a lot of friends and family too. My sister and my mother have been incredible as always, and I hope that me winning an award like this makes them happy to have continued to invest in me.

I also want to thank James Field who has helped me out on so many occasions, both with getting my uni work done, but with so many other things related to whatever I seem to be organising at any given moment. He’s a brilliant photographer, and has taken most (if not all) of the photos of me that seem to have been splashed around lately (with no credit given). But more than that, he’s just been a reliable and trustworthy friend, some whose help I’ve always been able to count on.

Of the countless others who have made the last few years possible for me, there are 2 others whom I need to single out for thanks: Sean McEntee and Jess Miley. When I was SONA rep for UniSA back in 2009, Jess was my Adelaide Uni counterpart, and Sean was my predecessor and then SONA President. The three of us spent a lot of time together and did a lot of work together. And it was with Sean and Jess that I organised Flux, the 2011 Australia New Zealand Student Architecture Congress. As Creative Directors for this event, we talked, argued, wrote, planned, organised, delegated, vented, and so much more. And I can honestly say that I can’t remember any tension between us. In fact we became even better friends for it. Thanks guys, I wish you could have received this prize too.

And my school has been pretty amazing. With all the things I would have to disappear to do, the various extra curricular things that I somehow got myself into, I always had the support of my lecturers at UniSA. Every single one of them. Stephen Ward, our program director, has been wonderful. Angelique Edmonds and Rachel Hurst, who were part of the Flux Coordinating Committee, are just incredible. And they’ve managed to also give me a pretty damn good education. I’m glad to be a student of this school. Proud.

The Institute itself has been great too. The thought that an undergraduate student could host the State Awards ceremony is one that shocks people from outside of SA. But I’ve done it 3 times now, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to have been involved in something so significant on the arch calendar in this state. And I’ve been a nuisance to Richard, Marissa and Michelle at the SA Chapter Office about more than just this. As a SONA rep I was always hovering around trying to get stuff and creating work for people. The National Office staff work closely with us in staging Flux, and we worked closely with them over a number of months. Paddy, Mel, and Renee, you’re stars!

And I do want to thank Hassell, who took a risk in employing me at a time when things were pretty tough in the world of architecture. Particularly I want to thank Alex Hall for getting me in the door, and Chris Watkins who took the real risks by giving me a start. And to the rest of the Hassell Adelaide office, I know I’ve said it before, but it’s been wonderful working with you. You’ve made it the best working experience I’ve ever had, and I love working with you. And just hanging out and drinking and partying and stuff.

I’m bound to think of other people to thank, in which case I’ll update this post, but I hope you understand how appreciative I am of receiving the 2012 SPAA. Thanks everyone.

So where did it begin? As far as Reyner Banham is concerned, Brutalism arose as a result of tension and disharmony between younger and older architects at work in post-war London, particularly in the London County Council. The younger modernists struggled against the communist tendencies of the older generation, and were subject to that very British means of control, snubbing. And edicts such as the following, which must have infuriated the young modernists, were issued to those working at the LCC:

“Building of four storeys or less are to be considered domestic in scale, and must have pitched roofs, but those of greater height are not domestic, and the form of the roof is to be settled by discussion in the department.”

In this climate of post-war peace, and cold-war politics, the modernists struggled to extol the virtue and value of modernism, and held as standards the likes of Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson, Alvar Aalto, Ernesto Rogers, and to some extent their British predecessors Wells Coates and Berthold Lubetkin.

Of these architects, a particular work of one of them can be understood to of great significance to the establishment of brutalism as an icon of post-war modernism: Le Corbusier’s Unité D’Habitation.

Unité D'Habitation under construction, via Architizer Blog

Le Corbusier described the concrete work of this building as “béton brut”, essentially raw concrete, and the semantic links between Brutalism and this building are as strong as the links between the movement and this work.

“In the early years of the fifties, few buildings anywhere in the world and such a hold on the imaginations of younger architects, especially in the English speaking countries, and – above all – in England itself.”

In spite of being the most significant work of architecture in terms of scale, programming, and “sociological pretensions”, it was Le Corbusier’s abandonment of the notion of concrete being a precise, clean, machine-age material that made it of such influence. With béton brut, concrete was no longer a smooth, polished, labour-intensive structural and surface material.

Unité D'Habitation, photo by Erika Lindsay

“Le Corbusier conjured concrete almost as a new material, exploiting its crudities, and those of the wooden formwork, to produce and architectural surface of rugged grandeur that seems to echo that of the well weathered Doric columns of temples in Magna Graecia”

And as Le Corbusier had de-mythologised concrete, another of the brutalists idols had done the same with steel. Mies van der Rohe, particularly with the Illinois Institute of Technology,

Crown Hall, IIT, Mies van der Rohe, photo by Dayna Bateman

“had made and honest use of steel as a builders’ material, employing it, not as an abstract ideal of structural stiffness, but as a real substance having surface, substance and character of its own, and structural habits as reliable and as comprehensible as those of brick or masonry.”

But who were these brutalists who held Corb and Mies in such high esteem? I’ll move on to that next.

It’s wonderful to see a socially conscious architectural intervention here in Adelaide, especially one that brings together so many different groups and people.

Well done Johnny and Ellen, proud of you.

"And the wind cries Gehry..."

On Friday night over a few beers, some of the guys at work and I came up with the idea of archimashups, combining the names of various architect or architecture offices with those of bands or musicians. We found it HILARIOUS, and proceed to tweet a bunch of them. You can find them on Twitter under the hastag #archimashups, and you’ll see how incredibly popular they became. I’m surprised it didn’t start trending around the world. Anyway, for your convenience, I’ve listed the best of them (all of them) here:

• The Jesus and Gehry Chain
• Ray Charles Eames
• Snøhetta Patrol
• Fumihiko Maki Mark and the Funky Bunch
• You Am I M Pei
• Frank Lloyd Wright Said Fred
• FAT Boy Slim
• Bee Gees Van Der Rohe
• Run DCM
• Pink Floyd Wright
• Foster the People and Partners
• Ou Est Le Swimming Koolhaas
• David Hassellhoff
• Notorious Bjarke Ingels Group
• R.E.M. Koolhaas

Of course there’s hours of fun to be had doing this, and even more fun to imagine what kind of music the above groups would create. But going beyond all of this I started to wonder what kind of music these well known architects would make had they become musicians instead. What would Frank Gehry’s music sound like if he applied the same talent, inspirations, style, and attitude to making contemporary music. What would Rem Koolhaas and the OMA sound like? I actually don’t have any answers, but I’d be interested to hear your thoughts. I suppose there’s an obvious link between this and my earlier post about the Sound of Brutalism, but rather than trying to find a musical equivalent for a style or period of arc hictecture, I’m curious to know what people would imagine these practitioners to sound like.

Please post your thoughts as a comment below rather than replying on Twitter, that way everyone gets to see them all in one place. And if you have any other ideas for archi/musician combos, tweet them with the hastag #archimashups.