WEBVTT - Leave Brutalism Alone! 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:11.559 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, 0:00:11.560 --> 0:00:15.080 and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck Bence 0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:18.360 here sitting in for Jerry, which we're all very happy about. Frankly, 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:22.120 that's our preference. And this is stuff I'm kidding, and 0:00:22.160 --> 0:00:23.279 this is stuff you should know. 0:00:24.840 --> 0:00:26.560 It's been a while since you bagged on Jerry for 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:27.080 no reason. 0:00:27.920 --> 0:00:30.400 I know things have felt weird. Now I just reset 0:00:30.440 --> 0:00:30.880 them again. 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:35.320 I'm excited about this one. This is another if you're 0:00:35.360 --> 0:00:38.519 listening at home, we would really encourage you to try 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:41.800 and follow along by looking up some photographs of some 0:00:41.840 --> 0:00:44.120 of the things we mentioned, because obviously we're talking about 0:00:44.159 --> 0:00:49.080 a design style of architecture, and those are always better 0:00:49.159 --> 0:00:51.360 when you can see some of this stuff and do 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:52.040 so safely. 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:55.279 Yeah, because it's really difficult to describe a building in 0:00:55.320 --> 0:00:59.160 any really good terms, you know, or any way that 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:01.400 you're just like, oh, I don't even need to see 0:01:01.640 --> 0:01:03.840 the picture of it. I totally got what you're saying. 0:01:04.400 --> 0:01:05.280 But we still try. 0:01:05.600 --> 0:01:08.640 We definitely still try, and probably of all the architecture 0:01:08.680 --> 0:01:13.280 there is, brutalist might be the easiest to describe without 0:01:13.319 --> 0:01:14.080 looking at it. 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:18.400 Maybe true, But then when you look at brutalist things, 0:01:18.640 --> 0:01:21.680 there's so much variety within that category. 0:01:21.840 --> 0:01:24.959 Yeah. Yeah, And if you hadn't guessed by now we're 0:01:25.000 --> 0:01:27.760 talking about brutalism, if you didn't pick up from that 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:30.440 exchange we just had or the title of this episode 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:34.880 and brutalist architecture, even if you don't know what it is, 0:01:35.040 --> 0:01:38.800 you have almost certainly witnessed it, maybe even been inside 0:01:38.840 --> 0:01:42.160 a brutalist building, because they're very often public buildings, as 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:49.600 we'll see, And brutalism is probably the most reviled, misunderstood, 0:01:50.320 --> 0:01:54.960 hated architecture of all time. It's just so easy to 0:01:55.000 --> 0:01:56.600 hate it, and so many people hate it for so 0:01:56.680 --> 0:02:01.639 many different, sometimes really weird reasons. But there also seems 0:02:01.680 --> 0:02:06.440 to be a renaissance and appreciating brutalism which is arriving 0:02:06.520 --> 0:02:10.720 just in time, because brutalist buildings are in really grave 0:02:10.800 --> 0:02:14.760 danger being torn down and erased from architectural history all 0:02:14.800 --> 0:02:15.760 over the world. 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:20.720 Yeah. Absolutely, I learned a cool thing today which I 0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:23.320 never knew before. And I thought about this when I 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:27.120 was in Mexico City, which has a lot of great 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:31.720 brutalist architecture. Yeah, including I mean that airport's got to 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:32.760 be brutalist. 0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:35.960 Right, Yeah, as a matter of fact, it's got to be. 0:02:36.160 --> 0:02:37.840 I think it is. I didn't see that. It didn't 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:40.640 come up in my research, but yes, Mexico City has 0:02:40.680 --> 0:02:41.959 a ton of good brutalism. 0:02:43.160 --> 0:02:45.080 But when I was there, I noticed some things and 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:49.240 I was like, and I saw a couple like sort 0:02:49.240 --> 0:02:52.880 of that echoed sort of pyramid style brutalism, and I 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:54.240 was like, wait a minute. I was like, these look 0:02:54.360 --> 0:02:58.240 like ancient mind temples, and if you look up like 0:02:58.400 --> 0:03:01.360 an ancient Mayan temple or it goes visit one like 0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:06.480 it's a totally brutalist thing. But I learned that apparently, 0:03:06.520 --> 0:03:10.560 originally these temples were very ornate. I saw. I can't 0:03:10.600 --> 0:03:13.040 remember where I got this, but I said, they were 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:17.519 as ornate as any neoclassical edifice in Europe. But they've 0:03:17.520 --> 0:03:20.960 been stripped down over the years from war and looting 0:03:21.400 --> 0:03:24.520 and just time, and they became brutalist in the end. 0:03:24.880 --> 0:03:28.280 Huh weird. That's fantastic and totally surprising. 0:03:28.520 --> 0:03:31.120 Yeah, so they weren't originally built that way. But when 0:03:31.400 --> 0:03:33.160 you look at a mine temple compared to like some 0:03:33.240 --> 0:03:35.880 of these other you know, like office buildings, I'm like, 0:03:36.280 --> 0:03:38.680 you say this was came around in like England in 0:03:38.680 --> 0:03:41.440 the nineteen fifties, and I say it came around long 0:03:41.480 --> 0:03:41.840 before that. 0:03:42.200 --> 0:03:45.920 So you hit upon something though that like these these 0:03:46.000 --> 0:03:49.000 mine temples are brutalist now, but they weren't before because 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:53.200 they've been stripped of their decoration or whatever. That is brutalism. 0:03:53.320 --> 0:03:56.720 It's a type of architecture that from its outset, from 0:03:56.720 --> 0:04:01.960 the creation of the building, from design onward, it's meant 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:06.040 to not have ornamentation. It's the it's the skeleton of 0:04:06.080 --> 0:04:09.920 the building, is the building. That's what brutalism is, or 0:04:09.960 --> 0:04:10.880 at least in part. 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:14.280 Yeah. And if you've ever and like we said, we'll 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:16.960 get into some of the variety within the style, but 0:04:17.040 --> 0:04:23.040 if you've ever seen a like a huge concrete, unfinished 0:04:23.279 --> 0:04:27.279 sort of concrete looking government building with the same little 0:04:27.360 --> 0:04:31.800 tiny windows and it just looks like this blocky monolith, Yeah, 0:04:31.880 --> 0:04:34.119 that is brutalism staring you in the face. 0:04:34.240 --> 0:04:37.320 Yeah. If you look at a building and suddenly Stalin 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:40.479 just comes into your head, you're looking at a brutalist 0:04:40.520 --> 0:04:41.640 building almost certainly. 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:44.960 Yeah. Or if you wonder what evil villains layer that is, 0:04:45.080 --> 0:04:47.160 it's probably a brutalist building. 0:04:47.080 --> 0:04:51.600 Right, exactly. I also had a brutalist epiphany in Mexico 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:54.520 City recently. When we were down there. We went to 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:58.440 one of the museums and they were having a brutalism exhibit, 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:04.360 and it completely reversed my feelings about brutalism. I walked 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:08.200 into that exhibit hating brutalism, and I walked out really 0:05:08.279 --> 0:05:12.000 appreciating it. And it turns out I didn't actually hate 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:16.159 brutalism all this time. I hate ugly buildings, ugly, thoughtless, dumb, 0:05:16.200 --> 0:05:20.800 boring buildings, and that is not Brutalism is not synonymous 0:05:20.800 --> 0:05:22.960 with that. It's gotten a bad name over the years, 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:26.000 and part of it is even the name itself brutalism. 0:05:26.279 --> 0:05:29.279 A lot of people think that the whole term was 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:32.920 coined to describe like how the building makes you feel 0:05:32.960 --> 0:05:37.720 when you look at it. It's brutal, it's sharp, it's merciless, 0:05:38.080 --> 0:05:42.520 has zero compassion, it's dehumanizing. That's not what the term 0:05:42.560 --> 0:05:45.440 brutalism means at all. It actually refers to a type 0:05:45.480 --> 0:05:50.000 of concrete that the French architect and designer the Corbussier 0:05:50.480 --> 0:05:53.000 introduced called beton brute. 0:05:53.200 --> 0:05:56.800 Yeah, beton brute. I think the exact English translation is 0:05:57.080 --> 0:05:59.480 gross cement exactly. 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:02.200 But they call it raw concrete. 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:06.400 Yeah, exactly, which is to say, just a raw, unfinished, 0:06:06.520 --> 0:06:11.120 poored concrete. There are a lot of houses in our 0:06:11.160 --> 0:06:15.320 surrounding neighborhoods in Atlanta now that are being built sort 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:19.280 of in this style, these huge, big concrete, blocky houses 0:06:19.320 --> 0:06:21.880 that are I think it's sort of a mishmash. It 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:26.200 definitely echoes brutalism, but most of them still have a 0:06:26.320 --> 0:06:29.039 polished sort of concrete look to them, and that is 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:31.200 not true true brutalism. 0:06:31.680 --> 0:06:36.120 No, And it's there's a lot of overlap between modernism 0:06:36.279 --> 0:06:40.120 and brutalism. They both were they both were going on 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:43.000 at the same time. And some people say that brutalism 0:06:43.080 --> 0:06:45.600 emerged out of modernism. There's a big old that's a 0:06:45.640 --> 0:06:49.520 hornousness that we're not going to get into. But just 0:06:49.839 --> 0:06:55.520 using exposed unfinished concrete is not in and of itself 0:06:55.560 --> 0:06:59.640 a brutalist building. There's other elements as well that come 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:01.280 into Yeah. 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:06.040 But I think an interesting thing is brutalism, isn't I mean, 0:07:06.040 --> 0:07:08.039 you know, and you see it, but it's it's something 0:07:08.080 --> 0:07:09.680 that I saw this. I think it was a new 0:07:09.760 --> 0:07:11.520 York Times article that said it has always sort of 0:07:11.600 --> 0:07:15.600 lacked a really clear, well articulated set of principles. 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:17.720 I saw that. I didn't agree with that. I thought 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:19.080 it was very articulated. 0:07:20.040 --> 0:07:24.480 Oh well, I think the I think what it means 0:07:24.520 --> 0:07:28.400 more is it there's there's so much variety within those principles. 0:07:28.480 --> 0:07:31.280 You can't say it's just this, because depending on what 0:07:31.320 --> 0:07:34.040 region you are in the world, the brutalist architecture is 0:07:34.040 --> 0:07:36.960 going to look different, whether it's you know, Soviet Russia 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:42.560 or postwar London, or in Brazil and Latin America. Brutalism 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:45.840 grew out of the modernist tradition, so stuff there looks 0:07:45.920 --> 0:07:47.480 quite a bit different than it does in other parts 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:47.920 of the world. 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:50.600 It does. I think that they all share in common 0:07:50.640 --> 0:07:55.400 a core set of principles that is brutalism. That that's 0:07:55.440 --> 0:07:58.000 what I disagree with. I know that there's differences in 0:07:58.320 --> 0:08:00.280 all that. I just I just I didn't agree with 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:03.840 that statement that the New York Times got it wrong, wrong, wrong. 0:08:05.160 --> 0:08:07.160 I'm with them. I'm down the paper record. 0:08:07.240 --> 0:08:08.840 Well, let's talk about where this came from. 0:08:08.920 --> 0:08:11.880 Huh yeah, well, I mean, you know, it came out 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:18.320 of the post war architectural rebuilding of so many cities 0:08:18.440 --> 0:08:21.960 around the world that were completely destroyed into rubble, and 0:08:22.000 --> 0:08:27.560 in particular this one couple, Peter and Allison Smithson in England, 0:08:27.600 --> 0:08:31.440 saw bombed out London and instead of seeing you know, 0:08:31.480 --> 0:08:33.800 a big bombed out mess where like, oh, we have 0:08:33.880 --> 0:08:36.760 to rebuild it, you know, more ornate and grander than before, 0:08:36.960 --> 0:08:40.200 they saw an opportunity and were inspired and said, why 0:08:40.240 --> 0:08:45.480 don't we start using this rubble and build some sort 0:08:45.480 --> 0:08:47.360 of unfinished looking places. 0:08:47.559 --> 0:08:51.560 Yeah, so it's almost like they visually speaking they used 0:08:51.600 --> 0:08:55.160 the rubble as the material to build the new buildings 0:08:55.200 --> 0:08:59.320 and they didn't actually use that, but visually speaking they 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:00.679 did that, and it was, like you said, in an 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:03.440 acceptance of the current reality rather than a return to 0:09:03.520 --> 0:09:06.720 a previous reality, which is radical in and of itself, 0:09:08.040 --> 0:09:12.600 but that was the essentially. The Smithsons are credited with 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:20.520 establishing brutalism as an architectural movement very frequently there. A 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:25.120 critic named Rayner Banham is credited with coining the term 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:28.079 brutalism that's wrong. He popularized it in a review of 0:09:28.120 --> 0:09:31.160 the Smithson's work. The Smithson's used it a couple of 0:09:31.200 --> 0:09:34.840 years before Bannam did, and a couple of years before that, 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:39.079 a Swedish architect named Hans Asplind used it to describe 0:09:39.080 --> 0:09:42.440 a home that he designed an Uppsala called Via goth 0:09:42.960 --> 0:09:45.640 in nineteen forty nine. So at least as far back 0:09:45.640 --> 0:09:48.600 as nineteen forty nine the term brutalism was being used. 0:09:48.720 --> 0:09:50.720 But you kind of dug up and you had said 0:09:50.720 --> 0:09:55.560 at the outset evidence that brutalism was around before that 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:56.840 term was ever used. 0:09:56.720 --> 0:10:00.720 Right, Yeah, I mean I think clearly they were inspired, 0:10:00.880 --> 0:10:04.200 inspired by stuff that came before them, maybe by mind 0:10:04.240 --> 0:10:06.920 temples and things like that, but no one was calling 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:09.800 it brutalist obviously until then. And I don't think it 0:10:09.840 --> 0:10:14.440 was like a bonafide, a bona fide architectural movement until 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:18.400 the post war, you know, sort of rebuilding. 0:10:18.040 --> 0:10:21.840 Right, and post war, because of all the rebuilding that 0:10:21.920 --> 0:10:26.120 was going on, brutalism was widely adopted across Europe, not 0:10:26.200 --> 0:10:28.640 just in the West but also in the Eastern Bloc 0:10:29.120 --> 0:10:32.839 because World War two just ravaged that continent and so 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:35.160 a lot of countries had a lot of cities that 0:10:35.240 --> 0:10:38.880 needed to be rebuilt largely, and not just in Europe 0:10:38.880 --> 0:10:44.679 in Japan, particularly in Okinawa. Supposedly ten to twenty percent 0:10:45.280 --> 0:10:47.960 of the buildings that were around before World War Two 0:10:48.320 --> 0:10:51.640 were still around after as much as ninety percent of 0:10:51.679 --> 0:10:53.760 the buildings were destroyed, so they had a lot of 0:10:53.760 --> 0:10:56.360 rebuilding to do, and it just so happened at the 0:10:56.440 --> 0:11:02.120 time brutalism was this new kind of up coming, frankly 0:11:02.200 --> 0:11:05.120 beloved style of architecture. So it happened to be in 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:08.480 the right place at the right time to become adopted 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:10.960 around the world because all this rebuilding was going on. 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:14.360 But the timing isn't the full explanation of the whole thing, 0:11:14.440 --> 0:11:15.679 is it? Is it? 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:19.760 No, No, it's not. Because it was also a time 0:11:19.920 --> 0:11:22.679 where in the sort of the fifties through the seventies 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:28.840 where the European nations that had colonized the world, that 0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:31.680 stuff started sort of going back the other way, and 0:11:31.720 --> 0:11:35.920 these countries were even either given their country back or 0:11:36.000 --> 0:11:38.760 they were flourishing. So in Latin America all of a 0:11:38.760 --> 0:11:41.280 sudden there was sort of a new prosperity going on. 0:11:42.120 --> 0:11:45.480 In Africa, there was you know, some of them were 0:11:45.520 --> 0:11:49.600 gaining independence, and so it all timed out with brutalism. 0:11:49.720 --> 0:11:53.000 So that's why you'll see like brutalism in Africa and 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:57.000 brutalism in Latin America and brutalism in Japan. It's really interesting. 0:11:57.080 --> 0:11:59.160 The thing is, though, is we said that Modernism was 0:11:59.160 --> 0:12:02.680 in full swing same time, so you could say, well, 0:12:02.720 --> 0:12:06.000 why didn't they just choose modernism instead, And you know, 0:12:06.000 --> 0:12:07.840 a lot of them did. A lot of Modernist buildings 0:12:07.840 --> 0:12:09.800 were built in these same cities around the same time. 0:12:10.280 --> 0:12:13.880 But the reason brutalism truly became so ubiquitous around the 0:12:13.920 --> 0:12:16.880 world is because it was cheap. It was really cheap 0:12:16.960 --> 0:12:20.880 to make a brutalist building because they were essentially poured 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:26.079 or slab concrete. There was no adornment to them. There. 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:30.720 They were as we'll see, Brutalism takes a single unit 0:12:30.880 --> 0:12:34.400 very often like a like the smallest unit like a 0:12:34.600 --> 0:12:37.600 Saint apartment, and then redoes it over and over and 0:12:37.640 --> 0:12:41.800 over again. So there's a standardization of the process of 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:45.600 the materials. So it just was. It was around the time, 0:12:45.800 --> 0:12:48.440 and it was a very cheap alternative to other much 0:12:48.480 --> 0:12:52.680 more ornate types of buildings like modernist buildings at the time, 0:12:52.920 --> 0:12:55.439 So that was one reason why it was so widely adopted. 0:12:56.320 --> 0:12:58.800 Yeah, and with that repeating thing, I mean, it can 0:12:58.880 --> 0:13:01.400 even just be like, well, like that airport in Mexico 0:13:01.480 --> 0:13:07.680 City with the circles, or what was the one the 0:13:07.720 --> 0:13:11.760 French guy like his very the habitat. 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:13.600 The United Bitasion. 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:16.640 Look, yeah, I mean if you look at that, that's 0:13:16.679 --> 0:13:20.640 another great example of these. You know, I guess they're windows. 0:13:21.200 --> 0:13:21.839 What are they? 0:13:22.160 --> 0:13:25.319 Yeah? I think they're balconies or like patios. 0:13:25.360 --> 0:13:27.439 Oh okay, it's hard to tell from like a distance, 0:13:27.440 --> 0:13:30.440 but it's just this repeated thing, and that's there's obviously 0:13:30.800 --> 0:13:34.439 a building efficiency when you're not adorning things and we're 0:13:34.520 --> 0:13:37.800 kind of repeating the same design feature over and over 0:13:37.840 --> 0:13:40.800 and over. Also, this is a time post war where 0:13:41.160 --> 0:13:43.520 people really started moving to the cities a lot more, 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:47.920 especially in the Eastern Block. It's cheap. It was a 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:50.880 cheap way to house tons of people as far as 0:13:50.880 --> 0:13:54.520 the US goes. That's when the federal government really beefed 0:13:54.600 --> 0:13:56.839 up and said, all right, we're going to be we're 0:13:56.840 --> 0:13:59.280 gonna take some steroids here and see what happens. And 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:01.439 so all of a udd and you had a much 0:14:01.520 --> 0:14:04.640 larger bureaucracy and these they needed, you know, there were 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:06.760 more people, more employees, and say need of these big 0:14:07.080 --> 0:14:10.200 federal government buildings. So you'll see a lot of some 0:14:10.240 --> 0:14:13.720 of the best brutalist architecture in American cities could be 0:14:13.880 --> 0:14:19.120 like the City Library like here in Atlanta, or like 0:14:19.160 --> 0:14:22.760 the IRS building or something like these big government buildings. 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:25.520 Also, one of the reasons brutalism was such a great 0:14:25.560 --> 0:14:29.680 idea for government buildings is because they're so stable and 0:14:29.720 --> 0:14:35.720 they're so just yeah, immovable, And so the designers were like, well, 0:14:35.840 --> 0:14:38.160 it's going to remind people that the government is stable 0:14:38.200 --> 0:14:40.600 and you don't have to worry because the government's in control. 0:14:40.920 --> 0:14:43.520 Just look at the buildings that they operate out of. 0:14:44.040 --> 0:14:46.240 Yeah. DC has a lot of brutalist stuff. 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:49.880 Right, Yes, it's a brutalist town. If you want to 0:14:49.880 --> 0:14:53.000 acquaint yourself with brutalist architecture, just walk around d C 0:14:53.120 --> 0:14:55.920 and look at the federal buildings. They are brutalists through 0:14:55.960 --> 0:14:56.400 and through. 0:14:57.840 --> 0:15:01.600 Should we take a break, but I say we take 0:15:01.600 --> 0:15:03.720 a break? Yeah, all right, because we need to go 0:15:03.760 --> 0:15:04.640 to Washington, d C. 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:20.520 And apologize. 0:15:31.400 --> 0:15:34.280 Okay, Chuck, I didn't understand. Why do we have to 0:15:34.320 --> 0:15:35.280 apologize to DC? 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:38.480 I don't know. It sounded like you were saying, I 0:15:38.560 --> 0:15:41.160 know you appreciate brutalism now, but it sounded like you 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:44.280 didn't have much love for the DC style of brutalism. 0:15:45.280 --> 0:15:48.760 No, it's not that I've always appreciated DC because it's 0:15:48.800 --> 0:15:52.440 just so weird architecturally, isn't it that nothing can be 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:55.360 taller than the Washington Monument. That's why there's no skyscrapers 0:15:55.360 --> 0:15:58.320 in DC. I think I've heard that the Monument or 0:15:58.360 --> 0:16:01.760 the Capitol Building one of the two. So yeah, it's 0:16:01.760 --> 0:16:06.440 a very low slong city. But that also is ready 0:16:06.440 --> 0:16:12.240 made for brutalist design too, because they're often like low, wide, 0:16:12.800 --> 0:16:14.480 hulking forms as well. 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:17.960 Yeah, you're never going to see a brutalist tower. 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:21.120 That's not true. There are some brutalist towers, but they're 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:22.840 very rare, very very rare. 0:16:22.880 --> 0:16:26.880 Well, yeah, I mean I've seen some skinnyish apartment buildings 0:16:26.880 --> 0:16:29.000 and things, but I guess I don't know. I'm thinking 0:16:29.080 --> 0:16:32.479 in terms of like skyscrapers. 0:16:31.720 --> 0:16:34.640 Well, do they have those the skyscrapers that we think 0:16:34.680 --> 0:16:36.480 of when we think of the cities today, those kind 0:16:36.480 --> 0:16:40.320 of came along and replaced brutalism and starting around the eighties. Yeah, 0:16:40.360 --> 0:16:42.960 so no, you wouldn't have seen that as brutalist because 0:16:42.960 --> 0:16:44.400 it's just wasn't brutalist. 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:48.280 So it's not all concrete all the time. It's obviously 0:16:48.280 --> 0:16:51.240 a very big part that unfinished concrete of brutalism. But 0:16:52.440 --> 0:16:54.240 you might see a little brick in there every now 0:16:54.280 --> 0:16:57.280 and then, probably not going to be like some super 0:16:57.280 --> 0:17:01.480 colorful thing. You'll probably see some steel, ill obviously some 0:17:01.600 --> 0:17:05.080 glass I have seen, you know, and especially in Brazil 0:17:05.160 --> 0:17:08.840 and Latin America out of the modernist movement incorporating wood, 0:17:09.560 --> 0:17:13.639 and I'm a big fan of of like combining like 0:17:14.320 --> 0:17:17.480 cement and wood and natural things like that, natural elements 0:17:17.480 --> 0:17:18.879 with unnatural elements. 0:17:18.960 --> 0:17:22.159 So that's the new that's the new thing. That's brand 0:17:22.200 --> 0:17:26.119 spanking new. They call it organic brutalism, which is combining 0:17:26.400 --> 0:17:30.840 like a brutalist space with like organic touches to it. Yeah, yeah, 0:17:30.880 --> 0:17:34.880 you'd love that. So even though it's I don't even 0:17:34.880 --> 0:17:37.000 know if you can't say that it's not all concrete 0:17:37.040 --> 0:17:39.840 all the time. I think one of the basis of 0:17:40.160 --> 0:17:42.399 brutalism is that it's got to be concrete, right Or 0:17:42.400 --> 0:17:45.359 are you saying like other people have experimented with other 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:47.280 stuff and still consider brutalist. 0:17:47.920 --> 0:17:50.280 No, no, no, I just mean like that every square 0:17:50.320 --> 0:17:52.840 inchoa gotch isn't concrete. 0:17:52.480 --> 0:17:56.040 But that it features very, very prominently. One of the 0:17:56.080 --> 0:17:58.440 things that, yeah, one of the things about this these 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:03.040 reinforced concrete buildings is because they were using just unfinished 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:07.520 concrete or you know, unadorned concrete, they figured out interesting 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:09.479 ways to kind of play with the concrete so that 0:18:09.520 --> 0:18:12.840 every building didn't look exactly alike. So you'll often see 0:18:12.880 --> 0:18:18.639 like vertical ripples going down long tall columns that's a 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:22.960 type of concrete. They'll be like aggregate, like maybe pebbles 0:18:23.000 --> 0:18:26.000 that are on the surface of the concrete. There's all 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:27.840 sorts of stuff they did. But if at the end 0:18:27.880 --> 0:18:30.399 of the day it's all reinforced concrete and there's not 0:18:30.520 --> 0:18:34.200 like drywall over it, there's not like a nice paint 0:18:34.280 --> 0:18:37.560 job over it, there's no decorations or any kind of 0:18:38.520 --> 0:18:42.479 like woodwork or anything like that. It's just right the 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:45.720 building itself. The point of brutalism is the building itself 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:49.840 is allowed to stand on its own. And I saw 0:18:49.880 --> 0:18:52.760 somewhere that somebody said that if modernism is meant to 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:56.159 be honest, then brutalism is brutally honest. Like what you 0:18:56.200 --> 0:18:57.920 see is what you get with the building. 0:18:59.000 --> 0:18:59.880 Oh, I like that. 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:00.640 I do too. 0:19:02.640 --> 0:19:05.440 They like you said, there's a uh, there's a sense 0:19:05.480 --> 0:19:08.640 of permanence to a brutalist building. And I think that's 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:12.760 another reason why government buildings like them, because, like you mentioned, 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:16.239 they just sort of convey this thing of like, I 0:19:16.280 --> 0:19:18.800 know you hate banger taxes, but look at this IRS building. 0:19:18.840 --> 0:19:21.960 It's not going anywhere, right, It sends a message, it 0:19:22.000 --> 0:19:22.840 says ts. 0:19:25.560 --> 0:19:29.400 There's some other like basic parts of the brutalist concept. 0:19:29.480 --> 0:19:35.120 Chuck like that. The buildings tend to be angular, geometric, sculptural, blocky, 0:19:35.520 --> 0:19:39.760 top heavy. The windows are very frequently deep set. They're 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:41.879 called fortress like. I don't know if you mentioned that 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:44.920 one before, but it pops up almost everywhere when you're 0:19:44.960 --> 0:19:48.520 talking about what brutalism is. Fortress like seems to be 0:19:48.640 --> 0:19:54.600 like a very like just a common description. And then 0:19:54.640 --> 0:19:57.000 we talked about them being self repeating. 0:19:56.640 --> 0:20:00.800 Right yeah, yeah, and that was you know the reason why, 0:20:00.840 --> 0:20:02.920 because the efficiencies and the costs. 0:20:03.560 --> 0:20:07.159 Right. So sometimes some brutalist buildings will take like the 0:20:07.280 --> 0:20:10.239 single unit, like say it's an apartment building, and they 0:20:10.280 --> 0:20:12.959 will take the they'll design the one apartment building and 0:20:13.000 --> 0:20:15.000 they just repeat it over and over and over again, 0:20:15.080 --> 0:20:17.320 and then the next row over and over and over again. 0:20:17.600 --> 0:20:22.720 And by combining these modular units together, they it forms 0:20:22.760 --> 0:20:25.960 the building just through repetition. And so some people call 0:20:26.000 --> 0:20:29.320 it a fractal as far as architectural movements go, which 0:20:29.359 --> 0:20:30.240 makes a lot of sense. 0:20:30.760 --> 0:20:34.199 Yeah, And you know, I appreciate it a lot, and 0:20:34.240 --> 0:20:37.320 I always have. But I get why people don't like 0:20:37.520 --> 0:20:40.520 a lot of these buildings. And I think that maybe, 0:20:40.560 --> 0:20:45.480 like you, previous to Mexico City only had in the 0:20:45.680 --> 0:20:48.720 in the brain like sort of one thing, which is God, 0:20:48.760 --> 0:20:51.439 that ugly building downtown that I have to go to 0:20:51.480 --> 0:20:56.160 get my driver's license or something exactly, and to expose 0:20:56.160 --> 0:20:58.080 yourself to more. And you know, we're gonna talk about 0:20:58.119 --> 0:21:02.560 some famous buildings, but you know, brutalism had a sort 0:21:02.600 --> 0:21:05.560 of a pre hatred going on before it even became 0:21:05.600 --> 0:21:09.159 a thing. The people that were I believe that was 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:13.359 La Corbusier's how do you pronounce this building again? 0:21:14.119 --> 0:21:18.159 The unite do pitasion? That's right, I think so my 0:21:18.240 --> 0:21:19.640 high school friends can hold up. 0:21:20.000 --> 0:21:22.520 He designed this thing for working class families to house 0:21:22.560 --> 0:21:25.000 a lot of people, which was the whole idea, but 0:21:25.440 --> 0:21:27.359 no one wanted to live there. None of those people 0:21:27.400 --> 0:21:32.159 wanted to live there, so the intelligentsia of Marseille was like, 0:21:32.359 --> 0:21:35.000 you know, they appreciated that architecture, and there. 0:21:34.840 --> 0:21:37.240 Who moved in, right, they said sold. 0:21:39.760 --> 0:21:43.320 I also think it's interesting that they have been used 0:21:43.320 --> 0:21:46.080 in a lot of as the one here that I 0:21:46.080 --> 0:21:48.560 sent you in Georgia that is so cool looking, of 0:21:48.600 --> 0:21:52.159 all places, Noon in Georgia was used, as I believe 0:21:52.280 --> 0:21:55.199 in ant Man and the Wasp, as the evil villain's 0:21:55.280 --> 0:21:59.320 layer from the outside and clockwork orange, and like just 0:21:59.320 --> 0:22:04.919 this associate with evil villains or the bad guys or 0:22:04.960 --> 0:22:08.280 the communist Soviet block. It just sort of always had 0:22:08.280 --> 0:22:11.959 this reputation of like, you should probably hate this architecture. 0:22:12.440 --> 0:22:16.320 Also dystopian too, Like if you ever watch a movie 0:22:16.560 --> 0:22:19.800 or look at artwork set in a dystopia, if you 0:22:19.800 --> 0:22:23.520 look at the buildings, they are almost always brutalist in 0:22:23.520 --> 0:22:26.920 some way should perform often very frankly brutalist, right, Yeah, 0:22:26.920 --> 0:22:28.760 And it kind of makes sense because a lot of 0:22:28.760 --> 0:22:32.320 times dystopian settings are well they're set in the future, 0:22:33.440 --> 0:22:36.720 or that maybe they're post apocalyptic. Yeah, yeah, And it 0:22:36.760 --> 0:22:38.639 makes sense that if any kind of buildings is going 0:22:38.720 --> 0:22:41.760 to survive a brutalist building would survive far into the 0:22:41.800 --> 0:22:48.879 future or would survive in apocalypse, So it makes sense intuitively, 0:22:49.320 --> 0:22:52.000 But also I think brutalism gets used in that because 0:22:52.040 --> 0:22:57.040