Part 4 – Brutalism Today & Tomorrow
Lecture Summary:
Brutalism was a more global architectural style than any style that had gone before it. When it fell from fashion, it came to be hated with an equally extreme intensity. Today Brutalism has come to be appreciated and admired by many, but uncertainty still hangs over many of its masterpieces as well as its less distinguished examples. This seminar will discuss the standing of Brutalism today, both in terms of taste and in terms of building performance.
For all of the optimism and creativity they embody, Brutalist buildings have required an enormous sum in 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 recognized at the time the harm that 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 our planet.
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.