Adventures in Architecture, Art, Music & Design

This post sees a return to London and one of my favourite examples of Brutalist architecture, not just one building or block, but an entire complex of concrete. The Barbican Estate. In 200 AD, defensive walls were built around London by the Romans. This part of the city in central London, not far from Liverpool Street, originally incorporated a grand entrance/gate which was later known as Cripplegate. This would likely have been a Roman 'watchtower'. This area is currently where the Barbican Complex stands. Coming from the Latin word Barbecana - Barbican - refers to a "fortified outpost or gateway, such as an outer defence of a city or castle" for defence purposes. London suffered mammoth damage during World War II, with the Cripplegate area particularly decimated by enemy bombing. In 1952, the council decided to rebuild and redevelop the site, and new residential accommodation was planned. Designed by the then young architects Chamberlin, Powell and Bon (w...

Many brutalist buildings become almost mythical in their existence; magical alluring places that brutalists and urban explorers alike fantasise about visiting. The Buzludzha Memorial House is such a prime example. I had dreamed of visiting ever since I first heard about it - on an urban exploration message forum in the heady ugly-fonted-scroll-marquee-texted days of the web. As I was eagerly clicking around, salivating over photographs like a kid in a sweet shop, I came upon images of this huge monstrous  bowl  of concrete - with what looked like a block antennae protruding out from it. What crazy structure was this? It was unlike anything I had ever seen before, certainly architecturally. It resembled a large concrete spaceship. How was this real? And unlike many of these gigantic concrete blobs, it was not standing in an urban or city setting, but of all places, right on top of a mountain in the middle of the balkans.  To understand ...

Brutalist architecture is an addictive beast that has a bewitching spell on those who delight in its elephantine aggression. Coined from the french phrase "beton brut" - raw concrete - by the British architectural critic Reyner Banham, Brutalism described the style of simple, blocky concrete constructions which flourished in the 1950s & 60s (its origins begin earlier in the 20th century). It was, of course, a pun on the french word to reflect the overall general disgust in which the style was received in the country. Yet I have come to learn that whilst it often evokes much distain amongst critics and the general public alike, there are many, like me, who have an insatiable appetite for the utilitarian concrete ogres whose mundane functions, like a gaping wound, are left very much exposed. I have been traveling the world to take photographs of buildings for the past 15 years, even before I knew I was doing it. Now I actively seek them out mostly for that purpose, as we...