Uncategorized | İdil İBRİKÇİOĞLU

THE BRUTALISM EFFECT

Since the begining of man’s history, architecture has been in human’s life as a primary issue. Styles in terms of constructing structures have been changed in every century according to human’s needs and desires. For instance, primitive people tried to achieve structural stability in their constructions. The reason why it took long time to keep up with structural stability is that at those times there was no technological solution for this problem. After solving that problem, people start to design their buildings according to their requirements and desires. From past to present, architects have used lots of architectural styles such as classicism, functionalism, modernism and brutalism. Nowadays, every architect supports different styles and techniques from each other. Loos (1908) mentioned about this situation in his article. He believes that our age does not have its own style and our architects still deal with out of date styles like ornament( para. 5). There are millions of materials in order to make our constructions enriched structures. However, lots of architects cannot take advantage of these materials while designing their buildings. There is no need to cover buildings’ façades with various additional stuffs. Therefore, architects can utilize a single material by using it’s pure form in a building. For example, a construction can be built by using only concrete without any other material. This style is called as ‘Brutalism’. Via the idea of brutalism, architects can achieve the sense of purism and beauty without using various material for covering buildings. Therefore, brutalism needs to be reconsidered by all architects and it should be the only way used in architectural designs because it provides architects with constructing available, economical, pure and integrated structures.

Brutalism should be taken into consideration by designers in tems of its availability about constructing mass producing houses. Zein (2013) stated that brutalism begins, as it often happens with most architectural trends, by the practical experience; design and construction are meant primarily to attend the client’s necessities, but they also benefit from new technical possibilities, take leads from suggestive plastic and structural developments and propose innovative solutions that reflect and rebound inside the professional ambiance. Buildings which are constructed by the way of brutalism do not require time consuming and troublesome human labour because there are not any ornamentation on them to adorn or any other material in addition to concrete to add. For instance, architects lived in twentieth century prefered utilizing the idea of brutalism while designing their structures since in that time, almost all cities were ruined resulting from second World war and countries needed to produce houses for their citizen. Therefore, brutalists erected mass produced houses in order to provide people with shelters in a fastest and most available way. Because of the war, there were lack of workers, material and significantly money in order to import materials in that time. Hence, the best adequate way so as to produce houses for people was constructing brutalists buildings without losing time, money and human labour. In terms of this situation, Goodwin (2012) said that an important characteristic of brutalism is an emphasis on functionalism. Additionally, because of the fact that human health was a very crucial thing at that time, workmen could not work for long time. Therefore, the process of building the constructions should have been shorter and eaiser in order to save power of people. Loos (1908) supported that if people prefer brutalism to ornament, labourers will have to spend their time on working for far less hours than ornamentors because the way of ornamenting things causes wasted time, human force and so wasted health of workers (para. 13). As a result, brutalism enabled those people who survived after the war to live in safe and suitable houses at that time so this way of constructing structures should use in every time in order to save human labour and time.

That brutalism has lots of positive effects on national economy is an unquestionable truth. Why human has been ornamenting every material and structure during the time rather than saving the money of both public and government via the brutalism idea? People need lots of materials while ornamenting structures. It is impossible to find every material in a country at the same time because required objects for ornamentation are unnecessarily expensive things. Hence, if architects want to design their buildings in the way of ornamentation, they have to import those expensive products. This causes some negative effects in terms of economical issues and then architects begin to decrease the quality of materials used in constructions in order to save the money and make more profit. While decreasing the quality of materials, the quality and durability of buildings decrease also. As a result of this situation, buildings and structures are needed to be renewed frequently. So, this means that governments spend much more money on ornamented buildings than brutalist ones. On the other hand, being contented with local products instead of getting them by importation in an unnecessarily expensive way is another method having lots of advanteges in terms of national economy. This is called as ‘Brutalism’. Brutalist buildings generally include a single crude material so it is quite easy to construct buildings with one material which is not required any extra power to ornament it for workers. Thus, the required time and human labour decrease while the quality and pureness of material incease. Also, this situation affects the economy of governments and citizens in a positive way.

In addition, brutalism provides all structures with integrity of them because there is a single material of each construction. Brutalist architects use pure forms of a single element on their buildings so when people observe those brutalist buildings including various geometrical forms of a material, they feel comfortable because of the integrity and pureness of buildings. Corbusier (1931) explained his observation about architecture as that the main job of architecture is to interact feelings with each other by the help of raw materials. Primary forms are attractive forms because those forms can be understood easily by human (p. 171). This observation shows us brutalism is a designing strategy which enables structures to have their pure beauty and aesthetic. If people evaluate this situation in terms of human psychology, pure forms with their pure beauty make human eyes relaxed without any complication. However, there is a huge complication in streets, if every architect uses a different way of ornamentation on his buildings,. For example, if every building in a street are painted some different colors, people feel disturbed while looking at the street. People are already tired beause of their daily laborious jobs so it is quite wrong to make them much more confused with complicated ornamentations. Sullivan (1896) said that ‘It could only benefit us if for a time we were to abandon ornament and concentrate entirely on the erection of buildings that were finely shaped and charminh in their sobriety’ (as cited in Loos, 1908). Additionally, people can observe the main material of constructions via the tecnique of brutalism beause any additional material is not used for covering sides of buildings in this way. For example, if a construction is built from concrete, everybody can easily see the concrete material and somehow can make a commend about its quality.

On the other hand, some suggest that brutalist architecture is inaesthetic. They think that it has pour quality of material and lack of artistic quality. Those people evaluate brutalism as senseless architecture because they believe that the only way to make sense for structure is ornamentation. Trilling (2003) supported that the effect is much stronger when ornament physically disrupts the surface or modifies the shape of an object. Nevertheless, every material has already its own meaning without any addition and when they are ornamented, their pure sense is ruined. Brutalism has the effect of aesthetic via pure forms and beauty of materials their own. In addition to this, Donelly (2007) thought that the beauty of modernism and brutalism depends on craftsmanship, exacting proportionality and clean lines without excess ornament. Opponents of brutalist architecture claim that materials used in bruralist structures have pour quality. This criticism is completely wrong. Some architects used high quality of material in each construction because there are only few material used in brutalist architecture. For this reason, it is easy to find the best ones in terms of materials for achitects. Also, people can easily comment on quality issue about brutalist constructions because those architects expose the main element of structure which are not hidden by using ornaments in their building in order to enable people to observe real quality of elements. Finally, some say that brutalism is lack of artistic sense. Loos (1908) regards modern ornamentalists as stragglers because he thinks that ornament used in recently has no relation to our culture and beauty (para. 14). In the light of this thought, it is possible to say that ornament does not mean artistic and architectural sense. On the contrary, brutalism is regarded as ‘Contemprary Architecture’ in our century. Artists and architects have been trying to produce perminant products for decades. Their main aim is to create contemprary and pure arts so it is known that brutalist constructions are much more durable than ornamented ones. For this reason, brutalism is more related and emotional for everyone than others.

In conclusion, brutalism is the style of our age although some suggest that it is lack of aesthetic and quality. Brutalist buildings can easily differentiate from others via their pure beauty. Their naked structures make people’s eyes satisfied. Corbusier (1931) evaluated the business of architects that the architect provides us with a harmonic relation between pure forms by his creative spirit and he affects our emotions by forms and shapes. He achives the idea of order which we can understand it according to our World and then we have a relation between our World and understanding of beauty (p. 43). Unfortunately, architects ruin the purity of structures by adding unnecessary materials on building or ornamenting them. They think that the only way is to mix various materials in buildings or to make them colured in order to satisfy people in terms of beauty. However, while doing this, they both decrease the quality of material and damage the idea of pure beauty. In our century, there are lost of material such as steel, glass and concrete in order to built structures so there is no need to use all materials in a building. Hence, if people reconsider the idea of brutalism, they can understand that it belongs to our century and it is quite appropriate in terms of aesthetical and economical issues. For these reasons brutalism should be the only architectural style in our century.

REFERENCES

Corbusier, L. (1931). Towards a new architecture. London: J. Rodker.

Donelly, L. (2007, August). Architecture around us: Brutalism. Retrieved March 17, 2014, from http://journals.psu.edu/index.php/wph/article/viewFile/7789/7562

Goodwin, G. (2012). Writing urban space. Retrieved March 17, 2014, from http://www.google.com.tr/books?hl=tr&lr=&id=vGMOkKomFsYC&oi=fnd&pg=P A73&dq=against+brutalism&ots=5nTzMypkId&sig=wT-XCw2inJ2o81- ZE_MDMPdHSCE&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=against%20brutalism&f=false

Loos, A. (1908). Ornament and crime. In A. Opel, Selected essays (pp. 167-176). California: Ariadne press.

Trilling, J. (2003). Ornament: A modern perspective. Retrieved March 17, 2014, from http://books.google.com.tr/books?id=HzQ_YEkyKL4C&printsec=frontcover&dq =TR%C4%B0LL%C4%B0NG+ORNAMENT:+A+MODERN+PERSPECT%C4 %B0VE&hl=tr&sa=X&ei=aOCU5adD6rT7Abm04GwDg&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAA #v=onepage&q=TR%C4%B0LL%C4%B0NG%20ORNAMENT%3A%20A%20 MODERN%20PERSPECT%C4%B0VE&f=false

Zein, R. V. (2013). Brutalist connections: What it stands for. Retrieved March 17, 2014, from

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