High Cross: a new look at Brutalism ?

Today, we learn that the National Trust is to open High Cross House , Dartington to the public. This is good news; it  shows that brutalist architecture is being recognised; at last. Usually, whenever modern architecture is in the news, the media will trot out their favourite library pictures of the worst examples of 1960s brutalism. We are treated to old snaps of sprawling masses of concrete such as Park Hill in Sheffield, now part owned by English Heritage.

The concrete blocks of flats were thrown up in answer to the chronic housing shortages in the 1950s; they  were housing for the masses. Post-war Governments were afraid of the masses; they worried they might start to revolt against the establishment unless something was not only done, but seen to be done. The country was bankrupt after the war years and the Government needed a quick fix cheap solution, the pre fabricated concrete blocks fitted the bill; blocks  went up quickly, problem out of the way.

Brutalism, influenced by the work of the French architect Le Corbusier, was a utopian dream, which quickly turned into a nightmare with state funded projects such as Park Hill. However, buildings such as High Cross show how brutalism could have been, the gentrified side if you will.  The media’s fondness of Park Hill style pictures leads to ‘ bad brutalism’ and ‘modern architecture’ being synonymous in the public psyche.  Banned in Nazi Germany and hated by some in the British establishment, modern architecture has had a bad press. Buildings such as High Cross show this is not the case. The clean lines, honesty and simplicity of such buildings speak for themselves. The public will now see for themselves that it is simply is wrong to associate the worst examples of brutalism with modern architecture  as a whole. Not all modern architecture  is as bad as some public figures and the media would have us believe. Consider, if you will, the gorgeous curves of the Guggenheim building in New York, or the sleek lines of its counterpart  in Bilbao, they are not exactly Park Hill.  The NY Guggenheim museum was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and opened in 1959, just a few years after the first brutalist school was built-in Norfolk UK (designed by Peter and Alison Smithson).  Sydney opera house is a fantastic piece of modern architecture, which shows it brutalist roots with an honest concrete and steel interior.

Would the world have these buildings if we all were stuck in the past and refused to accept anything new?

So what do we do?

Do we build everything in some ghastly neo Georgian/Victorian style, covering the land with twee little pseudo villages?

Do we all have to live in someone else’s Disneyfied pretence of the rural idyll?

Or do we take a stance and assert that it is the 21st century, and we should be embracing the new?Houses like High Cross show us that we should not harp on about the mistakes of brutalism; we  should build exciting new modern buildings to take this country kicking and screaming out of its past. Allow in the new and we could see some fantastic buildings in the UK.

SEE   http://www.ntsouthwest.co.uk/2012/01/national-trust-to-open-modernist-gem/    for more information

High Cross Dartington