Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Brutalism Around The Block
A few years back my friend Thomas described a building as 'brutalist' and I assumed that this was his own humorous turn-of-phrase. Not so, I later discoverd, Brutalism is a bona fide architectural movement...
Says Wikipedia: It 'flourished from the 1950s to the mid 1970s. Examples are typically very linear, fortresslike and blockish, often with a predominance of concrete construction. Critics of the style find it unappealing due to its "cold" appearance, projecting an atmosphere of totalitarianism or socialism, as well as the association of the buildings with urban decay due to materials weathering poorly in certain climates and the surfaces being prone to vandalization by graffiti. '
I don't have to look far for an example. A few blocks away is the Fashion Institute of Technology (which, by the way, always struck me as a truly moronic title to shoe-horn the initials into spelling 'FIT' - 'Institute,' of course, should only be modified by a place name.)
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