The Brutalists

Summary

99% Invisible: The Brutalists Host: Roman Mars | Release Date: February 25, 2025

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Introduction to "The Brutalist" Movie

Roman Mars opens the episode by discussing the film "The Brutalist," a cinematic exploration of architecture that has garnered significant attention, including ten Academy Award nominations. He introduces Mark Lamster, an architecture critic from the Dallas Morning News, who is also the editor of Architecture and Film and teaches at Harvard's Graduate School of Design.

Notable Quote:

"[...] it felt like journalistic malpractice if we didn't talk about it on the show at least a little bit."
— Roman Mars [00:38]

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Interview with Mark Lamster: Exploring Brutalism in Film

Mark Lamster delves into the portrayal of brutalism in "The Brutalist," highlighting discrepancies between the architectural style depicted and historical accuracy. He points out that the protagonist, Laszlo Toth, initially designs in the International Style before transitioning to brutalism, which is somewhat premature historically.

Key Points:

• Misinterpretation of Brutalism: Mark emphasizes that the general public often misuses the term "brutalism" to describe all modern architecture, diluting its specific historical context.

  Notable Quote:

  "No, brutalism is actually this type of architecture that's really constrained to this relatively short period of time."
  — Mark Lamster [04:08]

• Architectural Authenticity in Film: The film presents brutalist architecture as cold and uninviting, contrasting with real-life examples like Walter Gropius’s comfortable and luxurious House.

  Notable Quote:

  "It looked nice on screen. Right. But it wasn't the kind of place that you'd want to actually read a book."
  — Mark Lamster [06:49]

• Comparison to "The Fountainhead": Lamster draws parallels between "The Brutalist" and Ayn Rand’s "The Fountainhead," noting the archetype of the lone male genius whose architectural vision remains uncorrupted despite external pressures.

  Notable Quote:

  "Architecture is really a collaborative art practiced by many people working together over long periods of time."
  — Mark Lamster [14:26]

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Architecture in Films: Symbolism and Misrepresentation

Mark discusses the broader portrayal of architects in cinema, often reduced to symbols of bourgeois respectability and artistic genius rather than depicting the collaborative and sometimes mundane aspects of the profession.

Key Points:

• Stereotypical Representation: Architects in films are frequently shown as idealized, highly desirable figures who balance artistic integrity with professional success.

  Notable Quote:

  "They are all like the ideal figure, very attractive."
  — Mark Lamster [07:47]

• Impact of Misrepresentation: This skewed representation overlooks the practical challenges of architecture, such as client interactions and the collaborative nature of building design.

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Brutalism 101: Understanding Concrete Architecture

Following the interview, the episode transitions to "Brutalism 101," featuring Avery Trufelman, Sarah Briggs Ramsey, and Chris Grimley, alongside Adrian Forti, an expert on concrete architecture.

Key Points:

The Legacy and Perception of Concrete Architecture

• Public vs. Architectural Appreciation: Concrete buildings, often labeled as brutalist, are frequently maligned by the public for their austere appearance yet praised by architects for their structural honesty and material integrity.

  Notable Quote:

  "Concrete was this material that seemed boundless, readily available in vast quantities, and it could create massive spaces unlike any other material."
  — Sarah Briggs Ramsey [28:29]

• Environmental Concerns: The episode addresses the sustainability issues associated with concrete, noting its high energy consumption and environmental footprint.

  Notable Quote:

  "Concrete is the second most heavily consumed product in the world."
  — Avery Trufelman [28:53]

Case Study: Boston City Hall

• Controversial Design: Boston City Hall serves as a prime example of brutalist architecture's polarizing nature. Initially criticized for its cold and alienating design, it has become a political and cultural battleground.

  Notable Quote:

  "Brutalism is just a big, broad label that gets used inconsistently in architecture."
  — Mark Lamster [30:58]

• Active Neglect: The building's deterioration without proper maintenance has fueled public hatred, creating a cycle of neglect and further disapproval.

  Notable Quote:

  "Concrete deteriorates chemically from the inside out."
  — Chris Grimley [34:14]

Preservation vs. Demolition

• Challenges of Preservation: Experts argue against tearing down brutalist structures due to the environmental cost and potential for adaptation to more sustainable designs.

  Notable Quote:

  "We can adapt these buildings to make them greener. And make them more appealing places to be by adding windows, for example."
  — Avery Trufelman [35:09]

• Aesthetic and Functional Adaptations: Suggestions include enhancing functionality and aesthetic appeal without compromising the structural integrity of existing concrete buildings.

Concrete as Artistic Expression

• Subtle Beauty: While often perceived as monolithic and unyielding, concrete possesses inherent aesthetic qualities that reveal depth and texture upon closer inspection.

  Notable Quote:

  "Concrete's color and text texture can be dictated by local climate, local earth and local rock."
  — Sarah Briggs Ramsey [37:14]

• Global Variations: Concrete architecture varies globally, reflecting local styles and environmental conditions, from the rugged textures in the UK to the sleek finishes in Japan.

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Conclusion: The Future of Brutalist Architecture

The episode concludes by contemplating the future of brutalist architecture, suggesting that time and thoughtful restoration could lead to a renewed appreciation of these concrete structures. Preservationists advocate for recognizing the historical and artistic significance of brutalism to prevent the loss of architectural heritage.

Notable Quote:

"Concrete architecture now finds itself at a potential inflection point. Too outdated to be modern, too young to be classic."
— Avery Trufelman [39:16]

Roman Mars wraps up by acknowledging the complexity of brutalist architecture and encourages listeners to explore its multifaceted legacy.

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Additional Resources

• Mark Lamster's Work: Readers can follow Mark Lamster's architecture columns in the Dallas Morning News and his biography of Philip Johnson, The Man in the Glass House.
• Further Listening: The episode invites listeners to join the 99% Invisible community on Discord for discussions and Oscar predictions related to architecture-themed films.

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Produced by:
Roman Mars, Martine Gonzalez, Swan Real, Martin Gonzalez
Executive Producer: Cathy Tu
Digital Director: Kurt Kolstead
Senior Editor: Delaney Hall
Additional Team: Chris Perube, Jason De Leon, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Lesh, Madonn, Joe Rosenberg, Kelly Prime, Jacob Medina Gleason

Design:
Logo by Stefan Lawrence

Join the Conversation:
Visit 99pi.org for past episodes and to engage with the community.

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Note: Advertisements and non-content segments from the transcript have been excluded to focus on the episode's primary discussions.

Transcript

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[Roman Mars]

Hello beautiful nerds, It's Roman here. If you're loving 99% invisible and you want to hear new episodes, ad free and get access to exclusive bonus content, subscribe to Sirius XM podcast plus on Apple Podcasts or visit siriusxm.com podcastplus to start your free trial today. This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars The Brutalist is a movie. I don't know if it's a good movie or a bad movie, but it is definitely the most movie I've seen this year. It is also a movie nominally about architecture and is nominated for 10 Academy Awards, so it felt like journalistic malpractice if we didn't talk about it on the show at least a little bit. The story follows a fictional Hungarian architect named Laszlo Toth and his struggles to build a community center in rural Pennsylvania. The film neatly summarizes the debate about the architectural style known as brutalism. In this one exchange, concrete is sturdy and cheap concrete. It's not very attractive. The job of architect has often been depicted in movies, even though the practice of architecture is not very cinematic. It's mostly meetings and such, but it is a romantic profession that lends itself to high drama and strained metaphors, which, after seeing the Brutalist, is why I wanted to talk to Mark Lamster. Mark is the architecture critic of the Dallas Morning News, editor of a book called Architecture and Film, and he teaches an Architecture on Screen course at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. So he's basically the first and only call you make when you want to talk about this stuff. Mark, thank you so much for joining us.

[Mark Lamster]

It's super fun to be here. Thanks for having me.

[Roman Mars]

And you have seen the movie the Brutalist. I have heard you talk about it.

[Mark Lamster]

Yes, I have definitely seen the movie the Brutalist. I have podcasted about it. I wrote a review of it for our newspaper. So yes.

[Roman Mars]

So let's talk a little bit just about brutalism in general and why you think that this is the style that this character is working in. How does brutalism fit into this?

[Mark Lamster]

That's a great question. I'm not really sure that it does. When we first meet Lazlo Toth, lead character of the Brutalist, he is really designing in an International Style way. He's just come over, he's doing this bent tube furniture, kind of very Marcel Breuer inspired. The next thing we see that he designs is this library. But that's more kind of a modern project. It is the appropriate time, mostly for brutalism. It's a little early for brutalism. If you're an architectural historian looking at moments of history, that's a little earlier than brutalism might begin.

[Roman Mars]

I mean, I have a contention that what it has to do with Brutalism is that the word brutalist is just great.

[Mark Lamster]

Yes, it is a great word. And unfortunately, it has become sort of the. I think for much of the public, it has become like sort of default word for just all modern architecture, which is completely inappropriate. And it's sort of a cross that we architecture critics and architects themselves have to bear to explain this fact that. No, brutalism is actually this type of architecture that's really constrained to this relatively short period of time. But, you know, in the mind of the general public, any building that they don't like is Brutalism.

[Roman Mars]

Yeah. So the director of the Brutalist has mentioned that Laszlo Toth, the lead character, is this amalgam of, you know, maybe a little Paul Rudolph and Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Brewer. I mean, like, were you thinking about this at the time you were watching it?

[Mark Lamster]

The main thing I kept thinking about as I was watching it was that this emigre architect, who had ostensibly been the leading modernist architect of Hungary, was thrust into abject poverty in America with no connections. And all I could think about was that Philadelphia at that time, where he moves to, had this very significant emigre community of architects. The most notable modernist firm there was how in the scaz, they built the PSFS Tower, which, if you've taken an architectural history modernism survey, you've seen it as the first modernist skyscraper. So that was built in the 30s in Philadelphia. So the idea that Laszlo Toth comes there, can't find work, is this unicorn modernist in a city where that is an apostasy. And I kept just sitting there and sitting there and sitting there and sitting there because this movie is three and a half very long hours, and just wondering why he wasn't getting a job or going out and hanging out with all these cool modern architects who live down the block.

[Roman Mars]

That's such a Good point. Did you think about his buildings as an architecture critic at all? Did you look at them and judge them in a certain way?

[Mark Lamster]

Well, I'm not really sure what to say about him as an architect per se, because we see very little of his actual built architecture until the very end of the film. The first thing we see is this library that he's designed. And it's very beautiful as an object. But the only piece of furniture in the library is this Corbusier style lounge chair. And it just struck me as like so frigid and uncomfortable for a library. And, you know, I live not far from the actual house that Walter Gropius built for himself here outside of Boston. And it's exactly the opposite kind of space. It's very comfortable and luxurious. And the idea that the only kind of modernist library would be this spare, frigid place, I think didn't line up for me with history. It looked nice on screen. Right. But it wasn't the kind of place that you'd want to actually read a book.

[Roman Mars]

Yeah, I think most of the depictions of architecture and design in the movie are all about, you know, what looks good to be filmed or photographed and what serves the story. And they're not really about the veracity of different movements and such like that.

[Mark Lamster]

I think if the movie wasn't about architecture itself that you would. There would be a lot easier to forgive the transgressions, shall we say. But I mean, you asked about like his actual architect. Really, the only time we really encounter his full architecture is, you know, at the end when we're presented with this community center that the community actually didn't ask for.

[Roman Mars]

So let's talk about architecture in movies in general. I mean, you edited a book on architecture and film and thought about this a lot. What are architects in movies for? They seem like they have different purpose than your average vocation as depicted on screen.

[Mark Lamster]

Absolutely. Well, first of all, there are very few films that are about actual architects that center on the practice of making architecture. And it's kind of easy to understand why. And it's because architecture is kind of boring. It takes a long time to make. It's, you know, a lot of plumbing details, it's a lot of going over plans. You know, no one dies, there's no spying, there are no superheroes involved. Right. So it doesn't easily fit into the standard narrative structures of Hollywood film that require the sort of incredible existential drama. Right. Architecture is kind of like oxygen. It's all around us. We can't live without it. But we also take it super for granted. Right. So when architects do appear in films, usually they're there as a signpost of sort of bourgeois respectability that he is both. It's usually a man, not always, but quite often. And he is both an artist and a respected professional. Right. So he is this ideal figure, very attractive. I think of, you know, the character Sam Waterston plays in Hannah and Her Sisters. Right.

[Roman Mars]

I really came in here because I was bored stiff by the party.

[Mark Lamster]

What makes you think we're more interesting? And he's this very urbane, has, you know, a box at the opera, is able to, you know, discourse on all of the arts. The design's deliberately non contextual.

[Roman Mars]

But I wanted to keep the atmosphere of the street, you know, and the proportions and in the material that's unpolished Red crab.

[Mark Lamster]

He's very successful, has a Mercedes. And, you know, in the. In the film we see characters played by Diane Wiest and Carrie Fisher just fawning over them. It's like, which one of them will get to. To bed? This man is the principal action around his character. Of course. I was so tongue tied all night. I can't believe I said that about the Guggenheim. That is like, we often see that as like that this architect is a signpost rather than an actual. Than his career actually described in any number of films. You will see this from Jungle Fever, the Spike Lee film, Sleepless in Seattle. You just go through Hollywood and that's sort of the idealized vision of the architect as professional and artist at once very desirable.

[Roman Mars]

I mean, the architect is essentially just this artist that just has his stuff together enough to, you know, pay a.

[Mark Lamster]

Mortgage and a BMW. Right, exactly.

[Roman Mars]

So like an older woman can like, go like, okay, I'm not like throwing my life away for this guy. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yes. So funny. Sort of the ground zero for architects depicted on film is Howard Rourke in the Fountainhead. This is an awful, awful movie.

[Mark Lamster]

Well, it's both a great movie and a terrible movie. Right, so 1949, the Fountainhead, based on the novel by Ayn Rand and directed by King Vidor. And the characters in the film are of course, generally just mouthpieces for her objectivist ideology, basically libertarianist thinking. They hate you for the greatness of your achievement. They hate you for your integrity. They hate you because they know they can neither corrupt you nor rule you. And the lead character in the film, played by Gary Cooper, is this architect named Howard Rourke. And he's a very dogmatic modernist. He does not want his Vision corrupted. You know, we see him heroically at the beginning of the film getting this incredible commission for a skyscraper. And when the conservative bankers who he presents his model to see his modern building want to attack on this sort of classical facade on the front. And he is aghast and refuses this and storms out because no one shall interfere with his genius.

[Roman Mars]

It'd shock people. It's too different, too original. Why take chances when you can stay in the middle? If you want my work, you must take it as it is or not at all. We are your clients and it's your job to serve us. I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build.

[Mark Lamster]

Of course, the film sort of culminates with this incredible scene where he has now designed a housing project and once again, its completion has escaped his control. And his solution to this is to just go and blow up the housing project.

[Roman Mars]

Arrest me. I'll talk at the trial.

[Mark Lamster]

And of course, today this sounds like domestic terrorism, but in the world of the film, it's this act of completely justified righteous behavior. And he's in fact gets off at this trial that's held because no one, you know, in the world of Ayn Rand should interfere with the individual heroic genius. This idea of this architect who no one should confront his vision. He's a sole male genius. It basically holds, you know, even through today. I think the Brutalist is very much a product of that same vision. We also have the character here played by Adrien Brody, also sort of refuses to have his work corrupted in any way to the extent that he will pay for all change orders and overruns on its claws. He cuts three meters from the top, I add it to the bottom.

[Roman Mars]

We can't afford all this. I'm already over budget this quarter.

[Mark Lamster]

You take what you need from my.

[Roman Mars]

Field, Ashley, come on. What's the difference between 40 and 50ft anyway? The ceilings are still plenty high. Get it approved.

[Mark Lamster]

Several of the scenes in the Brutalist are even borrowed directly from the Fountainhead. These scenes in quarries and what have you. Architecture is really a collaborative art practiced by many people working together over long periods of time. So I think in many ways this is sort of a very dated way of thinking about the profession.

[Roman Mars]

Are there some examples in history of film where architecture is presented in a way that feels true to you?

[Mark Lamster]

I think the best examples are always going to be documentaries. Two recent ones that I really enjoyed. One Stardust, which is a film about the careers and lives of Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi. And it's really about their partnership working together about ideas. Another film I really enjoyed is called We Start with the Things We Find. Documentary about the New York based firm Lotec, founded by Neapolitan partners Adatola and Giuseppe Lignano. And they what's amazing, I think there's this very comparable scene to the Brutalist and also to the Fountainhead, right, Where in the Brutalist we see Laszlo Toth going to this Italian quarry to find the most beautiful marbles for his project. Whereas the film on Lotec starts with the characters also going to Italy, but in fact they're going to a shipyard to look at shipping containers and all this other infrastructural work, which is, you know, the detritus of the world, which, you know, they've decided like, we need to recover this and use this and transform the stuff that we might throw away or think of as own purely industrial and transform that into architecture. And it's a really beautiful idea.

[Roman Mars]

It strikes me that another thing that filmmakers use architects for is as a very basic metaphor to directors and filmmakers, Megalopolis, I think is a movie about filmmaking more than it's about city planning in any sort of meaningful way. In the Brutalist, it kind of blew my mind that the end credits song is this song that says one for me, one for you, one for me, one for you. Which is a movie trope of like you're gonna make one for the masses or for Hollywood and one of your personal things. This is not a line architects say very much to each other because they're all like, for all of us, you know, like there is no one for me. So what about this as sort of like architecture as ham fisted metaphor to moviemaking?

[Mark Lamster]

Well, I think it's kind of an obvious choice, right? And I saw exactly the same thing when I was looking at of those films. It strikes me they're both stereotypically the product of this lone male genius who has this vision and sees it to be completed as per meeting his genius ideas. Whereas really it's this wide cast of craftsmen to create an artist working together over a very long period of time. Usually one person gets the credit, but there's, you know, look at the credits to a film. It's like an endless, you know, you know, in the end you have this sort of three dimensional object that you sort of encounter in time and space, right? Whether it's a film or a building. So there is like a really interesting analogy there and I think a lot of filmmakers have seen that over the years. Peter Greenaway and his film the Belly of an Architect might be an example for that. Obviously, both the Brutalist and Megalopolis stand for that. In a way. The Fountainhead is very much that for Ayn Rand, in a way.

[Roman Mars]

But are there actually any works of fiction that get architecture right where you felt like? They really nailed it.

[Mark Lamster]

I think the filmmaker who best got it was Jacques Tati, the French filmmaker, the sort of French chaplain, if you will, and his films Monocle and Playtime, they're really about a confrontation with traditionalism and modernism and how the modern city shapes who we are. And our very humane look at modern architecture, about Americanization of the city, the modernization of the city. And they look at it critically, but also with this sort of humanity and acceptance. Like, we need to accept what is happening and we can make fun of it, but we're going to live in this world whether we like it or not.

[Roman Mars]

Before we go, are there any other fictional architects that you want to talk about?

[Mark Lamster]

Well, we haven't talked about America's most famous screen architect.

[Roman Mars]

Who would that be?

[Mark Lamster]

Well, Mike Brady, of course.

[Roman Mars]

That's right, Mike Brady.

[Avery Trufelman]

It's the story of a man named.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

Brady who was busy with three boys.

[Roman Mars]

So tell me about Mike Brady and how he practices architecture.

[Mark Lamster]

Well, I think, you know, I'm guessing that for many of the listeners out there who are our age, Mike Brady is their most common architect. You know, he's not a very good architect. He lives in this very dated kitschy ranch Burger with a sunken living room and, you know, of course, the very dramatic open staircase. And sure, yeah, I find it. There aren't too many episodes of the Brady Bunch where we see Mike actually engaging in architecture. But there is one that I find incredibly interesting. It's an episode called Mike's Horror Scope. And in this episode, Mike is approached by this quasi Italian fashion impresario named Bibi Galini. And she is very fabulous. I would introduce myself, but everyone knows who Bibi Galini is. Even people on the street come up to me and say, it's Bibi. And I always say to them, hello, my darling. She wants Mike to design a factory for her, and she gives him this complete freedom to do something creative and inventive. She wants it to be pink and fluffy. Make the factory the shape of a powder puff.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

Powder puff.

[Mark Lamster]

Or maybe tall, like a lipstick. Lipstick. A factory has to be practical and efficient, and Mike just can't wrap his mind around it. He keeps designing these, like, very straightforward factories for her. And she's like, no, no, no. And then she says she wants the roof to open up and he's like, that's technically impossible. And what's funny to me is that instead of embracing this brief that he's given, he could do anything and create some real interesting architecture. He is just so straightforward and lacks such an idea of invention that just sort of loses the client. I always find that very sad for Mike. Shows a challenge of the architect, right? Which is like clients are always difficult. You have to figure out how to both satisfy your own vision while satisfying demands.

[Roman Mars]

It's such a notable deviation from all the other ones we've discussed that given complete freedom, he just is like, please just make it a, make it a box and put stuff in it. Well, this has been so fun to talk about, Mark. I really appreciate you coming on the show.

[Mark Lamster]

That's been a lot of fun. Thanks.

[Roman Mars]

You can read Mark Lamster's architecture column in the Dallas Morning News. He also wrote an excellent biography of architect Philip Johnson. It's called the man in the Glass House. Check it out after the break. Brutalism 101 with Avery Trufelman. If you're doing what you love to do, there's nothing better than being surrounded by people who love it as much as you do. And if you own your own business, you want to hire employees who love what they do to boost the overall success of your business. Plus make it a pretty great place to work. But how do you find passionate employees who are a good fit for all your roles? ZipRecruiter ZipRecruiter is the hiring site employers prefer the Most. Based on G2. ZipRecruiter's powerful matching technology works fast to find top talent so you don't waste time or money. See a candidate who's perfect for your job. You can use ZipRecruiter's pre written invite to apply message to personally reach out to your favorite candidates. Hire experienced people who are excited about what they do with ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. See for yourself. Go to this exclusive web address to try ZipRecruiter for free. It's ZipRecruiter.com 99 Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com99. ZipRecruiter the smartest way to hire, even if you think it's a bit overhyped. AI is suddenly everywhere from self driving cars to business efficiency. If it's not in your industry yet, it is coming fast, but AI needs a lot of speed and computing power. So how do you compete without costs spiraling out of control? Time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or oci. OCI is a blazing, fast and secure platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, plus all your AI and machine learning workloads. OCI costs 50% less for compute and 80% less for networking, so you're saving a pile of money. Thousands of businesses have already upgraded to oci, including Vodafone, Thomson Reuters, and Suno AI. Right now, Oracle is offering to cut your current cloud bill in half if you move to oci for new US customers with minimum financial commitment. Offer ends March 31st. See if your company qualifies for this special [e-mail] invisible that's oracle.com invisible hello beautiful nerds, it's Roman here. If you're loving 99% invisible and you want to hear new episodes, ad free and get access to exclusive bonus content, subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast plus on Apple Podcasts or visit siriusxm.com podcastplus to start your free trial today. And we're back. If you finished the Brutalist and thought I don't really understand brutalism, well, we have a story for you. Enjoy.

[Avery Trufelman]

The best James Bond is either Sean Connery or Daniel Craig. I lean towards Daniel Craig. The new movies are just better. But the Sean Connery films definitely had the best villains. There's Blofeld, of course, who's so iconic that he turned the act of cat stroking into a thing that supervillains do. But Bond's flashiest nemesis has to be Goldfinger.

[Mark Lamster]

Do you expect me to talk?

[Roman Mars]

No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

Do you expect me to talk?

[Avery Trufelman]

Yeah, I expect you to talk.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

There's this dorky, fun fact that the Bond villain Goldfinger was actually named after a real person.

[Avery Trufelman]

That's Trufelman.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

Avery Trufelman, the author of the James Bond books, Ian Fleming named Goldfinger for a man he found so dastardly, so terrible, that he immortalized him in pop culture.

[Avery Trufelman]

The real Goldfinger was an architect, Erno Goldfinger, and he made giant, hulking, austere concrete buildings.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

Goldfinger's buildings were decreed soulless. Inhabitants claimed to suffer health problems and depression from spending time inside them. Some of Goldfinger's buildings were vacated because occupants found them so ugly.

[Avery Trufelman]

And yet many architects praised Goldfinger's buildings. His Trellog Tower, which was once threatened with demolition, has been awarded landmark status.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

This divide, this hatred from the public and love from designers and architects tends to be the narrative around buildings like Goldfingers, which is to say gigantic, imposing buildings made of concrete. What some people refer to as brutalist architecture.

[Avery Trufelman]

And a lot of folks beyond the creator of James Bond love to hate them.

[Adrian Forti]

We are in Worcester hall, which, to my great dismay and frustration, is often considered the worst building on campus, Or Worcester hall more like worst.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

I met up with Sarah Briggs Ramsey in Worcester Hall, A brutalist building at UC Berkeley.

[Adrian Forti]

I can't tell you how many times I've been locking up my bike outside and I overhear undergrads walking with their parents and going, ironically, this is the architecture school, and it's the ugliest building on campus.

[Avery Trufelman]

Yep, Wurster hall is the architecture school. Sarah completed her master's there.

[Adrian Forti]

Buildings like this are pretty pervasive across most American and Canadian campuses.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

Yeah, there was a big, bulky concrete building on the campus where I went to college, and I hated when I had to go through it. It just reminded me of a bunker or a bomb shelter. These big concrete buildings just, like, bum me out.

[Chris Grimley]

Absolutely. I mean, it has these connotations of, you know, Soviet era construction, sometimes third world construction, all these negative associations.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

This is professor Adrian Forti, author of the excellent book Concrete and culture. He's been researching concrete for around 10 years now.

[Chris Grimley]

It has a bad name.

[Avery Trufelman]

Apart from aesthetic criticisms, concrete buildings present environmental concerns.

[Chris Grimley]

A lot of these buildings built at a time when energy was cheap, and they use up an awful lot of energy to heat and cool them.

[Avery Trufelman]

Concrete buildings were built with the illusion of plenty that we will always have enough energy to build and heat and cool these massive, inefficient structures.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

As harsh as it looks, concrete is an utterly optimistic building material, Arguably too optimistic, really.

[Chris Grimley]

From the 1920s, it was seen as being the material that would change the world. It had the potential to build things in a way that hadn't been seen before.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

Concrete was this material that seemed boundless, readily available in vast quantities, and it could create massive spaces unlike any other material. So concrete sprang up everywhere.

[Chris Grimley]

It's the second most heavily consumed product in the world.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

The only thing we consume more of than concrete is water.

[Avery Trufelman]

We use concrete for sidewalks, bridges, tunnels, and highways, and of course, for giant.

[Chris Grimley]

Buildings, Whether we're talking about stadia or.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

Auditoria or condominia or gymnasia or planetaria.

[Avery Trufelman]

So historically, government programs all over the.

[Chris Grimley]

World loved concrete, particularly in Soviet Russia, but also later in Europe, North America. It was used for welfare, welfare state projects.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

Concrete presented the most efficient way to house huge numbers of people. And philosophically, it was seen as humble, capable, and honest. Concrete was just out there in all of its rough glory, not hiding behind any paint or layers, saying, here I am. Love me or hate me.

[Avery Trufelman]

And his concrete buildings came to signify humility, honesty, and integrity. They were erected all over the world as housing projects, courthouses, schools, churches, hospitals, and city halls.

[Mark Lamster]

You'll stand outside and a tour bus will go by, and they'll be, ladies and gentlemen, voted the most ugliest building in the world. Boston City Hall. How do you compete with that?

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

Chris Grimley is up against a lot, but he's trying to restore Boston City Hall's reputation.

[Mark Lamster]

My name is Chris Grimley. I'm with my fellow heroic people, Mark Pasnik and Michael Kubo.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

Chris, Mark and Michael have embarked on what they call the heroic project, chronicling the concrete structures in and around Boston.

[Avery Trufelman]

Rather than referring to these concrete buildings as brutalist, they prefer the term heroic because, like so many superheroes, these structures have the best, most noble intentions, but are sorely misunderstood.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

Also, just generally, brutalism is a big, broad label that gets used inconsistently in architecture. People tend to disagree on one precise definition.

[Avery Trufelman]

The name brutalism also just sounds intense, even though it's not actually related to brutality.

[Roman Mars]

It comes from beton brute, which is a French term for raw concrete.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

In any case, to these guys, heroic feels like a better term, especially in Boston, where concrete architecture swooped in and saved the day.

[Mark Lamster]

You have to situate Boston in late 50s, 1960s. It is America's first city. Well, it is America's most historic city.

[Avery Trufelman]

Again, not really, but I get your point.

[Mark Lamster]

And yet it finds itself in the doldrums.

[Avery Trufelman]

Boston, like a lot of other American cities, was plagued by a loss of manufacturing jobs and white flight to the suburbs. And for decades, Boston had the highest property taxes in the nation and almost no development.

[Mark Lamster]

There is this recognition from civic authorities that something needs to be done and something needs to be done quickly.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

So Boston sets an agenda to make the city great again, with big, soaring, capable, thoroughly modern buildings made, of course, out of concrete.

[Avery Trufelman]

And though some of these buildings were celebrated, others were really not.

[Mark Lamster]

What we call the third rail of.

[Roman Mars]

Boston concrete modernism is City Hall.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

When Boston City hall was built in 1968, critics were put off by this concrete style. It was called alienating and cold. And since it was a government building, this criticism became impossible to remove from politics.

[Avery Trufelman]

Boston City hall became a political pawn. Mayors and city council members kept trying to win public support with promises to get rid of the building. Like John Tobin did when he ran for City Council.

[Roman Mars]

Hi, everybody, this is John Tobin. Thanks for visiting. Votejontobin.com Here we are on City Hall Plaza in front of Boston City Hall.

[Mark Lamster]

I'm not an architect, but I know.

[Roman Mars]

Bad architecture when I see it.

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This is a bad building, and I.

[Roman Mars]

Think we can do a lot by.

[Mark Lamster]

Knocking this building down.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

Former Mayor Thomas Menino actually started a study to really look into tearing it down.

[Mark Lamster]

It turned out as a result of the study, that you would need something like a nuclear grade weapon basically to destroy this building because it was so heavily overbuilt and concrete.

[Avery Trufelman]

And so when they couldn't tear down City hall, officials chose to ignore it.

[Mark Lamster]

People that occupied the building for decades and decades didn't like it. And so they didn't invest money into the building and effectively wanted to see the building go away.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

This is called active neglect. And it happens with a lot of concrete buildings. They are intentionally unrepaired, unrenovated and uncared.

[Avery Trufelman]

For, which only makes the building more ugly and then more hated and then more ignored and creates this vicious cycle where the public hate of Boston City hall feeds itself.

[Mark Lamster]

And then the discussion years on really became about what the original architect had done wrong, as if this were not a failure of maintenance, but a failure of the initial design.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

When people built these mammoth concrete structures, no one really thought about maintenance. They seemed indestructible.

[Chris Grimley]

In the early days of concrete, people assumed that this was an everlasting material that wouldn't need any attention at all. And I mean, that's wrong. We know that it does need to be looked after. It does deteriorate, it does decay.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

But it can be hard to tell when concrete is decaying.

[Chris Grimley]

If you think of brick and timber, the decay takes place on the surface of them. But with concrete, the deterioration is internal.

[Avery Trufelman]

Concrete deteriorates chemically from the inside out. Part of this has to do with the metal reinforcements that help hold up most concrete buildings. The rebar, well, it can rust, and the rust eats away at the overall structure.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

But Adrian Forti says tearing them down is not the answer, because as soon.

[Chris Grimley]

As you tear them down, then you have a problem, first of all, what you do with the detritus that's left. And secondly, you've got to replace them with something else and use up a whole lot more energy and create a lot more CO2 in building something in their place.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

They already used up all that energy when they were made. They're already there.

[Avery Trufelman]

We can adapt these buildings to make them greener. And make them more appealing places to be by adding windows, for example. But basically, Professor 40 thinks we can all develop the capacity to love these concrete brutes in all their hulking glory.

[Chris Grimley]

Yeah, sure, people can learn to love anything. But you know, as with any art form, whether it's opera or painting or literature, the more you know about it, the more you'll get out of it. The the more you'll appreciate it.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

And this is especially true of concrete buildings. Architecture students appreciate them because they know that concrete actually requires a hell of a lot of skill and finesse to work with.

[Chris Grimley]

To do architecture in concrete is proof that you really are an architect. It's the test of being an architect.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

With a concrete building, every little detail needs to be calculated in advance. Concrete is wildly intimidating to work with. Once you pour it, there's no going back.

[Chris Grimley]

With a concrete building, it's like the result of an immaculate conception. The whole thing is an integral monolithic whole and it has to be right.

[Avery Trufelman]

And aside from the interesting design challenges it poses, concrete itself as a material can be subtly beautiful.

[Adrian Forti]

If you look closely, you know, what we think of as just a monolithic, consistent, homogeneous texture is actually really rich and has a lot of interest when you actually go up to it and consider it.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

Sarah Briggs Ramsey, the one I spoke with at Berkeley's Worcester hall, did a year long project traveling around the world looking at concrete buildings in Europe and Asia and south and North America to.

[Adrian Forti]

Create a global comparison of one material that I think is so sort of under considered. It's like the background of all the cities, but no one actually stands to look.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

We call the city a concrete jungle to talk about the artificialness of the urban landscape. But concrete can actually be a very natural expression of the environment. Concrete's color and text texture can be dictated by local climate, local earth and local rock.

[Adrian Forti]

This is the Harvard Science center on the Harvard campus. And it's got a very purpley, like a really pronounced purpley color. And that's the ground from the site.

[Avery Trufelman]

Concrete can also be an expression of local style and custom. Like how UK concrete has big, thick, textured chunks of rock, while Japanese concrete is very fine and flat.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

But the beauty of concrete architecture is all the better when you can just observe the buildings like pieces of sculpture without actually having to live and work in them. Which brings in concrete's surprising photography.

[Chris Grimley]

Concrete looks good in photographs.

[Avery Trufelman]

It provides this kind of neutral background.

[Chris Grimley]

It provides a wonderful setting for people's skin tones, color of clothes.

[Avery Trufelman]

Fashion photographers realized this first. And then pockets of the Internet started to appreciate these concrete buildings.

[Chris Grimley]

There are lots of these blogs and so on which show a kind of extraordinary enthusiasm for concrete.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

Photography is allowing a new audience of non architects to appreciate these buildings for their strong lines, their crisp shadows, and increasingly the idealism they embody.

[Chris Grimley]

They represent a set of ideas about the state of the world and what the future was imagined to be that, you know, we want to preserve. We should remember what people were thinking 50 years ago. If we tear these buildings down, we will lose all of that.

[Avery Trufelman]

Architecture, whether we want to admit it or not, has a sort of shelf life, a time after which buildings fall out of fashion and then are allowed to fall apart.

[Sarah Briggs Ramsey]

Back in the 1960s, Victorian style buildings were considered hideous, falling apart, impossible to repair, and we were tearing batches of them down, all the while erecting big concrete buildings. But enough Victorians were saved that today they are these beautiful, lovingly restored treasures.

[Avery Trufelman]

Brutalist, heroic, whatever you want to call it. Concrete architecture now finds itself at a potential inflection point. Too outdated to be modern, too young to be classic. And a small but growing band of architects, architecture enthusiasts and preservationists would like us to just wait a bit and see. Maybe with a little time and love, we might discover some architectural natural diamonds in the rough that we just can't see right now.

[Roman Mars]

That story was produced by Avery Trufelman back in 2015. 99% Invisible was produced this week by me, Roman Mars, along with Martine Gonzalez, who also mixed this episode music by Swan Real and Martin Gonzalez. Cathy Tu is our executive producer. Kurt Kolstead is the digital director. Delaney hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Chris Perube, Jason De Leon, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Lesh, Madonn, Joe Rosenberg, Kelly Prime, Jacob Medina Gleason and me, Roman Marsh. As I said, the 99% invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part of the SiriusXM podcast family now, headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building in beautiful uptown Oakland, California. I think all of us are on Blue sky now, which is kind of like Twitter, except it's not supporting an unelected billionaire who's currently dismantling the government. We're also having a ball on our Discord server server where you can join us to make Oscar predictions and talk about your favorite architect movies. There's a link to that as well as every past episode of [e-mail].

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