Part 4 – Brutalism Today & Tomorrow
Lecture Summary:
Brutalism was a more completely global architectural style than any that had gone before. When it fell from fashion it came to be hated with a proportionately extreme vigour. Today it has come to be appreciated and admired by many, but uncertainty still hangs over many of its masterpieces, and a much greater number of decent, ordinary Brutalist buildings. This seminar will discuss the standing of Brutalism today, both in terms of taste and in terms of building performance.
For all the optimism and creativity they embody, the Brutalist buildings discussed in this series cost, between them, an enormous amount of natural resources: steel for reinforcement, stone for aggregate and cement, and the fossil fuel heat to process, transport and deploy huge tonnages of materials. Almost no one knew at the time what harm this was doing, but looking back from a time of deepening ecological crisis, this talk will investigate the implications of climate change for the Brutalist buildings we inherit, and will ask what Brutalism has to teach us about finding our way to a sustainable future on a planet worth living on.
Speaker: Dr. Barnabas Calder
Biography
Dr Barnabas Calder is Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Liverpool. He is a historian specialising in architecture since 1945, and the history of architecture and energy.
He has lived in one of the buildings in his book Raw Concrete: the Beauty of Brutalism, worked in another, and would love to have the opportunity to live and work in most of the rest.