Towards a New Brutalism

(Published in: "Build" - Magazin für Architektur, Wuppertal, 2004)

Towards a New Brutalism

Within the matrix of the concepts “identity” and “architecture” the term “vernacular” holds a central position. Describing a traditional architecture arising from a collective notion and shaped by external factors such as regional materials, climatic and geographical conditions and local rule-systems, it is an architecture not by the master builder, but by the “anonymous” craftsmen. The examples of stacked villages along the Amalfi coastline or Moroccan clay towns show this relationship between identity and architecture through the vernacular. Even though external factors forming this architecture can be of political or legal nature, the vernacular architecture is no political architecture, as no demagogical or ideological interest is involved, and can therefore be described as being apolitical.
In times of globalization, vernacular architecture obtains a entirely new role. An apolitical architecture is transformed into a de-politicizing architecture. When new cities are built in China for a population of millions, that aim at urbanizing the rural community within special economical zones, these foundation of cities hold more than their purely rational and functional value, but become a political act instead. If these cities are then planned in the shape of a lotus-flower and huge apartment complexes are designed using “traditional Chinese” roofs, this architecture morphs into the wolf in sheep’s clothes. An “ethnization” of architecture is aimed at de-politicizing the architectural and urban intervention. Jerusalem, which was built for centuries using a local stone, is a classical example of vernacular architecture. This stone is marked as obligatory for the city’s extensions into occupied territories. The ethnization of this architecture, which bathes the suburb in a warm light, hides the war-like act, with which this urbanization is conducted. A contemporary vernacular is used as a de-politicizing instrument. The ethnization becomes a replacement for politics and the architect proudly plays along.

The fact that often the same architect is involved in the construction of American suburbs in an Italian style and in the planning of Chinese new cities with “local character” shows with an almost embarrassing clarity that the anonymous globalization and the mythical ethnization are only two sides of the same coin. The same ideology stands behind the rediscovery of local and historical styles, i.e. the construction of identity on the one hand and the globalization of the “product” of architecture. The use of stylistic elements, which produce only simulacra of identity, results in the complete annihilation of identity. In times where global acting real-estate funds have for long time discovered the benefit of regionalization to construct an appearance of the acceptable and the “nice and beautiful”, the architect should not credit himself for the reference to local styles for the sake of constructing a false identity. The “Genus Loci” has lost its innocence and has stepped into the service of the international capital. The architect, inspired by local styles, is a villain who tries to present his rationalization of corporate culture as heroism.
As the classical modern is not deemed suitable for the export into developing countries anymore, and the vernacular architecture has hence also lost its legitimacy, the tolerant and eager architect asks what can be done, because however the architect acts, it seems to be wrong. The first response should be: Initially, don’t do anything at all! Even if difficult to imagine in a time of bitter recession, doing nothing should again become an option in the canon of the architect’s possibilities. In a second, and maybe slightly romanticized retrospective view upon the seventies, a new brutalism emerges as a second adequate answer. The reaction to a task with a political dimension (irrespective of its size), a project of Faustian quality, cannot lie in the vernacular, and therefore in the de-politicized, but should make the brutal aspect of this intervention explicit. The unambiguous and the disclosure of the brutal qualities are its main components. To express these qualities without the use of exposed concrete, and without recourse to Smithson or the early Tange seems to be a greater challenge to the contemporary architect, than any reinterpretation of a regional building style.

M Herz ©