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Some quality concrete memorials (no bus stations here...)
I bought my brother a book of soviet era Russian bus stops recently
https://weirdrussia.com/2015/02/10/weird-bus-stop-design-of-the-soviet-era/
So sad when Yoguslavia fell apart. I went there as a kid on a European driving holiday. I learnt to swim and to avoid sea urchins in now Croatia. I drove a minibus to Greece through Yoguslavia aged 22 then the lovely places that I'd visited became a war zone.
Whilst Tito was a dictator the fiction that he built helped keep the lid on.
Norco House in George street Aberdeen is was one of my favourites. Is it still there?
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Big big fan of this era of architecture.
We used to have some great threads BITD when Fred started them.
Good links 👍
Hackney Wick station by Landolt & Brown (opened this summer)
Cardross seminary. I've a wee guilty admission that I think it looks better derelict than it ever did in use, it's even more concretey.
Do you need massive concrete to be brutalist? I always thought Rochdales Black Box had brutalist leanings - certainly a dehumanising place to work..
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<p><p>That is awesome. Brutalism does nothing for me but this is something else.</p><p>
</p><p>My missus is from Cumbernauld. Bleh.</p></p>
Norco House in George street Aberdeen is was one of my favourites. Is it still there?
In a true middle class style, it’s a John Lewis now.
Brutalism you say? You need Jonathan Meades...
😍
rachel
Oh, and I did rather like this place...
Cardross seminary. I’ve a wee guilty admission that I think it looks better derelict than it ever did in use, it’s even more concretey.
Thats nothing to be guilty about - It does look great derelict - seems to defy gravity. Its a shame NVA's plans to stabilise it as a ruin - a sort of semi open-air pavilion - and make it accessible again have been torpedoed.
I got to spend a couple of days clambering about the place as part of a film project recently and its strange floating quality was really disconcerting - it really doesn't seam to want to touch the ground
Wouldn't mind scouting round here on my next trip to Berlin...
Apparently known as the 'Mouse Bunker' due to the animal testing that took place 😬
That's a good one dmck16, makes me expect xenomorphs though
What a great website.. thanks for sharing. I have finally found a place I visited near Llubijana. What an interesting read...
I bought my brother a book of soviet era Russian bus stops recently
Cardross seminary. I’ve a wee guilty admission that I think it looks better derelict than it ever did in use, it’s even more concretey.
Thats nothing to be guilty about – It does look great derelict – seems to defy gravity. Its a shame NVA’s plans to stabilise it as a ruin – a sort of semi open-air pavilion – and make it accessible again have been torpedoed.
I got to spend a couple of days clambering about the place as part of a film project recently and its strange floating quality was really disconcerting – it really doesn’t seam to want to touch the ground
I got the Russian Bus Stops book for my birthday, love it.
Is Cardross still there? I'm staying not far from there next summer and I've always fancied a wander around.
I spent four years of my life 'learning' here. It was only later I found out that the aversion therapy scenes from Clockwork Orange were filmed in it.
My old Uni... always seems to get forgotten, I guess unless you’ve been there it just doesn’t appear on the radar..
Spomenik database is fab. Just need a week to get through it all.
I got the Russian Bus Stops book for my birthday, love it.
Rik? is that you?
Is Cardross still there? I’m staying not far from there next summer and I’ve always fancied a wander around.
Yes its still there but what the access arrangements are at present I'm not sure - NVA acquired the building a few years ago and did a lot of cleanup/make safe work (in the sense of dealing with quite a lot of asbestos that was littering the site). That meant the site was then secured and had 24 hr security so you couldn't just rock up and wander about is as you could in the past.
They staged a few events there and theres been a bit of filming and you could also get access on Doors Open Day etc
They secured funding to renovate/make safe as sort of pavilion /perfomance venue but having secured the funding for the work they then had the funding for themselves as an organisation pulled and they've gone under as a result. So I don't currently know where that leaves ownership of the site and whether its still being kept secure.
I also don't know what the status of the funds that we're committed to the renovation - whether another organisation could step in and continue the project or whether that has all evaporated now
My old Uni… always seems to get forgotten, I guess unless you’ve been there it just doesn’t appear on the radar..
What - a large greenfield university by one of Britain's most important post war architects?
How about Israel Lyons Ellis (Gray) - PCL
gallowayboy wrote
Do you need massive concrete to be brutalist?
Really, yes. It comes from the french "brut" meaning raw, referencing the raw concrete that Le Corbusier used to create his buildings. It's not really about "brutal" architecture
Rik? is that you?
Haha nah, MrsMonkey got me it. She knows me too well!
Ta for the Cardross info, might be worth a look. Wouldn't be the first time I've snuck past security.
For telly addicts, Little Drummer Girl, starting Sunday on C4, adds to the list of TV/movies shot at the iconic Rowley Way estate.
Cheers nbt, always learning....
Dys[s]U[/s]topia
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Oh, and no brutalism thread is complete without some background muzak.
My old Uni… always seems to get forgotten, I guess unless you’ve been there it just doesn’t appear on the radar..
It's pretty well-known, but it's Modernist, not Brutalist.
Edit: I stand corrected (by Wikipedia). It has a lot of glass by what I think of as Brutalist standards. A google tells me that Brutalism doesn't even have to involved concrete but generally does.
Actually it doesn't need to be concrete - the first reference was by Hans Asplund as a name for a style related to a domestic scaled masonry building around 1950, it was only really in the mid 50 then mid 60s when Reyner Banham named the school of architecture led by (amongst others) the Alison and Peter Smithson as "The New Brutalists" and leading on from le Corbusier's <i>béton brut</i> after the war, based on pre-war buildings by Perret amongst others.
The recently departed 10 Murray Street.
Berkshire "Shire Hall", a monument to local government stupidity. They spent a fortune building huge out of town offices, then split the council up into smaller districts, couldn't then sell it as it's not in the town, so sold it to Foster Wheeler at a massive loss. Foster Wheeler's USA arm then almost went bankrupt and was bailed out by the UK operations selling the office building to an investment company with themselves as a sitting tenant, apparently that "project" made more money than any other actual work done in the building!
From this angle it just looks horrible, from the roadside it looks like a Bond villains lair with multiple levels of underground car parks and [s] ventilation ducts [/s] missile silo's.
From a distance though it kinda makes sense, it's on the top of a hill with a further artificial slope on two sides, so it sort of looks like a Brutalist reimagining of Windsor castle!
And like all good cold war buildings, there's a nuclear bunker in the basement.
Yay, I'm buying that bus stop book for my brothers xmas present, any other 'similar' suggestions for my Step dad?
My brother works in that building for Foster Wheeler. Judging by their layoffs over the last few years they’ll be rattling round in there with a floor for each of them.
A mate of mine wrote and photographed this:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/A1-Portrait-Road-Jon-Nicholson/dp/0002201992
Lancaster (Forton) Services
Rapha have a “brutalist” tour map of London on thier website if anyone fancies a poodle around town..
I went on one about 2yrs ago and it was surprising to see so many buildings still standing.. the Court House on Euston Rd is especially interesting as it’s hardly visiable from the main road, but behind it is fabulous.
Yay, I’m buying that bus stop book for my brothers xmas present, any other ‘similar’ suggestions for my Step dad?
the book has a sequel 🙂
If it wasn’t for the foliage this looks pretty crap, but with it the feel is fun. Gotta love a bit of Basingstoke.
My brother works in that building for Foster Wheeler. Judging by their layoffs over the last few years they’ll be rattling round in there with a floor for each of them.
Not anymore he doesn't, FW doesn't exist.
We were "bought" by AMEC who funded the whole thing on debt because they didn't actually have any money to buy anyone (unlike FW who had loads of cash reserves). They then spectacularly mismanaged the merger, lumping that office which the UKCS assets, despite that office doing zilch upstream of offshore work, most of it's work was downstream and in the middle east. So not only did we have no work (or experience) in our new region, old clients refused to work with other offices that had been put into their region as they were effectively unknown. So what was FW was now lumbered with having to offset the AMEC losses in the oil price downturn and struggling itself.
So after making everyone (and me) redundant and turning the site into a ghost town they eventually succumbed to the market and got brought up by Wood, and apparently getting back on track.
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True, but but I still think of it as Foster Wheeler. I do t speak to him that much. I preferred it when they were based by the station.
I preferred it when they were based by the station.
Ahh, the curse of FW, Thames Tower, Abbey Gardens and Aldwych house were all empty after they left until they were re-developed. PRobably because they were the only company prepared to rent the crappy "almost but not quite bad enough condition to justify renovation" blocks!
A google tells me that Brutalism doesn’t even have to involved concrete but generally does.
Since "brutalism" is derived from "beton brut", i.e. raw concrete, it's hard to see how that can be true !
Since “brutalism” is derived from “beton brut”, i.e. raw concrete, it’s hard to see how that can be true !
The entomology of a word and what people use it for don't always match up
We still call meteorites 'meteorites' even thought we now know they're not a result of the weather.
Any of the '-ists' and 'isms' are just nicknames really - just a name that someone coins to describe a group of similarly influenced practioners that sticks - its not rigorous scientific taxonomy
DrJMember
A google tells me that Brutalism doesn’t even have to involved concrete but generally does.Since “brutalism” is derived from “beton brut”, i.e. raw concrete, it’s hard to see how that can be true !
Curious, I always assumed it was from the word 'brutal' - as in 'the stairwell in this concrete carbuncle smells a bit brutal'
Possibly, but if people start using alternative meanings for words it makes it impossible to have a sensible discussion about anything.
Brutalism isn't derived from beton brut, it comes from brut which means raw.
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Since “brutalism” is derived from “beton brut”, i.e. raw concrete, it’s hard to see how that can be true !
It isn't quite. Villa Goth which is more or less where the term started has beton brut features but is mostly brick. And when Banham made it popular he was referring to that (probably), and to le corbusier's beton brut, and also basically making a shit-stirring pun about brutality and a not-very-well-founded political statement on isms.
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I stand corrected - everyday something to learn round here 🙂
how about the Coventry elephant...
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Brutalist architecture had really grown on me the last few years. Some of these are great!
Thanks to this thread and a bit of research on brutalism I discovered the architect Ernö Goldfinger.
You have to love anyone whose Wiki entry includes the phrase
Goldfinger was known as a humourless man given to notorious rages. He sometimes fired his assistants if they were inappropriately jocular.
Even better
A discussion about Ernő with Ursula, Goldfinger's cousin, on a golf course prompted Ian Fleming to name the James Bond adversary and villain Auric Goldfinger after Ernő (Fleming had previously been among the objectors to the pre-war demolition of the cottages in Hampstead that were removed to make way for Goldfinger's house at 2 Willow Road). Goldfinger consulted his lawyers when <i>Goldfinger</i> was published in 1959, which prompted Fleming to threaten to rename the character 'Goldprick', but eventually decided not to sue; Fleming's publishers agreed to pay his costs and gave him six free copies of the book.<sup id="cite_ref-5" class="reference">[5]</sup><sup id="cite_ref-6" class="reference">[6]</sup>
You’ll probably like these.
https://strangeabandonedplaces.com/tag/russia/
http://www.thebohemianblog.com/exclusion-zone/belarus-soviet-monuments
This and the previous post both in the Scottish Borders
Oh, and I spent a couple of years in Havana a while back. Lived in a high rise on the Malecon and thes buildings were neighbours.
Fascinating to see some Soviet brutalist architecture in Tallinn in the summer.
I visited here on a morning run. As featured on Alan Walker video.
https://www.jensassmann.com/linnahall/
"Achmelvich Castle" is quite a cute, tiny, brutalist bothy/foilly in Assynt. In 1955 an architect travelled up from Norwich, spent 6 solid months building it, spent one weekend in it, then left and never returned
That is frankly amazing.
Darn. Now I want to start an architecture thread but know I’ll start with the cliche. It is a cliche because it is so great.
went to uni here. still going strong.
Something from Sydney...
The old Pimlico school. A building so poorly designed pupils froze in winter and cooked in summer. A bit of a brutalist classic, nonetheless.
Cubitt would have been spinning in his grave as they built it. Now gone, thankfully.
Sheffield brutalist weekend starts today, probably a bit late for some of the ticketed events but there might be some free stuff about. I'll be doing the brutal bike ride this eve .
the book has a sequel 😀
LOL, I just found it! Hmm might save that for my brother's birthday instead..
Ok. Not quite on the same theme. But if you really like someone buy them ‘Carlo scarpa and Castlevecchio revisited’ by Richard Murphy 🙂
i really like ‘me’ so bought it for myself