Film depictions of the future such as Blade Runner, Star Wars, Starship Troopers, Minority Report, and Equilibrium are just a few examples of portrayed futuristic designs that arguably focus around concepts in brutalist practice. Equilibrium is the strongest of these examples listed. In this film, the image of the overpowering government relies on the visual separation of the individual. Because of this, the city’s citizens and figure heads wear primarily shades of white and black (a few throughout the film wear colored clothing, but to accentuate the importance of their actions to the viewer) in order to sustain common peace. But not only the people of the city abide by these regulations; the city itself does as well by maintaining an almost repetitive beauty of massive concrete aesthetics.
Along with the generic concrete massing symptom of brutalist
design, an impressive study of spatial light play reveals itself throughout the
film. Multiple uses of long, slender, solar
fenestration really set the mood of the scene; a warm atmosphere surrounds a
cold way of life in an amazing example of cinematic contrast.
Starship Troopers
holds many of these same attributes described in Equilibrium, although in a far less poetic setting. Now some would say that the film series, Star Wars, does not primarily focus the
imagery of “futuristic” around these notions of Brutalism; I would have to beg
to differ. Some of the architecture
displayed may be, to some degree, of brutalist design (especially the
architecture seen across the large city planets I.E. Coruscant), but I believe
it is far more prevalent in George Lucas’ vehicle and machinery creations. John Powers states that Lucas’ depictions
were Frankenstein generations where he, “…willfully mashed together minimalism,
modernism, and NASA design” in order to teach us, “…to love the blight and
grime of industry.” I can see how this
is a strong argument for the visual, new age, innovative creativity that
allowed Star Wars to be so successful,
but let’s take a hard look at the vehicle designs below.
The first image above is the “Sandcrawler” used by the Jawa
alien race located on Tatooine. Immediately,
the overwhelming scale of this vessel seems to mimic that of brutalist
regularities. The mass amount of
material and structure also closely follow brutalist protocol. Although this treaded beast is not
constructed out of concrete, the aesthetic qualities are very much
macroscopic. Next on the image list, as
most should know, is the imperial fleet.
From the Death Star to the Star Destroyers, each of these obviously clones
the exaggerated scale sought by this architectural style, not to mention the
large, white structures that litter the surfaces of each that seemingly look
similar to immense concrete structure. The
interior fenestration of the vessels creates beautiful exterior views of the
endless galactic inspiration as well dittos the optic views presented within
most brutalist forms. These same
similarities can again be traced through the Millenium Falcon’s design. Almost all of the vehicle concepts of the original
three Star Wars films hold true to
the totalitarian, urban decay, “cold” appearance attributes known characteristically
for brutalism. These observations are
purely opinion based, but I do believe that Lucas, conscience or unconsciously,
was truly inspired by the new brutalism movement seen between the 1950’s, 60’s,
and 70’s; the movement that arguably led to the modernist architectural
movement.
Blade Runner as
well appears atmospherically similar to the late architectural style. Again the sheer enormity of the construction
follows close with the design ideals, although the geometric formality seems
more pastiche. The notion of urban decay
and atmospherically “cold” emotions are also prevalent.
A more recent example (and one I have brought up in several
other posts) is the Halo
franchise. This game series thrives off
of the brutalist atmospheric qualities. The
choice of this architectural style for this game was utilized in order to
create the feeling of insignificance as far as size is concerned.
Brutalism
as an architectural philosophy, rather than a style, was often also associated
with a socialist utopian ideology, which tended to
be supported by its designers; an ideology in which I believe has not
yet gone. I believe this style could
make a very prominent second coming, which is another reason for my
architectural approach of futurist depictions in my graphic novel. My primary reasons are listed in the prior
post, but another not among that list is that I have always gained inspiration
from drawings published by Archigram.
They too focused on the brutalist approach to design; only they revolved
their graphical depictions about ethic concepts. Their designs incorporated circulation
experimentations, structural shock and awe, the notions of disposable
architecture, and kinetic qualities.
Archigram
thrived on the idea of resistance against the modernist movement, consisting of
the stale chokehold on rectilinear form, cast concrete articulation, and abuse
of curtain wall systems. “…brutalism,
once touted as an ethic, was settling into an aesthetic of molded concrete
aggregate, much as the whirlwind of early modernism had settled into the white
villa style of the 1930’s.” They also
enjoyed focusing all concept and design creations to traditional hand drawing
and graphical representation in opposition to the Royal Institute of British
Architects. “Peter Cook ‘enjoys drawing’
his ideas ‘rather than writing about them’; Ron Herron ‘draws like a dream…
apparently effortlessly.’” Archigram
ultimately was the rebellious teen of the architectural world, attempting to
turn known and validated concepts in on themselves for their own amusement through
their conceptual graphics. This is
probably the most logical reason as to why I have grown so fond of their work
over the years… forever striving to prove that what may appear as the only
answer can, in fact, contain multiple solutions; those of which could render
the original logical answer as inferior, or even obsolete.
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