Brutal, Brutalist Science Fiction and the Ties to Archigram

The architectural style of brutalism has always been a personal favorite due to its massive, almost epic nature in scale and material usage, but primarily because it has been ingrained into my mind from a young age through science fiction film and videogames.  Brutalist buildings usually are formed with striking repetitive angular geometries, and, where concrete is used, often revealing the texture of the wooden forms used for the in-situ casting. Although concrete is the material most widely associated with brutalist architecture, not all brutalist buildings are formed from concrete. Instead, a building may achieve its brutalist quality through a rough, blocky appearance, and the expression of its structural materials, forms, and (in some cases) services on its exterior.  Another common theme in brutalist designs is the exposure of the building's functions—ranging from their structure and services to their human use—in the exterior of the building.  Again, most commonly linked to massive concrete aggregate structure, these immense complexes have, in recent decades of postmodernism, also been linked to the image of futurism. 

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.