0:00:02 > 0:00:05This programme contains some strong language.
0:00:05 > 0:00:08As we have seen, Brutalism, like the baroque,
0:00:08 > 0:00:10like high Victorian modern Gothic,
0:00:10 > 0:00:13has been routinely vilified.
0:00:13 > 0:00:1850 years after its heyday, however, its uncompromising vigour
0:00:18 > 0:00:23and muscular aggression are once again beginning to be appreciated.
0:00:26 > 0:00:29It begins with Le Corbusier's audaciously violent reaction
0:00:29 > 0:00:31to the smooth, white idiom
0:00:31 > 0:00:34of which he was the master in the 1920s and 1930s.
0:00:34 > 0:00:36Doesn't it?
0:00:56 > 0:00:59Le Corbusier was the 20th century's greatest architect.
0:00:59 > 0:01:01He had no doubt about it.
0:01:01 > 0:01:06Nor did his numberless idolaters, who refer to him as Corb.
0:01:06 > 0:01:11An embarrassing intimation of familiarity rather akin to
0:01:11 > 0:01:17that of people who call Miles Davis Miles and Buckminster Fuller Bucky.
0:01:18 > 0:01:22No less embarrassing, though, than Le Corbusier's own habit
0:01:22 > 0:01:24of referring to himself in the third person.
0:01:24 > 0:01:28A habit today associable with brain-ectomised footballers
0:01:28 > 0:01:30and backward celebrities.
0:01:30 > 0:01:33One might take a cue from Andre Gide.
0:01:33 > 0:01:37When asked who was the greatest French writer, he replied,
0:01:37 > 0:01:39"Victor Hugo...alas!"
0:01:39 > 0:01:42Le Corbusier, alas!
0:01:43 > 0:01:46He had all the usual qualities of a big-time architect -
0:01:46 > 0:01:50paranoia, vanity, startling selfishness,
0:01:50 > 0:01:53egotism, resentment,
0:01:53 > 0:01:56sycophancy, moral nullity.
0:01:57 > 0:01:59Like Talleyrand and the Vicar of Bray,
0:01:59 > 0:02:04he had the ability to switch sides with impunity.
0:02:04 > 0:02:08After two years' anilingual treating with Petain's Vichy government
0:02:08 > 0:02:11- he even went to live in that benighted spa -
0:02:11 > 0:02:14he attached himself to De Gaulle's Minister of Reconstruction
0:02:14 > 0:02:17within days of the liberation of Paris.
0:02:18 > 0:02:21As a writer, he was a harmful eccentric.
0:02:21 > 0:02:26Rash, provocative and a dangerous influence on those same idolaters
0:02:26 > 0:02:29who took his megalomania seriously.
0:02:34 > 0:02:38His most famous dictum - "a house is a machine to live in" -
0:02:38 > 0:02:42was stolen from HG Wells's Tono-Bungay.
0:02:42 > 0:02:46As a painter and sculptor, he stole from Fernand Leger.
0:02:48 > 0:02:51Le Corbusier, painter and sculptor,
0:02:51 > 0:02:54began to coalesce with Le Corbusier, architect.
0:02:54 > 0:02:57They begat the architect that he would be
0:02:57 > 0:02:59for the last 30 years of his life.
0:03:01 > 0:03:04The pre-war master of white, abstracted, orthogonal villas
0:03:04 > 0:03:08for the rich and arty mutated into a primitivist,
0:03:08 > 0:03:13a pseudo-primitivist, working, supposedly, for the people.
0:03:13 > 0:03:16A stylistic Talleyrand too, then.
0:03:18 > 0:03:22His architecture took on the farouche colours, irrationalism,
0:03:22 > 0:03:26emotional heat and dreamlike exaggerations
0:03:26 > 0:03:29which he displayed in the other disciplines.
0:03:29 > 0:03:31His sculpture became architecture.
0:03:31 > 0:03:34His architecture became sculpture.
0:03:34 > 0:03:36Functioning as sculpture.
0:03:36 > 0:03:39Sculpture with a social purpose.
0:03:39 > 0:03:41It was an extraordinary mutation.
0:03:41 > 0:03:46It was as momentous as what the wife of a current government minister
0:03:46 > 0:03:49called "the shifting of Teutonic plates".
0:03:49 > 0:03:53He had, so to speak, abandoned the prose of a technical manual
0:03:53 > 0:03:56in favour of the poetry of the Sublime.
0:04:00 > 0:04:05The precocious Edmund Burke, Anglican, aesthetician,
0:04:05 > 0:04:07politician...
0:04:22 > 0:04:25In which case, these are sublime -
0:04:25 > 0:04:27the might of mountains,
0:04:27 > 0:04:28yardangs,
0:04:28 > 0:04:30the seething ocean,
0:04:30 > 0:04:33basalt columns and pounding waterfalls.
0:04:33 > 0:04:36Jackfruit trees and sausage trees.
0:04:36 > 0:04:39The force of the screaming wind.
0:04:39 > 0:04:40Canyons and hoodooes.
0:04:40 > 0:04:42Termitaries.
0:04:42 > 0:04:45Forces beyond human control.
0:04:46 > 0:04:51The witness to the Sublime is overwhelmed by vastness,
0:04:51 > 0:04:54by awe, by wonder, by terror.
0:04:56 > 0:04:58The Sublime is crushing.
0:04:58 > 0:05:03According to Burke, the Sublime's qualities include ruggedness,
0:05:03 > 0:05:06lack of clarity, infinity.
0:05:06 > 0:05:10And also darkness, literal darkness.
0:05:10 > 0:05:12The darkness of heathen temples.
0:05:21 > 0:05:24Unlike his older contemporary David Hume, Burke believed
0:05:24 > 0:05:28the Sublime to be dissociate from the beautiful.
0:05:28 > 0:05:31The two qualities were mutually exclusive.
0:05:31 > 0:05:35Burke found the Sublime in certain poetry - Milton's.
0:05:35 > 0:05:37But not in painting,
0:05:37 > 0:05:40at least not in the painting of the mid-18th century.
0:05:40 > 0:05:44This was before Turner, before Casper David Friedrich,
0:05:44 > 0:05:50before John Martin, whose every waking day was a molten apocalypse.
0:05:56 > 0:05:59But paintings which attempt to capture the Sublime
0:05:59 > 0:06:01are not themselves Sublime.
0:06:01 > 0:06:07Maybe any form of representation precludes sensations of sublimity.
0:06:26 > 0:06:28Again, Burke was writing
0:06:28 > 0:06:29of the architecture,
0:06:29 > 0:06:31the classical architecture,
0:06:31 > 0:06:32of his time.
0:06:32 > 0:06:34Times change.
0:06:39 > 0:06:40Mankind usurped God.
0:06:41 > 0:06:44Mankind has, to put it mildly,
0:06:44 > 0:06:47augmented the inventory of the Sublime.
0:06:47 > 0:06:51Not through pictorial or literary representation,
0:06:51 > 0:06:55not by making art about it, but by matching it.
0:06:59 > 0:07:02By mimicking nature, by emulating the elements,
0:07:02 > 0:07:05by acting like camoufleurs,
0:07:05 > 0:07:06by learning from plovers
0:07:06 > 0:07:10which are indistinguishable from the stones they lie on.
0:07:11 > 0:07:15Sublimity and terror are found in technological warfare,
0:07:15 > 0:07:18listening devices, choreographed mass rallies,
0:07:18 > 0:07:21the explosion of atomic bombs, cloud seeding,
0:07:21 > 0:07:25the multiplication of means by which the atrocious can be achieved.
0:07:25 > 0:07:30They are found in pylons, great dams, oil refineries,
0:07:30 > 0:07:33power stations, bridges, cooling towers.
0:07:33 > 0:07:36Chimneys whose smoke colours the sky -
0:07:36 > 0:07:38orange, apple, plum.
0:07:39 > 0:07:43They're found in the brutality of Cold Warriors whispering
0:07:43 > 0:07:48mutually assured destruction through chinks in the Iron Curtain
0:07:48 > 0:07:51which stretch from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea.
0:07:51 > 0:07:56A 4,000-mile-long, 40-metre-high blind barrier
0:07:56 > 0:08:01of plates, rivets, braces, bolts, studs,
0:08:01 > 0:08:04chevaux de frise and rust.
0:08:12 > 0:08:15The structures of over half a century ago,
0:08:15 > 0:08:17architectural monuments,
0:08:17 > 0:08:20supreme feats of engineering,
0:08:20 > 0:08:24represent the dramatic apogee of the high Anthropocene era,
0:08:24 > 0:08:29when mankind guiltlessly lauded it over the Earth
0:08:29 > 0:08:31with disregard for the consequences
0:08:31 > 0:08:33or in ignorance of the consequences
0:08:33 > 0:08:37or with the conviction that the means are always justified,
0:08:37 > 0:08:40or with the blindest of eyes.
0:08:46 > 0:08:49Much of this seemingly monolithic gigantism
0:08:49 > 0:08:52might form the mise-en-scene of myth.
0:08:52 > 0:08:56Seemingly, because whilst the majority of brutalist works
0:08:56 > 0:08:59are built on a superhuman scale,
0:08:59 > 0:09:02and belong to an extra-human realm,
0:09:02 > 0:09:06they are fragmented, articulated, punctuated.
0:09:06 > 0:09:10They evoke powers which, until science caught up,
0:09:10 > 0:09:12were the properties of nature.
0:09:12 > 0:09:16And nature, throughout most of mankind's term on this planet,
0:09:16 > 0:09:19has been determined by God, or by gods.
0:09:19 > 0:09:22Or devils. Or Furies or spirits.
0:09:22 > 0:09:25Bacchus and John Barleycorn.
0:09:25 > 0:09:27Odin and Eros.
0:09:27 > 0:09:29Apollo and Saturn.
0:09:30 > 0:09:33These were the agents deemed responsible.
0:09:49 > 0:09:51These structures challenge the gods.
0:09:52 > 0:09:55They are monuments to mankind's supremacy.
0:09:56 > 0:10:00They are supremely optimistic, supremely confident,
0:10:00 > 0:10:02supremely hubristic.
0:10:02 > 0:10:07Mankind, when it was discovered that there was no God, saw an opportunity.
0:10:07 > 0:10:09There was a void to be filled.
0:10:09 > 0:10:15And to be filled with ostentatious, earnest and grandiose exultation.
0:10:15 > 0:10:21This was a near-sacred project undertaken with the utmost gravity.
0:10:21 > 0:10:24It usurped the God that wasn't.
0:10:40 > 0:10:46It did his works. But only those of 45,000 square metres or more.
0:10:46 > 0:10:49Modesty has no place
0:10:49 > 0:10:53when you are taking on the most vainglorious force that never was.
0:10:53 > 0:10:57The God that never was wasn't a micromanager.
0:10:57 > 0:10:59So why should his apes be?
0:11:04 > 0:11:08Unite d'Habitation in Marseilles was not the first building
0:11:08 > 0:11:12that Le Corbusier had designed in reaction to his earlier idiom.
0:11:12 > 0:11:17He had made tentative forays, rather ham-fisted, left-handed,
0:11:17 > 0:11:20as early as the early 1930s.
0:11:20 > 0:11:24But Unite's size, ambition, fecund invention,
0:11:24 > 0:11:28outrageousness and sheer effrontery caused it
0:11:28 > 0:11:32to capture the imagination of architects the world over.
0:11:32 > 0:11:34In contrast, much rooted contrast,
0:11:34 > 0:11:37to the reaction of the people of Marseille.
0:11:41 > 0:11:45They are said to have referred to it as La Maison du Fada.
0:11:45 > 0:11:50Fada is that Provencal word which is not spoken with much fondness.
0:11:50 > 0:11:51It means madman.
0:11:52 > 0:11:56Specifically, a madman who is possessed,
0:11:56 > 0:12:00touched by extra-worldly powers, by contact with elves, no doubt.
0:12:01 > 0:12:05Who actually coined this epithet is not recorded.
0:12:05 > 0:12:08This was how the new was greeted.
0:12:08 > 0:12:11Or rather, how we were told it was greeted.
0:12:12 > 0:12:16Here was a presage of the notorious gulf that would come to exist
0:12:16 > 0:12:19between the will of architects
0:12:19 > 0:12:23and the taste of... well, of who, exactly?
0:12:23 > 0:12:26ECHOING VOICE: Concrete monstrosities...monstrosities...
0:12:28 > 0:12:31Defensive antagonism, blaming anything
0:12:31 > 0:12:35but their own prejudices, their own ignorance, the own incuriosity.
0:12:37 > 0:12:40Such was the behaviour of a vociferous, populist,
0:12:40 > 0:12:42moralistic, aesthetically timid faction
0:12:42 > 0:12:46that wanted to lead the world backwards.
0:12:46 > 0:12:49Their heirs - taxi drivers who write for newspapers -
0:12:49 > 0:12:53still want to bury their head in the sand, in the sands of time.
0:12:53 > 0:12:57Some other time. Usually the 18th century.
0:12:57 > 0:13:02An obscure group calling itself the Society for French Aesthetics,
0:13:02 > 0:13:07which probably dreamed up the coinage "La Maison du Fada",
0:13:07 > 0:13:11went so far as to bring a suit for damages against Le Corbusier.
0:13:11 > 0:13:13It lost.
0:13:13 > 0:13:16It was typical of those factions which claim presumptuously
0:13:16 > 0:13:20to speak on behalf of the ordinary people,
0:13:20 > 0:13:23which invent slogans for the common man...
0:13:24 > 0:13:27..which encourage hard-working families
0:13:27 > 0:13:29and other demographic fictions
0:13:29 > 0:13:33to militate against the unfamiliar simply because it is unfamiliar.
0:13:42 > 0:13:45Muslims undertake the hajj to Mecca
0:13:45 > 0:13:48where they may be crushed in stampedes.
0:13:48 > 0:13:51Gamblers hit Vegas and lose everything.
0:13:52 > 0:13:57Ailing Catholics visit Lourdes and they don't get better.
0:13:57 > 0:14:00Hindis immerse themselves in the septic,
0:14:00 > 0:14:02shit-thickened Ganges at Varanasi.
0:14:02 > 0:14:07Architects go to Marseille, to L'Unite d'Habitation
0:14:07 > 0:14:11an apartment block that is another place of pilgrimage.
0:14:11 > 0:14:14The danger here is more subtle.
0:14:14 > 0:14:19It is that L'Unite has for 60 years proved an invitation to plagiarism
0:14:19 > 0:14:22or homage, much the same thing.
0:14:23 > 0:14:26In fact, no-one plagiarised Le Corbusier
0:14:26 > 0:14:29so comprehensively as Le Corbusier himself.
0:14:29 > 0:14:34The four further Unites are like full-scale models of the original.
0:14:34 > 0:14:38They lack the handmade, almost arts and crafts qualities
0:14:38 > 0:14:41that the architect brought to the original one
0:14:41 > 0:14:45and brought also to his works in eastern France at Ronchamp,
0:14:45 > 0:14:47Firminy and La Tourette,
0:14:47 > 0:14:50to the Jaoul houses in Neuilly
0:14:50 > 0:14:52and to his many works at Chandigarh.
0:14:59 > 0:15:01Prefabricated, that is to say
0:15:01 > 0:15:05factory-produced building systems of the same era,
0:15:05 > 0:15:07CLASP, Reema and so on,
0:15:07 > 0:15:11evidently persisted with standardisation.
0:15:12 > 0:15:14They achieved a worldwide monotony,
0:15:14 > 0:15:18block after featureless block, built of the same panels,
0:15:18 > 0:15:22the same windows, and with the same paucity of imagination.
0:15:24 > 0:15:27Brutalist buildings, forged on site from poured concrete,
0:15:27 > 0:15:30had the evident capacity for uniqueness,
0:15:30 > 0:15:33or at least to be different from each other,
0:15:33 > 0:15:36because they weren't reliant on prefabricated components.
0:15:38 > 0:15:43Some of the pilgrims who congregated at L'Unite randomly pilfered
0:15:43 > 0:15:46tics and mannerisms of the sculptural vocabulary,
0:15:46 > 0:15:51the plastic font that Le Corbusier had invented.
0:15:51 > 0:15:54They replicated this form or that when they got the chance,
0:15:54 > 0:15:58or misapplied brisesoleils in northern climes.
0:15:58 > 0:16:02But the overwhelming effects that this building had
0:16:02 > 0:16:07were those of inspiration and an unshackling of the imagination.
0:16:07 > 0:16:10It stretched the limits of the possible.
0:16:21 > 0:16:23It showed what could be done,
0:16:23 > 0:16:26and what was eventually as international
0:16:26 > 0:16:29as the International style, though less inhibited.
0:16:29 > 0:16:32But then, art has always been international.
0:16:32 > 0:16:34The Gothic, the columnar,
0:16:34 > 0:16:37Van der Weyden and Bouts in the North,
0:16:37 > 0:16:40Crivelli and Cosimo Tura in the South.
0:16:40 > 0:16:42Who took from whom?
0:16:43 > 0:16:47There was nothing new about mounting a building on pylons or pilotis.
0:16:47 > 0:16:51Le Corbusier himself had been at it since the 1920s,
0:16:51 > 0:16:55and his nameless predecessors for 6,000 years.
0:16:55 > 0:16:58Certainly since the late Mesolithic period.
0:16:58 > 0:17:04Pylons or stilts keep at bay enemies, tides, floods,
0:17:04 > 0:17:07rodents, assorted predators.
0:17:08 > 0:17:10They are staples of coastal,
0:17:10 > 0:17:13estuarine and bucolic vernacular architecture.
0:17:13 > 0:17:17Tchanquees at Arcachon, the granaries of Galicia,
0:17:17 > 0:17:21southern English barns raised on staddle stones.
0:17:21 > 0:17:24Hong Kong and Cambodian fisher cabins.
0:17:24 > 0:17:26Maghrebian beach houses,
0:17:26 > 0:17:28charolais on the Gironde.
0:17:28 > 0:17:32Mediterranean cabanons at such places as Gruissan Plage.
0:17:32 > 0:17:37Mounting a building on such hefty legs was, however, unprecedented.
0:17:37 > 0:17:39They are the legs of a pachyderm.
0:17:39 > 0:17:42But what sort of pachyderm has 34 legs?
0:17:42 > 0:17:43It must be an insect.
0:17:43 > 0:17:46A trigintaquattuorped.
0:17:46 > 0:17:51But even an insect with elephantiasis does not have legs this thick.
0:17:51 > 0:17:55Further, the pilotis form a nave,
0:17:55 > 0:17:58or a nave's ancestor, the sacred grove.
0:18:03 > 0:18:06It's all as exhilaratingly impure as an oxymoron,
0:18:06 > 0:18:11the centrifugal, simultaneously pulling in several directions.
0:18:11 > 0:18:15It's what Max Ernst talked of his own work as being -
0:18:15 > 0:18:19a hallucinatory series of contradictory images.
0:18:19 > 0:18:24A series which refuses to be resolved into a single meaning.
0:18:24 > 0:18:28It's a multiple monument which defies explanation.
0:18:37 > 0:18:41When Jean Cocteau saw Nijinsky, he exclaimed...
0:18:45 > 0:18:48That's the dancer, not the Derby winner.
0:18:48 > 0:18:53And indeed, as well as possessing a singular delicacy of movement
0:18:53 > 0:18:56and an exceptional gamut of expression, Nijinsky had
0:18:56 > 0:19:00the shoulders of a prop forward and the face of a manly woman.
0:19:01 > 0:19:07"What grace, what brutality" is the most fitting reaction to L'Unite.
0:19:07 > 0:19:11It's self-contradictory, dissonant, contrapuntal.
0:19:12 > 0:19:15It was finished early in 1952.
0:19:15 > 0:19:17It had taken six years to build -
0:19:17 > 0:19:19architecture is a slow business.
0:19:20 > 0:19:24It wasn't until it began to attract idolaters of a sort
0:19:24 > 0:19:29that anyone thought to look at bunkers and flak towers as architecture,
0:19:29 > 0:19:34rather than as the defences of a vanquished regime.
0:19:47 > 0:19:51As a model for social housing, Unite was often disastrous
0:19:51 > 0:19:54because it was so ineptly copied.
0:19:55 > 0:19:58The earliest of the thousands of schemes it spawned
0:19:58 > 0:20:01began to appear towards the end of the '50s.
0:20:01 > 0:20:04The copyists were copying the uncopyable.
0:20:04 > 0:20:07Unite is a one-off, a work of art
0:20:07 > 0:20:10as much as an apartment block.
0:20:10 > 0:20:12However, as a springboard
0:20:12 > 0:20:15to a new sort of architectural invention, it was peerless.
0:20:15 > 0:20:18It was a conduit.
0:20:18 > 0:20:20It sanctioned sculptural concrete,
0:20:20 > 0:20:21which had been off-limits.
0:20:21 > 0:20:24And it vastly increased the gamut of models
0:20:24 > 0:20:27that architecture might draw on.
0:20:27 > 0:20:29It changed architecture's attitude
0:20:29 > 0:20:32towards both the past and nature.
0:20:38 > 0:20:43Imagine a form of IVF that creates babies which are giants.
0:20:45 > 0:20:48Their pituitary gland is programmed to shrink
0:20:48 > 0:20:52the 12-foot tall, 25-stone newborn monster
0:20:52 > 0:20:55throughout its childhood and adolescence
0:20:55 > 0:20:58until it achieves adult size.
0:21:02 > 0:21:04The Brutalist mindset
0:21:04 > 0:21:07was enthused by such...what? Impossibilities,
0:21:07 > 0:21:10apparent impossibilities.
0:21:10 > 0:21:12By the lure of counter-intuition,
0:21:12 > 0:21:15of going against nature.
0:21:15 > 0:21:18But then, nature itself goes against nature.
0:21:18 > 0:21:23Nature overturns what is carelessly called "the natural order".
0:21:23 > 0:21:26Inhabitants of sober landscapes
0:21:26 > 0:21:27and temperate climates
0:21:27 > 0:21:32are persuaded of nature's reticence and courtesy.
0:21:32 > 0:21:34Their experience
0:21:34 > 0:21:38is not that of those who live in more extreme latitudes,
0:21:38 > 0:21:41where the notion of equanimity is alien.
0:21:41 > 0:21:44Nature, in one man's manor,
0:21:44 > 0:21:47the everyday surroundings that he takes for granted,
0:21:47 > 0:21:49is another's exotic grail.
0:21:49 > 0:21:52There's no universalism in nature,
0:21:52 > 0:21:54and little in man.
0:21:54 > 0:21:56But, as David Hume observed,
0:21:56 > 0:22:00"There is a universal tendency among mankind
0:22:00 > 0:22:03"to conceive of all beings like themselves
0:22:03 > 0:22:07"and to transfer to every object those qualities
0:22:07 > 0:22:09"with which they are familiarly acquainted
0:22:09 > 0:22:13"and of which they are intimately conscious."
0:22:13 > 0:22:16The sublime elements of nature that succoured Brutalism
0:22:16 > 0:22:19were seldom to be found in Britain.
0:22:19 > 0:22:21They were, then, in that last era
0:22:21 > 0:22:24before the advent of mass foreign travel,
0:22:24 > 0:22:27not those that the British were "familiarly acquainted with."
0:22:27 > 0:22:29Jagged rockscapes,
0:22:29 > 0:22:32repetitive basaltic organs,
0:22:32 > 0:22:34subterranean extravaganzas
0:22:34 > 0:22:37and geological gaudies,
0:22:37 > 0:22:40weird trees, petrified forests.
0:22:40 > 0:22:44An architecture suggestive of such phenomena
0:22:44 > 0:22:46is bound to be more alien in Britain
0:22:46 > 0:22:49than it is in dramatically furnished countries,
0:22:49 > 0:22:52where the link between built forms
0:22:52 > 0:22:55and natural forms is more readily made.
0:22:55 > 0:22:58Inverted pyramids, allusive shapes,
0:22:58 > 0:23:00reckless cantilevers,
0:23:00 > 0:23:02toppling ziggurats,
0:23:02 > 0:23:04vertiginous theatre,
0:23:04 > 0:23:07imitations of Pyrites,
0:23:07 > 0:23:09the defiance of gravity -
0:23:09 > 0:23:11always a sign that a demi-god is at work.
0:23:11 > 0:23:14The architectural imagination was flying.
0:23:23 > 0:23:25Which was alarming to the timid,
0:23:25 > 0:23:27aesthetic arbiters
0:23:27 > 0:23:30of a country which was zealously divesting itself
0:23:30 > 0:23:31of the relics of the last time
0:23:31 > 0:23:34that architects went on a collective bender.
0:23:34 > 0:23:37England was being architecturally cleansed
0:23:37 > 0:23:39of High Victorian works.
0:23:39 > 0:23:42Buildings of great grace and greater brutality
0:23:42 > 0:23:45were demolished at the rate of a dozen a week
0:23:45 > 0:23:47throughout the 1950s.
0:23:47 > 0:23:50They were, of course, "monstrosities".
0:23:50 > 0:23:54Brutalism changed the way that architecture drew upon nature.
0:23:54 > 0:23:57Applied decorative representations,
0:23:57 > 0:24:00usually formal, occasionally naturalistic,
0:24:00 > 0:24:04of, say, bearded steroid junkies called atlantes,
0:24:04 > 0:24:07of boughs, tendrils, fronds, bucrania,
0:24:07 > 0:24:11of vessel-bearing maidens called caryatids -
0:24:11 > 0:24:14all of these disappeared with International Modernism.
0:24:14 > 0:24:16They didn't return.
0:24:16 > 0:24:21Brutalism, however, did not shun representation.
0:24:24 > 0:24:26Anything but.
0:24:26 > 0:24:29Instead, however, of just incorporating natural forms,
0:24:29 > 0:24:32its ambition was to create buildings
0:24:32 > 0:24:35which were themselves natural forms.
0:24:35 > 0:24:39Such a remaking of the planet was not a modest undertaking.
0:24:39 > 0:24:42It didn't copy what was already there.
0:24:42 > 0:24:44It invented natural forms,
0:24:44 > 0:24:46new natural forms.
0:24:46 > 0:24:48That's what art does.
0:24:48 > 0:24:51It makes what was not there before,
0:24:51 > 0:24:53it creates what was lacking.
0:24:53 > 0:24:58These new natural forms possessed manifold textures and services.
0:24:58 > 0:25:01The precedents were, firstly,
0:25:01 > 0:25:04some of the 17th and 18th century's
0:25:04 > 0:25:06more extravagant exercises in rustication,
0:25:06 > 0:25:10but they, too, were applied, rather than integral.
0:25:10 > 0:25:14Secondly, they'd arrived from the camoufleur's craft.
0:25:17 > 0:25:21Bunkers were routinely given dense, irregular
0:25:21 > 0:25:23impacted surfaces,
0:25:23 > 0:25:25of random incisions and accretions,
0:25:25 > 0:25:30in order to break up the shape of a building seen from the air.
0:25:30 > 0:25:33texture was more important than colour,
0:25:33 > 0:25:37for all reconnaissance photography was still monochrome.
0:25:37 > 0:25:41The Brutalists created the most haptic civilian architecture ever.
0:25:41 > 0:25:44Board-marked concrete grazed skin,
0:25:44 > 0:25:47furrowed concrete tore clothes,
0:25:47 > 0:25:50bush-hammered concrete just hurt.
0:25:50 > 0:25:52Here is an instance of the way
0:25:52 > 0:25:55in which they overbearingly demanded an audience
0:25:55 > 0:25:57and, having won that audience,
0:25:57 > 0:26:00treated it with unrepentant aggression.
0:26:00 > 0:26:02They never pandered.
0:26:02 > 0:26:05And they never forgot the belligerence
0:26:05 > 0:26:07that Brutalism was born from.
0:26:07 > 0:26:09A building is a weapon.
0:26:11 > 0:26:13If they pleased,
0:26:13 > 0:26:16and they were indifferent to whether or not they did so,
0:26:16 > 0:26:18they pleased by choosing not to please.
0:26:18 > 0:26:22By respecting humankind as equals
0:26:22 > 0:26:24who were not to be spoken down to,
0:26:24 > 0:26:28not to be patronised, not to be treated like children.
0:26:28 > 0:26:32Remember, 50 years ago adults did not dress like children.
0:26:32 > 0:26:36They did not read, or try to read, children's books.
0:26:36 > 0:26:39They did not enjoy children's diet.
0:26:42 > 0:26:46The more they've been consulted as consumers, if anything,
0:26:46 > 0:26:49the more they've elected to be fed drivel.
0:26:49 > 0:26:53And the more they have regressed into irreversible infantilism
0:26:53 > 0:26:55and helpless dependency.
0:26:56 > 0:26:59Brutalism, like much of its era,
0:26:59 > 0:27:03was an encouragement to betterment.
0:27:03 > 0:27:05It was singularly optimistic.
0:27:05 > 0:27:06It was Meliorist.
0:27:26 > 0:27:29Because architecture does not depend on language,
0:27:29 > 0:27:33its example is spatially and temporally limitless.
0:27:33 > 0:27:35It is, so to speak, portable.
0:27:35 > 0:27:37It crosses borders.
0:27:38 > 0:27:41Localism was once a necessity -
0:27:41 > 0:27:45available materials, lack of communications and so on.
0:27:45 > 0:27:48But localism today, neo-vernacular,
0:27:48 > 0:27:50built communitarianism,
0:27:50 > 0:27:52is a fake.
0:27:52 > 0:27:56Its architecture is a badge of identity and of exclusion,
0:27:56 > 0:27:59in the way that regional accents are.
0:27:59 > 0:28:02Architecture does not have a "language",
0:28:02 > 0:28:06despite the convenient shorthand which uses, or mis-uses,
0:28:06 > 0:28:08the word "language"
0:28:08 > 0:28:10to describe its mute gestures,
0:28:10 > 0:28:12mute devices, mute beams,
0:28:12 > 0:28:14mute foundations, mute jetties,
0:28:14 > 0:28:18mute windows, mute lintels.
0:28:18 > 0:28:20It does not speak to us,
0:28:20 > 0:28:22it does not sign.
0:28:22 > 0:28:25Even so-called "architecture parlante",
0:28:25 > 0:28:27the abattoir in the form of a donkey,
0:28:27 > 0:28:30the town hall in the form of a backhander,
0:28:30 > 0:28:34the parliament in the form of an asylum for the criminally insane,
0:28:34 > 0:28:39is doomed to repeat one word over and over again.
0:28:39 > 0:28:42Soi-disant "architectural language"
0:28:42 > 0:28:44is no more speakable than body language,
0:28:44 > 0:28:46which, again, isn't a language,
0:28:46 > 0:28:50although every thinker in the world is increasingly fluent
0:28:50 > 0:28:52in this unwitting semaphore.
0:28:52 > 0:28:55- Body language.- Body language. - Body language.
0:28:55 > 0:28:57- Body language.- Body language. - Body language.
0:28:57 > 0:29:00- Body language. - The all-important body language.
0:29:00 > 0:29:02Because architecture is not a language,
0:29:02 > 0:29:05it requires no translation.
0:29:05 > 0:29:06We glance at architecture,
0:29:06 > 0:29:08we stare at it,
0:29:08 > 0:29:10we scrutinise it,
0:29:10 > 0:29:11we react to it.
0:29:11 > 0:29:13We may feel frightened,
0:29:13 > 0:29:15we may feel awestruck,
0:29:15 > 0:29:18we may feel powerless in the presence
0:29:18 > 0:29:20of vastness and blankness.
0:29:21 > 0:29:25But whatever properties we invest it with
0:29:25 > 0:29:27are the products of our sensibility,
0:29:27 > 0:29:30our reason, our wonder,
0:29:30 > 0:29:33our despisal.
0:29:33 > 0:29:35There is no compact with buildings.
0:29:35 > 0:29:40Our relationship with them is one-sided.
0:29:40 > 0:29:44It is not reciprocated. To think otherwise is delusory.
0:29:45 > 0:29:47Your inflatable rubber doll friend
0:29:47 > 0:29:49does not love you.
0:29:49 > 0:29:51IT, not she,
0:29:51 > 0:29:53is un-aroused by you.
0:29:59 > 0:30:01Frank Lloyd Wright,
0:30:01 > 0:30:04an architect almost as protean as Le Corbusier,
0:30:04 > 0:30:06was among those who took up the fashion
0:30:06 > 0:30:08for Mayan architecture,
0:30:08 > 0:30:12a fashion which peaked in California in the late 1920s.
0:30:12 > 0:30:15Though "architecture" may not be the way to describe it.
0:30:15 > 0:30:19It was, rather, a question of exterior decoration.
0:30:19 > 0:30:21Of buildings sheathed in blocks,
0:30:21 > 0:30:23incised with motifs
0:30:23 > 0:30:26that were Mayan, or Mayan-ish,
0:30:26 > 0:30:29or Zapotec or sort of Aztec.
0:30:29 > 0:30:31This eclecticism was prompted by
0:30:31 > 0:30:35the dissemination of Mesoamerican archaeological research
0:30:35 > 0:30:38which had begun in the 1880s.
0:30:38 > 0:30:41Here, then, were the New World's own primitives.
0:30:41 > 0:30:45Save, of course, that they weren't that primitive.
0:30:45 > 0:30:50Just less well-armed than Spaniards with God on their side.
0:30:50 > 0:30:53Still, no matter how unconvincing and slight
0:30:53 > 0:30:56these initial essays might have been,
0:30:56 > 0:30:59they were significant because they were the first instances
0:30:59 > 0:31:01of architects taking their cue
0:31:01 > 0:31:05from pre-Hispanic, pre-Columbian America.
0:31:05 > 0:31:09There is a significant difference between the approach to the past
0:31:09 > 0:31:11adopted by the post-Corbusier,
0:31:11 > 0:31:13post-bunker generation
0:31:13 > 0:31:15and the imitative approach
0:31:15 > 0:31:17adopted by Frank Lloyd Wright
0:31:17 > 0:31:20and other Mayan revivalists such as the eccentric
0:31:20 > 0:31:23English-born architect Robert Stacey Judd.
0:31:23 > 0:31:27The pre-Columbian architecture to which the later generation was drawn
0:31:27 > 0:31:30was predominantly that of the Incas.
0:31:30 > 0:31:33Stern, massive, monumental,
0:31:33 > 0:31:35hardly decorated,
0:31:35 > 0:31:37Cyclopean.
0:31:37 > 0:31:41Constructed in response to the harsh Andean climate,
0:31:41 > 0:31:44it was the elemental qualities of ancient architecture
0:31:44 > 0:31:47that the Brutalists immersed themselves in,
0:31:47 > 0:31:50as if learning how to build from the beginning.
0:31:50 > 0:31:53They were finding their way back to rudiments.
0:31:53 > 0:31:55There was no question of mimicry,
0:31:55 > 0:31:58of reproducing decorative surfaces.
0:31:58 > 0:32:00Here was an aesthetic programme
0:32:00 > 0:32:02which sought to rediscover the very essence
0:32:02 > 0:32:05of architecture, which aspired
0:32:05 > 0:32:08to start from scratch.
0:32:08 > 0:32:10Because it was conducted in public,
0:32:10 > 0:32:13it was a far more audacious programme
0:32:13 > 0:32:17than that of the painters and sculptors of half a century before.
0:32:17 > 0:32:19Far riskier, too.
0:32:20 > 0:32:24It has to be emphasised that the denigration of Brutalism
0:32:24 > 0:32:26by the aesthetically myopic
0:32:26 > 0:32:29is almost entirely retrospective.
0:32:29 > 0:32:32These people habitually use the label
0:32:32 > 0:32:36to describe everything that was built in the long '60s.
0:32:38 > 0:32:41As I say, they're myopes,
0:32:41 > 0:32:43such is their furious abhorrence
0:32:43 > 0:32:47of any architecture created since the days when television was powered
0:32:47 > 0:32:48by steam,
0:32:48 > 0:32:51they can't distinguish sculptural Brutalism
0:32:51 > 0:32:53from systems building
0:32:53 > 0:32:54or from curtain walling.
0:32:57 > 0:33:00The world of half a century ago,
0:33:00 > 0:33:02the world that Brutalism was built for,
0:33:02 > 0:33:04was far from hostile to it.
0:33:04 > 0:33:06It was keenly receptive,
0:33:06 > 0:33:08excited by newness,
0:33:08 > 0:33:10eager for change,
0:33:10 > 0:33:12maybe naively eager,
0:33:12 > 0:33:14but change was presumed to mean "better".
0:33:16 > 0:33:17Architectural change
0:33:17 > 0:33:19was inhibited by the rationing of materials
0:33:19 > 0:33:22such as steel and by building licences,
0:33:22 > 0:33:25which were not removed until late 1954.
0:33:25 > 0:33:30Even after that date, there were still shortages of materials.
0:33:30 > 0:33:33The timespan between a scheme's inception
0:33:33 > 0:33:36and its completion is more often to be measured in years
0:33:36 > 0:33:39that in months.
0:33:39 > 0:33:42The shape of the building boom of the '60s
0:33:42 > 0:33:45was being hatched in the '50s
0:33:45 > 0:33:49by young architects who had mostly fought in the War.
0:33:49 > 0:33:51"Young" is in quotes.
0:33:51 > 0:33:53A "young" architect
0:33:53 > 0:33:57is almost certainly at least 40 years old.
0:33:58 > 0:34:01There could be no greater incongruity
0:34:01 > 0:34:04than that of Brutalism's complexity,
0:34:04 > 0:34:06earnest sternness,
0:34:06 > 0:34:07danger and menace
0:34:07 > 0:34:10and early pop music's
0:34:10 > 0:34:11sweet simplicity,
0:34:11 > 0:34:12fluffy immediacy
0:34:12 > 0:34:14and eagerness to please.
0:34:14 > 0:34:16MUSIC: "Poor Little Fool" by Ricky Nelson
0:34:16 > 0:34:17They belonged to different eras
0:34:17 > 0:34:20which happened to exist at the same time.
0:34:20 > 0:34:22They inhabited parallel worlds.
0:34:22 > 0:34:26The people who made pop were mostly a generation junior.
0:34:26 > 0:34:28These two expressions
0:34:28 > 0:34:30of the late '50s and the '60s
0:34:30 > 0:34:32do not meet each other.
0:34:32 > 0:34:34The music of Brutalism
0:34:34 > 0:34:36is musique concrete,
0:34:36 > 0:34:38Schoenberg, Berg,
0:34:38 > 0:34:39Miles Davis,
0:34:39 > 0:34:41Surrealists
0:34:41 > 0:34:42and Stockhausen.
0:34:44 > 0:34:48Events do not adhere to calendrical chance.
0:34:48 > 0:34:52The 1960s London that is repetitively shown on telly
0:34:52 > 0:34:55comprises mini skirts, Mini Mokes,
0:34:55 > 0:34:57mods, hippies,
0:34:57 > 0:34:58Kings Roadies,
0:34:58 > 0:35:00dolly birds, LSD trips,
0:35:00 > 0:35:01addled mysticism,
0:35:01 > 0:35:03philosopher hairdressers,
0:35:03 > 0:35:05gingham, the Pheasantry,
0:35:05 > 0:35:06Courreges,
0:35:06 > 0:35:08Hung On You,
0:35:08 > 0:35:11a kaleidoscope of polychromatic vacuity
0:35:11 > 0:35:14and enjoyably witless hedonism.
0:35:14 > 0:35:16This was the exclusive London
0:35:16 > 0:35:21of David Bailey and perhaps 1,000 of his very closest friends.
0:35:21 > 0:35:24It was hardly characteristic of the experience
0:35:24 > 0:35:28of the other 7 or 8 million inhabitants.
0:35:28 > 0:35:29As is often the case,
0:35:29 > 0:35:34the atypical is presented as being the everyday.
0:35:34 > 0:35:37Even though pop music grew up in the middle '60s,
0:35:37 > 0:35:41there was still an absence of affiliation with the architecture.
0:35:41 > 0:35:44There was still a generation gap.
0:35:44 > 0:35:47Brutalism was mostly Dad's architecture.
0:35:47 > 0:35:51And it became, furthermore, the architecture of the establishment,
0:35:51 > 0:35:53of Harold Wilson's administration,
0:35:53 > 0:35:56of the new universities, of municipal libraries,
0:35:56 > 0:35:58of the state's theatres and galleries,
0:35:58 > 0:36:02of cultural welfarism and hospitals.
0:36:03 > 0:36:07Save for a vague correspondence between the blues craze
0:36:07 > 0:36:09of 1962-1964
0:36:09 > 0:36:12and the architectural fascination with the primitive,
0:36:12 > 0:36:14governmentally sanctioned Brutalism
0:36:14 > 0:36:17had only the frailest cultural links
0:36:17 > 0:36:20to popular music, clothes and so on.
0:36:25 > 0:36:28What it did share was an insatiable appetite
0:36:28 > 0:36:31for turning over the old order, for novelty.
0:36:31 > 0:36:33For novelty for its own sake, maybe.
0:36:33 > 0:36:35But why not?
0:36:35 > 0:36:40Novelty did not then carry pejorative implication.
0:36:40 > 0:36:42The forces of novelty
0:36:42 > 0:36:45pulled in countless conflicting directions.
0:36:45 > 0:36:47Nouvelle Vague, Nouvelle Cuisine,
0:36:47 > 0:36:48New Left,
0:36:48 > 0:36:51Nouveau Roman, the New Psychiatry.
0:36:51 > 0:36:54The therapeutic state is controlling you.
0:36:54 > 0:36:55Bin your medication.
0:36:55 > 0:36:59New universities busily invented new disciplines.
0:36:59 > 0:37:02The Vatican, too, decreed that new churches
0:37:02 > 0:37:04should be churches in the round,
0:37:04 > 0:37:06like theatres in the round.
0:37:06 > 0:37:08Every town was awarded a shopping mall,
0:37:08 > 0:37:10a bypass,
0:37:10 > 0:37:12and a series of underpasses,
0:37:12 > 0:37:17where aspiring sex offenders could loiter and learn their trade.
0:37:17 > 0:37:19The future was almost upon us.
0:37:19 > 0:37:21"It's just over there, mate!"
0:37:21 > 0:37:24Tomorrow's transport would be powered
0:37:24 > 0:37:25by magnetic levitation.
0:37:25 > 0:37:30We would soon feed ourselves on a regime of capsules and pills,
0:37:30 > 0:37:32emigrate to space colonies,
0:37:32 > 0:37:33teach animals to speak,
0:37:33 > 0:37:36transfer thoughts, wear woggles,
0:37:36 > 0:37:37banish disease,
0:37:37 > 0:37:40never have to work because robots would do it for us.
0:37:40 > 0:37:45Attain immortality in plastic bubbles.
0:37:45 > 0:37:46The heart that beats within us
0:37:46 > 0:37:48is made from Gore-Tex
0:37:48 > 0:37:49and within that heart,
0:37:49 > 0:37:51and within our mind,
0:37:51 > 0:37:53is an unshakeable belief in progress
0:37:53 > 0:37:55which would beget further progress,
0:37:55 > 0:37:59which would beget further progress, and so on and on.
0:38:02 > 0:38:05It turned out to be anything but unshakeable.
0:38:05 > 0:38:08Ken James, the scientist who introduced
0:38:08 > 0:38:11operational research and computing to the Civil Service,
0:38:11 > 0:38:13had lived through a mid-century
0:38:13 > 0:38:17dominated by two genocidal theocracies,
0:38:17 > 0:38:21Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany.
0:38:21 > 0:38:24He remarked that the last thing he expected to see
0:38:24 > 0:38:26late in his long lifetime
0:38:26 > 0:38:31was religion once again raising its ugly head.
0:38:31 > 0:38:34But that, of course, is what happened.
0:38:34 > 0:38:36The Ayatollah Khomeini,
0:38:36 > 0:38:39whom the squeamish Giscard and the ailing Shah
0:38:39 > 0:38:41had neglected to assassinate,
0:38:41 > 0:38:43revived theocratic rule.
0:38:44 > 0:38:46Whilst in the addled West there grew
0:38:46 > 0:38:51from its beginnings as a late-1960s alternative backwater
0:38:51 > 0:38:53a gloopy soup of mysticism,
0:38:53 > 0:38:56tree-hugging, whole-earthness
0:38:56 > 0:38:59and the advent of the environmental piety
0:38:59 > 0:39:01which is today de rigueur.
0:39:04 > 0:39:06To which the apt reply is...
0:39:10 > 0:39:13This process does not represent progress.
0:39:13 > 0:39:15Indeed, the very notion of progress
0:39:15 > 0:39:18is today widely discredited
0:39:18 > 0:39:20as a sort of hubris,
0:39:20 > 0:39:21a relic of when mankind,
0:39:21 > 0:39:23in its vainglorious naivety,
0:39:23 > 0:39:25held itself to be all-powerful,
0:39:25 > 0:39:27capable of ruling the world.
0:39:29 > 0:39:32At the high point of Brutalism, I was in my teens.
0:39:32 > 0:39:36I shall never forget my excitement when, walking across Hyde Park,
0:39:36 > 0:39:40I saw the Royal College of Art for the first time.
0:39:40 > 0:39:42And I shall never forget my amazement
0:39:42 > 0:39:44at the sheer virtuosity
0:39:44 > 0:39:46of the Tricorn,
0:39:46 > 0:39:48almost finished, not yet inhabited.
0:39:48 > 0:39:51It was like concrete from outer space.
0:39:55 > 0:39:57You get to realise that
0:39:57 > 0:40:01you have lived through what to subsequent generations is history.
0:40:01 > 0:40:03Second-hand, lied about,
0:40:03 > 0:40:05generalised, mediated.
0:40:05 > 0:40:10And only obliquely related to one's own experience
0:40:10 > 0:40:11of a far-off epoch
0:40:11 > 0:40:13whose mores and hopes and moods
0:40:13 > 0:40:16actually promised a better world.
0:40:16 > 0:40:19Though we knew the promise was preposterous.
0:40:21 > 0:40:24The cretinous apes of the demolition community
0:40:24 > 0:40:28must salivate at the very thought of Brutalism.
0:40:28 > 0:40:30Such juicy pickings.
0:40:31 > 0:40:33England's two finest Brutalist schemes,
0:40:33 > 0:40:37designed by Rodney Gordon of the Owen Luder Partnership,
0:40:37 > 0:40:40the Trident at Gateshead and the Tricorn at Portsmouth,
0:40:40 > 0:40:42have both been destroyed.
0:40:45 > 0:40:50English Heritage, typically, did not lift a finger to protest.
0:40:50 > 0:40:56You can imagine the kind of timid dross they've been replaced with.
0:40:56 > 0:40:58Pimlico School, gone.
0:40:58 > 0:41:01Basil Spence's Hutchesontown flats in Glasgow,
0:41:01 > 0:41:03gone.
0:41:03 > 0:41:06Long-outlived by the ephemeral Rolling Stones,
0:41:06 > 0:41:08the ephemeral Roy Wood,
0:41:08 > 0:41:10the ephemeral Joe Brown,
0:41:10 > 0:41:13which only goes to show...show what?
0:41:13 > 0:41:15Imperial College, London,
0:41:15 > 0:41:17got rid of its magnificent Hall of Residence.
0:41:17 > 0:41:21English Heritage, well...you know the score.
0:41:21 > 0:41:25Cooling towers are sublime structures.
0:41:25 > 0:41:27They enhance the landscape.
0:41:27 > 0:41:31They especially enhance the landscape of the Flatlands.
0:41:31 > 0:41:35They make the East Coast Mainline exciting.
0:41:35 > 0:41:37They create their own weather.
0:41:37 > 0:41:39Those at Richborough, near Ramsgate,
0:41:39 > 0:41:41at Sheffield and at Retford,
0:41:41 > 0:41:44have been wantonly demolished.
0:41:44 > 0:41:48Richard Green, an economist, who is professor of something called
0:41:48 > 0:41:50Sustainable Energy in Business
0:41:50 > 0:41:54at demolition-crazed Imperial College, London,
0:41:54 > 0:41:58defends the destruction of cooling towers thus -
0:41:58 > 0:42:00"You have to think,
0:42:00 > 0:42:02"how much does this enhance the landscape,
0:42:02 > 0:42:04"compared to what else we could do
0:42:04 > 0:42:07"if we weren't having to maintain the towers."
0:42:25 > 0:42:28This appears to be the very epitome
0:42:28 > 0:42:31of unreflective short-termism
0:42:31 > 0:42:36and a not particularly convincing justification for sanctioned vandalism.
0:42:36 > 0:42:39Would Professor Greene propose
0:42:39 > 0:42:42building a science park at Stonehenge,
0:42:42 > 0:42:46or dumping a housing estate on Maumbury Rings,
0:42:46 > 0:42:50in order to make these sites pay their way?
0:42:50 > 0:42:54Would he be in favour of defacing Maiden Castle's environs
0:42:54 > 0:42:57with a kitschy, twee, Germanic development
0:42:57 > 0:43:00and calling it Thomas Hardy Theme World?
0:43:00 > 0:43:02No, calling it Poundbury.
0:43:06 > 0:43:08The intrinsic value of a structure
0:43:08 > 0:43:11has nothing to do with how old it is.
0:43:11 > 0:43:13A plant
0:43:13 > 0:43:15whose age is measured in millennia
0:43:15 > 0:43:17is not necessarily superior to a plant
0:43:17 > 0:43:20whose age is measured in decades.
0:43:20 > 0:43:23There is, incidentally, nothing remotely sustainable
0:43:23 > 0:43:27about destroying the evidence of the recent industrial past.
0:43:27 > 0:43:28Unless, that is,
0:43:28 > 0:43:32"sustainable" merely means a devotion to the bottom line.
0:43:32 > 0:43:35The appropriation by every exciting start-up
0:43:35 > 0:43:38and thrilling enterprise of the prefix "sustainable"
0:43:38 > 0:43:40would be comical
0:43:40 > 0:43:44were it not so obviously mendacious.
0:43:44 > 0:43:46Sustainable street furniture,
0:43:46 > 0:43:48sustainable nail extensions,
0:43:48 > 0:43:50sustainable liposuction,
0:43:50 > 0:43:52sustainable logistics,
0:43:52 > 0:43:54sustainable root canals,
0:43:54 > 0:43:56sustainable bestiality,
0:43:56 > 0:43:58sustainable strategies,
0:43:58 > 0:44:00sustainable offal shampoo,
0:44:00 > 0:44:02sustainable masturbation.
0:44:04 > 0:44:06Open, transparent, sustainable.
0:44:06 > 0:44:08The three great lies of the age.
0:44:08 > 0:44:10Life itself is not sustainable.
0:44:10 > 0:44:12I'm going to die.
0:44:12 > 0:44:14You are going to die.
0:44:14 > 0:44:16Get over it.
0:44:16 > 0:44:19The sacred cow of sustainability
0:44:19 > 0:44:21is due for slaughter.
0:44:21 > 0:44:24It goes on and on and on.
0:44:24 > 0:44:26Aesthetic pygmies,
0:44:26 > 0:44:28officious functionaries,
0:44:28 > 0:44:31mediocrities with pompous job titles.
0:44:31 > 0:44:34Soon an entire architectural epoch
0:44:34 > 0:44:37will have been pulverised into extinction
0:44:37 > 0:44:40by legally sanctioned vandals.
0:44:40 > 0:44:41Why?
0:44:41 > 0:44:44A lack of appetite for sublimity,
0:44:44 > 0:44:47a fear of being afraid or overawed,
0:44:47 > 0:44:50a mistrust of might,
0:44:50 > 0:44:52A despisal of intellectual rigour,
0:44:52 > 0:44:57an impatience with anything which might be deemed difficult,
0:44:57 > 0:45:00these values..."values"
0:45:00 > 0:45:03are bound in a Western culture
0:45:03 > 0:45:05which demands cosiness,
0:45:05 > 0:45:08comfort, instant comprehensibility,
0:45:08 > 0:45:09pap,
0:45:09 > 0:45:11and populism's goody bag.
0:45:11 > 0:45:14And the solaces of smallness of scale.
0:45:14 > 0:45:18Humans in the First World, the rich world
0:45:18 > 0:45:20may have got physically larger,
0:45:20 > 0:45:22fatter,
0:45:22 > 0:45:25but the objects around them have been miniaturised.
0:45:25 > 0:45:29Fubsy hands grasp midget computers.
0:45:29 > 0:45:34Sausage fingers miss-hit Tony Meyboards.
0:45:34 > 0:45:37We live in a microworld.
0:45:37 > 0:45:40We live, too, in an atomised world.
0:45:40 > 0:45:45There is every reason to be nostalgic for the Cold War.
0:45:45 > 0:45:49But why the structures that derive from that era should be deemed
0:45:49 > 0:45:51surplus to requirement and thus
0:45:51 > 0:45:53expendable is a different matter.
0:45:53 > 0:45:55Taste.
0:45:55 > 0:45:56Crazes.
0:45:56 > 0:45:58The adherence to norms.
0:46:00 > 0:46:02Fashion.
0:46:02 > 0:46:05Delirious High Victorian monuments
0:46:05 > 0:46:08were obliterated in the name of common sense
0:46:08 > 0:46:10and civilisation,
0:46:10 > 0:46:15which was, apparently, at its height in the 18th century.
0:46:15 > 0:46:17What is it with the Georgians?
0:46:17 > 0:46:20Georgian, Georgian, Georgian
0:46:20 > 0:46:22Barry Lyndon, Quality Street,
0:46:22 > 0:46:25the crescents, the minuets, the follies,
0:46:25 > 0:46:28the elegance, the stab-me-vitals,
0:46:28 > 0:46:32the dignity, the manners, the punctilios.
0:46:32 > 0:46:35The dentistry, the syphilis, the sewers,
0:46:35 > 0:46:36the rookeries, the halitosis,
0:46:36 > 0:46:39the life spans, the malnutrition,
0:46:39 > 0:46:42or ought I not to have mentioned these?
0:46:42 > 0:46:44What it is with the Georgians
0:46:44 > 0:46:46is the lack of threat.
0:46:46 > 0:46:49There's no animus, they're modest,
0:46:49 > 0:46:50they doff their caps,
0:46:50 > 0:46:53they give great forelock, they're apologetic,
0:46:53 > 0:46:54they say sorry.
0:46:54 > 0:46:58And they have fomented an architectural ethos which says sorry
0:46:58 > 0:47:01in countless ways, in manifold styles,
0:47:01 > 0:47:06which cause the greatest offence by attempting not to give offence.
0:47:08 > 0:47:11The destruction of Brutalist buildings
0:47:11 > 0:47:15is more than the destruction of a particular mode of architecture.
0:47:15 > 0:47:17It is like burning books.
0:47:17 > 0:47:20It's a form of censorship of the past,
0:47:20 > 0:47:23a discomfiting past, by the present.
0:47:23 > 0:47:26It's the revenge of a mediocre age
0:47:26 > 0:47:28on an age of epic grandeur.
0:47:28 > 0:47:31It's the cutting down to size of a culture
0:47:31 > 0:47:33which committed the cardinal sin
0:47:33 > 0:47:35of getting above its station,
0:47:35 > 0:47:39of pushing God aside and challenging nature.
0:47:39 > 0:47:41It's the destruction, too,
0:47:41 > 0:47:45of the embarrassing evidence of a determined optimism
0:47:45 > 0:47:48that made us more potent than we have become.
0:47:51 > 0:47:55We don't measure up against those who took risks,
0:47:55 > 0:47:58who flew and plunged to find new ways of doing things,
0:47:58 > 0:48:00who were not scared to experiment,
0:48:00 > 0:48:03who lived lives of perpetual inquiry.
0:48:05 > 0:48:09Here was mankind at its mightiest.
0:48:09 > 0:48:11Brutalism has to go.
0:48:11 > 0:48:14For it is the built evidence of the fact that once upon a time,
0:48:14 > 0:48:17we were not scared to address the Earth
0:48:17 > 0:48:19in the knowledge that the Earth
0:48:19 > 0:48:22would not respond, could not respond.
0:48:22 > 0:48:25Brutalism's grandeur taunts us.
0:48:25 > 0:48:28It reminds us that our supposed reciprocal
0:48:28 > 0:48:31compact with the Earth is an illusion.
0:48:31 > 0:48:34The most powerful legacy of the age of Brutalism
0:48:34 > 0:48:39is the legacy of the reaction against it.
0:48:39 > 0:48:44A reaction formed of an alliance of moralistic yoghurt weavers,
0:48:44 > 0:48:46New Left pietists
0:48:46 > 0:48:48and free-market pirates.
0:48:48 > 0:48:51Hippie entrepreneurs were merely Manchester liberals
0:48:51 > 0:48:52in patchouli and velvet.
0:48:52 > 0:48:55Thatcherites avant les lettres.
0:48:55 > 0:48:58By the time this generation was middle-aged,
0:48:58 > 0:49:00its bullying sententiousness was
0:49:00 > 0:49:02established as the consensus
0:49:02 > 0:49:06from which only the perverse excepted themselves.
0:49:06 > 0:49:09It has trodden the green path to self-righteousness
0:49:09 > 0:49:11and big-heartedness.
0:49:11 > 0:49:13It cares for animals,
0:49:13 > 0:49:14it cares for trees.
0:49:14 > 0:49:16Boulders have rights.
0:49:16 > 0:49:18Every grain of the Earth's sand
0:49:18 > 0:49:20possesses a raft of entitlements.
0:49:20 > 0:49:24Beware the child who picks a wild flower.
0:49:24 > 0:49:26The new Boney, Bono,
0:49:26 > 0:49:30will smother the little mite with humanitarian concern.
0:49:30 > 0:49:34Badger gassers, innocently going about their daily business,
0:49:34 > 0:49:37risk finding Brian May strumming some dreadful
0:49:37 > 0:49:40rock anthem to his stripey friends
0:49:40 > 0:49:43in their sett.
0:49:43 > 0:49:45And the post-Brutalist architecture
0:49:45 > 0:49:46of the past 40 years
0:49:46 > 0:49:48which has accompanied this posture
0:49:48 > 0:49:52has, predominantly, been commensurately pessimistic,
0:49:52 > 0:49:54the architecture of no confidence,
0:49:54 > 0:49:57the architecture of not standing out,
0:49:57 > 0:50:01the architecture of playing safe.
0:50:01 > 0:50:02Predominantly.
0:50:04 > 0:50:06The tiny proportion of stuff
0:50:06 > 0:50:08by big-name goats
0:50:08 > 0:50:10which is recurrently mediated,
0:50:10 > 0:50:11flatteringly photographed
0:50:11 > 0:50:13and slavishly written about,
0:50:13 > 0:50:16is, as usual, far from typical.
0:50:23 > 0:50:25What is typical, always has been,
0:50:25 > 0:50:27always will be,
0:50:27 > 0:50:30is the work of the small-name sheep.
0:50:30 > 0:50:33Neo-vernacular, which is polite to the Earth.
0:50:33 > 0:50:36Special-needs post-modernism,
0:50:36 > 0:50:39in case the Earth is a slow learner.
0:50:39 > 0:50:42Because, however, the Earth is inanimate,
0:50:42 > 0:50:44it doesn't understand when
0:50:44 > 0:50:48it is being treated with respect or kindness or gentleness.
0:50:48 > 0:50:50It doesn't know it has friends,
0:50:50 > 0:50:53it is incapable of such comprehension.
0:50:53 > 0:50:56Its friends are cheerfully delusional.
0:50:56 > 0:51:00The poor saps might as well be raging wrists gaping at a porn star,
0:51:00 > 0:51:03telling themselves "she wants me".
0:51:03 > 0:51:05There's an entrenched category error here.
0:51:05 > 0:51:07Volcanoes and tsunamis
0:51:07 > 0:51:10are incapable of distinguishing between humans
0:51:10 > 0:51:13who build eco-chummy benders
0:51:13 > 0:51:15and humans who construct
0:51:15 > 0:51:18sculpturally magnificent knolls of Brutalism.
0:51:18 > 0:51:21It's rather like expecting a bomb-planting jihadi
0:51:21 > 0:51:24to have the nous to distinguish
0:51:24 > 0:51:26between infidel victims who are fellow travellers
0:51:26 > 0:51:28of his half-witted cause
0:51:28 > 0:51:30and infidel victims
0:51:30 > 0:51:33who would happily string him up.
0:51:33 > 0:51:36Soft-building is made out of bad faith,
0:51:36 > 0:51:39out of a mendacious proposition.
0:51:39 > 0:51:41It is, of course, made
0:51:41 > 0:51:44by and for guilt-ridden humans.
0:51:45 > 0:51:47Apologising to the Earth
0:51:47 > 0:51:50for our forebears' treatment of it
0:51:50 > 0:51:54is even more vacuous, even more wretchedly self-serving
0:51:54 > 0:51:57than apologising to the heirs of slaves,
0:51:57 > 0:51:59to the heirs of the exploited
0:51:59 > 0:52:01and the mass-murdered.
0:52:01 > 0:52:06Still, while my coevals have been luxuriating
0:52:06 > 0:52:08in a lifetime's cosseting penitence
0:52:08 > 0:52:11and cosying up to their pain
0:52:11 > 0:52:13and nursing their precious alienation,
0:52:13 > 0:52:16there has grown up a more hard-headed generation
0:52:16 > 0:52:19which understands the Brutalist aesthetic,
0:52:19 > 0:52:20its social programme
0:52:20 > 0:52:22and urbanistic vitality,
0:52:22 > 0:52:26and which treats it with an appreciative enthusiasm.
0:52:26 > 0:52:29Now, half a century after its heyday,
0:52:29 > 0:52:33a wholesale rehabilitation of Brutalism is under way.
0:52:35 > 0:52:37The knee-jerk deprecations
0:52:37 > 0:52:39of bien pensant non-thinkers
0:52:39 > 0:52:43are being ridiculed by a new generation,
0:52:43 > 0:52:45mostly born after that heyday.
0:52:45 > 0:52:48The received ideas are being questioned.
0:52:48 > 0:52:51The aesthetic, the ethic
0:52:51 > 0:52:54and the antagonism are being scrutinised.
0:52:54 > 0:52:56Michael Abrahamsom,
0:52:56 > 0:52:58whose photo archive is called
0:52:58 > 0:53:00Fuck Yeah Brutalism.
0:53:00 > 0:53:02Louise Hayward, born 1963,
0:53:02 > 0:53:06makes prints of South London social housing.
0:53:09 > 0:53:12David Liodet, born 1971,
0:53:12 > 0:53:16is an archivist of architectural postcards.
0:53:16 > 0:53:18David Heffer, born 1935,
0:53:18 > 0:53:22makes paintings of South London social housing.
0:53:26 > 0:53:30Frederic Chaubin, born 1959,
0:53:30 > 0:53:33is a photographer of the Brezhnev-and-Kosygin -play-The-Sands-in-Vegas
0:53:33 > 0:53:35school of architecture
0:53:35 > 0:53:38in the former Soviet satellite states.
0:53:38 > 0:53:41Jan Kempenaers, born 1968,
0:53:41 > 0:53:43is a photographer of the monuments
0:53:43 > 0:53:45that Marshal Tito erected
0:53:45 > 0:53:47the preserve the memory of the National Liberation War.
0:53:47 > 0:53:50The war against Hitler.
0:53:50 > 0:53:54Nicola Moulin, born 1970,
0:53:54 > 0:53:56is a photographer and collagist
0:53:56 > 0:54:00of ideal dystopias and immense, grim morphascapes.
0:54:00 > 0:54:03Neil Montier, born 1982,
0:54:03 > 0:54:06is a photographer and collagist of desolate landscapes
0:54:06 > 0:54:10infected by ruinous point blocks and viaducts.
0:54:10 > 0:54:13The sheer joylessness is thrilling.
0:54:13 > 0:54:16Bas Princen, born 1975,
0:54:16 > 0:54:19is a photographer and collagist.
0:54:19 > 0:54:22Peter Mackertich, born 1948,
0:54:22 > 0:54:25is a photographer of the Atlantic Wall.
0:54:25 > 0:54:28These artists are using Brutalism
0:54:28 > 0:54:31as Brutalists used rock formations
0:54:31 > 0:54:32and castle ruins.
0:54:36 > 0:54:39As I said, not all crazes,
0:54:39 > 0:54:42not all tastes, not all fashions
0:54:42 > 0:54:43not even all religions,
0:54:43 > 0:54:46are blatantly commercial creations.
0:54:46 > 0:54:49Some, the worthwhile minority,
0:54:49 > 0:54:51are born of a commonality,
0:54:51 > 0:54:53a harmonious unison,
0:54:53 > 0:54:54a thread of juncture,
0:54:54 > 0:54:57a complex combination
0:54:57 > 0:54:59of circumstance, coincidence,
0:54:59 > 0:55:05chance and, no doubt, various other alliterative properties.
0:55:05 > 0:55:07A number of British writers,
0:55:07 > 0:55:10most notably Owen Hatherley, born 1981,
0:55:10 > 0:55:13and Douglas Murphy, born 1982,
0:55:13 > 0:55:17have disputed the received history of Brutalist social housing,
0:55:17 > 0:55:20have questioned the unquestionable.
0:55:20 > 0:55:25The supposition that such housing was not welcomed by its tenants.
0:55:27 > 0:55:31It was welcomed. It was new, exciting, hygienic, light.
0:55:31 > 0:55:34There were inside toilets and central heating.
0:55:42 > 0:55:44It had yet to be gangrened
0:55:44 > 0:55:47by local authority mismanagement and neglect.
0:55:47 > 0:55:51You don't buy a car and then never get it serviced.
0:55:51 > 0:55:53The lifts had yet to be pissed in,
0:55:53 > 0:55:56the stairwells had yet to become crime scenes,
0:55:56 > 0:56:00it had yet to be used as a sort of asylum.
0:56:00 > 0:56:02That was the horrible future,
0:56:02 > 0:56:04which was by no means inevitable.
0:56:07 > 0:56:10These writers have displayed a nuanced nostalgia
0:56:10 > 0:56:12for a utopian grandeur
0:56:12 > 0:56:18which was far more realised than the media have subsequently been willing to admit.
0:56:24 > 0:56:27As I say, it is the bullying,
0:56:27 > 0:56:30loudmouth twits of the political and journalistic classes
0:56:30 > 0:56:33who have done, and continue to do,
0:56:33 > 0:56:35most of the objecting.
0:56:35 > 0:56:37Whatever party or faction they belong to,
0:56:37 > 0:56:41they stick like glue to the accepted wisdom,
0:56:41 > 0:56:46Wisdom here means its very opposite, ignorance.
0:56:46 > 0:56:48They have another shortcoming.
0:56:51 > 0:56:55We are witnessing the emergence of Neo-Brutalist architecture.
0:56:55 > 0:56:58It is not revivalist.
0:56:58 > 0:57:02It begins where first-generation Brutalism finished.
0:57:02 > 0:57:05The timid piety of sustainability
0:57:05 > 0:57:09is being abandoned in favour of a more aggressive stance.
0:57:09 > 0:57:12Green architecture has been a failure,
0:57:12 > 0:57:15a spendthrift cosmetic exercise
0:57:15 > 0:57:18in environmental correctness and self-righteousness.
0:57:18 > 0:57:19Architects are once again
0:57:19 > 0:57:23considering themselves to be artists who lead
0:57:23 > 0:57:27rather than meekly following as social workers, climate guardians,
0:57:27 > 0:57:30functionaries, who do the bidding
0:57:30 > 0:57:34of the consensual bland mass.
0:57:34 > 0:57:36This signals a cultural shift,
0:57:36 > 0:57:40a move away from inoffensive accessibility,
0:57:40 > 0:57:44eager-to-please lowest-common- denominator architecture,
0:57:44 > 0:57:46towards what artists ought to do,
0:57:46 > 0:57:48please themselves.
0:57:48 > 0:57:53Create the unknown and assert mankind's supremacy over the Earth
0:57:53 > 0:57:56rather than cosy up to the inanimate.
0:57:56 > 0:57:59This revived Brutalism is saying once again,
0:57:59 > 0:58:06"YOU are the audience, WE are the creators. No concessions."
0:58:06 > 0:58:07We're going to be getting
0:58:07 > 0:58:09an architecture as tough
0:58:09 > 0:58:12as that archetypal Cold War figure,
0:58:12 > 0:58:17the steroid-enhanced East German woman shot-putter
0:58:17 > 0:58:20fighting off the crinkle-necked security simian
0:58:20 > 0:58:23who is attempting to arrest her for shoplifting.
0:58:23 > 0:58:27An architecture which in the words of Mr Owen Luder...
0:58:27 > 0:58:30Doesn't have any reason to say sorry.