But now, like the chevron mustache, Brutalism is undergoing something of a revival. Despite two generations of abuse (and perhaps a little because of it), an enthusiasm for Brutalist buildings beyond the febrile, narrow precincts of architecture criticism has begun to take hold. Preservationists clamor for their survival, historians laud their ethical origins and an independent public has found beauty in their rawness. For an aesthetic once praised for its “ruthless logic” and “bloody-mindedness” — in the much-quoted phrasing of critic Reyner Banham — it is a surprising turn of events.
For long-suffering admirers of Brutalism, the internet has proved an unexpected boon companion. Popular Tumblrs unleash endless streams of black-and-white images of gravity-defying cantilevers from the world over. A hulking concrete school in downtown Miami swallowing students! A concrete ski resort in Chamonix, France, that appears poised to tumble off the edge of a mountain! Brutalism, it turns out, lends itself to Instagram-style scrolling, one eye-popping hunk of brush-hammered weirdness after another. [...]
THERE’S NO QUESTION that Brutalism looks exceedingly cool. But its deeper appeal is moral. In the words of Reyner Banham, it was an attempt to create an architectural ethic, rather than an aesthetic. When the Smithsons called their work Brutalist or part of a New Brutalism, the brutality to which they referred had less to do with materials and more to do with honesty: an uncompromising desire to tell it like it is, architecturally speaking. The Modern movement in architecture had supposedly been predicated on truthfulness in materials and forms, as well. But as a dreary stroll down Park Avenue will remind you, Modernism swiftly became a gutless orthodoxy, its high ideals devolving into the rote features of the International Style, a repetitive and predictable series of gestures (curtain walls or ribbon windows, recessed plinths, decorative piloti, windswept plazas, ornamental lawns and flat shimmering pools).
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