In collaboration with the Wüstenrot Foundation, which for three decades has applied itself to the conservation of buildings in a world heritage context, we set out to draw up a global “red list”. Which buildings of the Brutalist movement are particularly endangered, and how can a reassessment of these often unpopular structures be achieved?
For that purpose, the hashtag #SOSBrutalism was established, and for two years now it has been the international emblem of all initiatives that engage themselves for Brutalism. Parallel to preparations for the exhibition, a website was also set up which has listed more than 1,000 buildings worldwide, and in the accompanying publication, we present 120 buildings in detail. At least a dozen of them will also be on display in the DAM in the form of large models specially created for the exhibition. Brutalism was a global phenomenon. Almost everywhere, these structures, with their sculptural character, helped a younger generation of architects to establish themselves. In Japan after the Second World War, for example, a new, specifically Japanese architecture emerged in which traditional carpentry skills were allied with new concrete technology. These structures have been emulated around the world, particularly in places where there was a craving for new architecture – in Skopje, for instance, destroyed by an earthquake.
In the Rozzol Melara housing development in Triest (ills. 1, 2), people drive up a steep ramp to an inner street about 15 m above the ground, where they can park their cars before going on to their dwellings. In pictures, it looks like some bleak vision of the future: a huge rectangular strip development removed from its surroundings. The concrete is crumbling, and the shops along the internal street have long been closed. But one has a completely different impression when one is there. Ordinary Italian families enjoy a view of the sea and have come to love their environment.
The route to the Ben Gurion University campus in Beersheba on the edge of the Negev in Israel (ill. 3) is also a journey of discovery. The concrete structures there are coated with fine desert sand and look like outcrops of natural rock. In Israel, Brutalism is regarded as the first specifically native period of building following independence, when young architects in the 1960s sought to break away from the white Bauhaus modernism that had determined the urban image, especially in Tel Aviv.
In Birmingham, in contrast, one would have been too late: the Brutalist municipal library (ill. 4) had been demolished, and that was the fate of other “monstrosities” torn down while preparations were under way for the present exhibition. In Frankfurt alone, a high-rise university structure, a museum and the technical city hall all fell victim to the demolition experts.
