“Soft Brutalism” took 2nd Place in the AIA|Miami Photography Competition
The Hirshhorn Museum is a perennial favorite here at Brutalist DC, and we’re always looking for new angles that accentuate its textural qualities. On this otherwise dreary day, enough water had collected on a wall at the nearby Air & Space Museum that an opportunity for a double Hirshhorn exposure presented itself. With a depth of field that rendered the foreground out-of-focus, the Hirshhorn appears softer in its reflection, allowing its distinct cylindrical form to blur at the edges. This image, drawn from the Brutalist DC Instagram feed and taken by Brutalist DC founder Deane Madsen, took second place in the color category of AIA|Miami’s 2018 Architecture Photography Competition.
Brutalism is in the news once again, with founder Deane Madsen appearing on CGTN America to discuss Washington, D.C.’s collection of Brutalism at the Hirshhorn Museum. CGTN reporter Owen Fairclough surveys the deep catalogue of D.C.’s Brutalist buildings and interviews Madsen about his love of the style. Walking in the courtyard of the Hirshhorn Museum, Madsen praises Brutalism’s texture, materiality, and expression of structure, all of which are on display at the Hirshhorn. Of course, Brutalism is an often misunderstood moniker, as brief snippets with passersby illustrate.
The segment first aired on Oct. 5, 2018. Watch the full clip via CGTN America or below:
Many thanks to Owen Fairclough, Ahmad Coo, and the rest of the CGTN production team for putting all of this together. Thanks also to the gracious Hirshhorn Museum staff for facilitating the filming. A gratuitous selection of screenshots from the segment follows.
Over the past few years, the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum has emerged as one of the main proponents of World Architecture Day in the Washington, D.C. region. This year, the Hirshhorn teams up with the National Building Museum for two full days of programming (Sept. 30 and Oct. 1) to mark the occasion, and, as an endcap to the week, the Hirshhorn will have Brutalist DC founder Deane Madsen for coffee and conversation as part of its Hirshhorn/AM program.
“SOS Brutalism” (two volumes) and “Finding Brutalism”
Here at BrutalistDC headquarters, we have several shelves dedicated to all matters concrete, and have had to make room for the many new editions that have been arriving at a steady pace for the last few years. Two of the latest, “Finding Brutalism” and “SOS Brutalism,” (both from University of Chicago Press and Park Books) offer new looks at the style. BrutalistDC founder Deane Madsen reviewed them for Architectural Record:
An interior spread from SOS Brutalism features Marcel Breuer’s Pirelli Building
SOS Brutalism presents the theoretical issues behind the term in a two-volume set covering the origins, current state, and potential future of Brutalism. The eponymous first volume is a worldwide compendium—based on the website #SOSBrutalism—that has more than 1,100 Brutalist buildings in its database.
This effort is filled with case studies and examples of structures of varying status: still in use (such as Minoru Yamasaki’s Shiraz University in Iran), heritage-protected, under threat of elimination, or demolished. Chapter introductions show the divergent attitudes to each region’s embrace of the movement. The companion volume, Brutalism: Contributions to the International Symposium in Berlin 2012, comprises 17 lectures in which authors investigate theories and regions where Brutalism was practiced according to country-specific interpretations.
“Finding Brutalism” features the stunning black-and-white photography of Simon Phipps
In Finding Brutalism, Simon Phipps lets a rich assortment of his black-and-white photographs do the talking, save for a trio of essays at the back. But that’s precisely the point: each of his images is a 1,000-word composition on material, scale, or form, and Phipps is a master storyteller in this medium without “the distractions and extraneous detail of color,” so, as he writes, “the form and structure and surface textures [can] be amplified by the action of light and shadow.” His approach returns to the origins: “The biggest misunderstanding about Brutalism is that it is all about concrete—not only concrete, but massively formed concrete. The essence of Brutalism for me is material ‘as found.’ ”
On Tap Magazine recently released its July edition, which focused on design in Washington. BrutalistDC founder Deane Madsen was thrilled to be interviewed by M.K. Koszycki for the issue, an excerpt of which is below:
On Tap: Why is Brutalist architecture so important to the architectural landscape of DC? Deane Madsen: For one, there’s just so much of it. Look at any satellite image of Southwest DC and you’ll find enormous superblocks of government buildings rendered in concrete: the Department of Energy, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, L’Enfant Plaza. Two, most of it arose during an era of urban renewal in Washington. The Brutalist architecture in the District breaks from the traditions of Neoclassical, Federal and Gothic Revival to present buildings constructed at the height of post-war optimism.
OT: What are some common misconceptions about Brutalism and how do you respond to them? DM: Probably the biggest misconception about Brutalist buildings is that they’re somehow brutal. I sometimes joke that these buildings are not, in fact, out to kill you—chunks of concrete falling off the FBI Building are the result of neglect, not malice. The other default reaction to Brutalism is that it’s ugly. I get it, not everyone appreciates the aesthetic. And there’s no way I’m going to be able to change someone’s taste, but when I’m giving tours of Brutalist buildings, I encourage people to get up close and examine tactile features such as board-formed concrete. On the pairs of columns at the base of HUD, for example, you can actually feel the grain of the wood that was used to form the columns embedded in the concrete. The attention to detail paid to the concrete formwork resounds throughout the rest of the architecture as well, and if I can help people appreciate the architectural effort behind these buildings, perhaps they can also grow to like them.
OT: What led you to create the BrutalistDC Instagram account and website? DM: Washington has an amazing breadth of architecture, but the city’s government buildings of the 1960s and 1970s—the urban renewal era—are much maligned, and, quite frankly, I was tired of seeing Brutalist buildings top lists of DC’s ugliest. My goal in creating BrutalistDC was to advocate for an underappreciated set of buildings and to show them in ways that highlight their textural beauty.
OT: What are your favorite Brutalist buildings in DC and why? DM:The Hirshhorn Museum is easily my favorite Brutalist building in D.C., for many reasons, but the foremost is that the staff of the Hirshhorn understands the value of their museum’s architecture, and works hard to maintain, promote, and improve it; a recent lobby renovation stands out as an example of a sensitive addition to an already great space. The Hirshhorn benefits from its prime location at the midpoint of the National Mall, and its diminutive scale relative to the nearby Air & Space Museum and
National Gallery of Art makes for a pleasant respite. The Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden is also perhaps one of D.C.’s best-kept secrets, with shaded greens populated with works by the likes of Auguste Rodin, Barbara Pepper, and Henry Moore, along with more recent acquisitions such as Yayoi Kusama’s Pumpkin.
Beyond the Hirshhorn, there are plenty of other buildings to love, but I’m especially keen on the architecture of D.C. Metro, which was designed by Harry Weese and opened in 1976. The deeply coffered, column-free vaults evoke the monumental scale of Washington (each station is 600 feet long) while also serving up dramatic—and photogenic—shadows, thanks to lighting designer William Lam.
Bluejacket released a new beer, Turnstiles, bedecked with Metro’s coffered vaults.
Local brewer Bluejacket has released a new beer, Turnstiles, that celebrates the DC Metro with a can wrapper depicting the coffered vaults of the system’s underground stations. Scaling down the idea of Metro wallpaper to a more portable and potable package makes sense for Bluejacket, which began weekly unveilings of smaller production runs in cans in February.
Designed in-house by creative director Kris Mullins, the Turnstiles can is part of a limited release program from the brewery that allows greater control on beer freshness. The Bluejacket brewery is housed within repurposed boilermaker shops, which were originally part of the Navy Yards manufacturing facilities; the brewery takes its name from the term for someone enlisted in the Navy.
TURNSTILES is an IPA with Amarillo, Centennial & Citra – 7.0% abv. Double dry-hopped with Amarillo, Centennial & Citra, Turnstiles is teeming with citrus aromatics, accompanied by floral & herbal notes. Juicy & softly bitter on the palate.
$15 x 4-pack.
If your daily ride on Metro makes you feel like you’re hurtling through concrete tunnels in a tin can, now you can upend that metaphor by raising a can that celebrates concrete tunnels. Pairs well with our Brutalist Washington Map, which also features all of the Metro stations.
In 1950, two French engineers, Pierre Danel and Paul Anglès d’Auriac, developed and patented the tetrapod, which is an interlocking, four-footed concrete shape that they proposed for use in sub-aqueous walls. Used to protect seashores worldwide, tetrapods accumulate to form robust sea walls that alleviate coastal erosion by dispersing wave forces around their shapes while remaining stable due to their interlocking ability.
Patent drawing for Tetrapods: MY6300031 (A) – Improvements in or relating to artificial blocks for building structures exposed to the action of moving water
More than a half-century later, a Hong Kong-based company called Furnitury incorporated the same form for its Tetra Soap products. That’s because soap is slippery, according to a Tetra Soap video the company used in its Kickstarter promotional materials. The tetrapod shape of the soaps interlocks perfectly with our pentadactyl limbs, allowing for ease of grip without the ungainly appendage of a rope. To make the the soaps, a mixture of palm, coconut, and extra virgin olive oils blended with myrrh and sandalwood is poured into formwork that yields the tetrapod shape; once formed, the soaps are then cured for 30 days.
Tetrapods on the coast of Okinawa, Japan
Tetra Soap is available for purchase individually, in trios, or as a miniature sea wall set of 12.
Following on the success of the Docomomo DC Tour Day, Rediscovering Brutalism, founder Deane Madsen has been asked to deliver a lecture on Brutalism for the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC). Teaming up with Docomomo DC president Tom Jester, Madsen will have the opportunity to educate NCPC staff on the importance of Brutalism, highlighting successful examples of renovations and restorations while also pointing to buildings that have been lost, such as the Third Church of Christ, Scientist, and the API Building in Reston, Va.
In a recent post on Curbed, architecture critic Alexandra Lange dove into the history of the Washington, D.C. Metro (a.k.a. WMATA), finding that its designers envisioned a forward-looking transit system with longstanding appeal. Metro architect Harry Weese and his firm traveled the world studying existing transportation examples, noting details down to the fabric selection of ticket collectors’ uniforms, before returning stateside to design what has become one of D.C.’s most recognizable landmarks. The D.C. Metro system has been celebrated since its 1976 opening for its column-free, Brutalist vaults of concrete, and was the recipient of the AIA 25-Year Award for Architecture in 2014. This spring, D.C. Metro became the focus of controversy discussed elsewhere and on these pages for (in addition to longstanding issues of management, safety, and scheduling) an ill-advised whitewashing of the vaults at its Union Station stop.
One resource Lange studied was a self-published book with a cumbersome title–”For the Glory of Washington: A Chronicle of Events Leading to the Creation of the System-Wide Architectural Concept for the Design of the Washington Metro Stations, December 1965 – November 1967″–by Stanley Allen, who was chairman of Harry Weese Associates at the time. This book chronicles the firm’s deep involvement in the systemwide design of the D.C. Metro system. Lange sifts through accounts of a worldwide subway tour to preliminary sketches to CFA hearings, and links her findings to current stances on infrastructural maintenance across the country:
To honor the people who clean, upgrade, and augment, we have to see transit design as Weese did: distributed across the city, both as a network of connected stations, platforms, and trains, and as a network of connected tasks. Weese and his team identified the problem, but needed the sometimes harsh design critiques of the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA), “the only federal commission dedicated to design review and aesthetic excellence,” as it says on its website, to create a solution that spoke to place, operations and maintenance.
Maintenance has long plagued the D.C. Metro system. In response to outcry from the architectural community and preservationists over the Union Station paint job, some Metro riders voiced approval for the painting, citing the need for brighter conditions. But underground white paint can only reflect the light that shines on it, besides which, it is a temporary solution–a $100,000 bandage that will need to be re-applied continuously–when upgrades to William Lam’s lighting design, if budget allowed them, would provide a more permanent fix. Again, Lange:
If WMATA had consulted with the CFA or historians, they might have learned that the concrete, if cleaned, with the lighting maintained as Lam intended, would solve the very brightness problems the paint (three coats, easily soiled) provided a short-term solution for. … The paint offers a momentary ‘Ah!’ but the money would be better spent on soap and replacing the lightbulbs with new LEDs—work less likely to be noticed because it’s maintenance.
The purists among supporters of Brutalism note that the style’s moniker stems from béton brut–or, raw concrete–meaning that the paint not only issues a long-term repainting sentence that WMATA seems incapable of serving, but also detracts from the architectural and stylistic integrity of the D.C. Metro.
Former Washington Post architecture critic Benjamin Forgey raised a similar outcry in 1992 over the repainting of the Farragut North Metro station, comparing the D.C. Metro’s 600-foot-long, public great halls to classical architecture:
Like much of the city’s above-ground architecture–the barrel vaults in, say, John Russel Pope’s National Gallery West Building or Daniel Burnham’s Union Station–it is based upon classical precedents. But in its forthright expression of structure in those bold concrete vaults, it’s also modern–a shadowy, richly textured space of our own time. There’s no mistaking that the color and texture of the concrete contribute greatly to the architectural effect.
Perhaps Forgey gets to the point quicker: Paint applied to the vaults flattens out the texture for which the D.C. Metro stations and other Brutalist buildings are celebrated, and you don’t solve problems (of lighting, concrete deterioration, or any others) by painting over them.
