brutalism

plural brutalisms

1. countableuncountableBrutal, violent behaviour; savagery.

   Instances of misguidance like the ones given, and at least recognized in retrospect, in fascism, racism, and ecological brutalism, are also to be sensed by religious communication in other contexts.

   2012, Michael Welker, “Creation, the Concept of God, and the Nature of the Human Person in Christianity”, in Peter Koslowski, editor, The Concept of God, the Origin of the World, and the Image of the Human in the World Religions, Springer, page 87

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   1839, Earl of Clarendon, Speech to House of Lords, recorded in Mirror of Parliament, republished in 1840 January-June, The Eclectic Review, New Series, Volume 7, page 455, Their punishments for crimes were of the most savage nature: and the absurdities of the Theodosian Code, together with the ancient customs of Germany, came to be all blended into a singular amalgamation of refinement and meanness,—of brutalism and bravery.

   2013, Aimee Gasston, Katherine Mansfield, Cannibal, Janet Wilson, Gerri Kimber, Delia da Sousa Correa (editors), Katherine Mansfield and the (Post)colonial, Edinburgh University Press, page 15, She revelled at being dubbed the 'little savage from New Zealand' by her principal at Queen's College, London, and as an adult would develop a commitment to brutalism by consistently refusing to represent a falsely civilised world view in her fiction.

2. countableuncountablearchitectureAlternative letter-case form of Brutalism.

   2015, Johnny Rogan, Ray Davies: A Complicated Life, Vintage (The Bodley Head), page 375, A founder of the Victorian Society in 1958, Betjeman was a celebrated critic of architectural brutalism and an active campaigner against the march of modernism.

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   Art deco is one of the first truly modern styles and a precursor to the more streamlined and simpler lines of later styles, such as the international style, art moderne, and even brutalism.

   2010, Donna M. DeBlasio, Martha I. Pallante, Images of America: Amherst, Arcadia Publishing, page 75

   On the face of it the pair also seemed to plunder much of their muscular brutalism in the building of the church from late Le Corbusier but they have consistently, and independently, rejected any Corbusian or even post-Corbusian label.

   2011, Steve Redhead, We Have Never Been Postmodern: Theory at the Speed of Light, Edinburgh University Press, page 48

   Gated, gilded and gaudy, they have sprung up all over China: overwrought government buildings erected at vast public expense, and in stark contrast to the shoddy state of so many homes and schools. In style they range from modernist brutalism to Versailles kitsch.

   2013 July 27, “Architectural bombast”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8846, archived from the original on 13 Dec 2013

alternative brutalism

1. uncountablearchitectureA style of modernist architecture characterized by angular geometry and overt signs of the construction process.

   The trend towards Brutalism - an austere style that had its origins in the Bauhaus and is characterized by its emphasis on the building materials (especially bare concrete) and unconcealed service pipes - did little to improve the situation.

   2005, Rodney Bolt, Bavaria, Cadogan Guides, page 26

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   In similar spirit, Nigel Henderson, a member of the Independent Group's Brutalist core, exhibited black and white photographs of the East End at the 1953 ICA show Parallel of Life and Art which stressed the unsanitised reality of everyday life: Peter Smithson's defence of Brutalism through the categorical rhetoric of objectivity and truth, quoted above, echoes Anderson.

   2000, Katherine Shonfield, Walls Have Feelings: architecture, film and the city, Taylor & Francis (Routledge), page 20

   2004, B. M. Boyle, Brutalism, R. Stephen Sennott (editor), Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Architecture, Volume 1: A-F, Taylor & Francis (Fitzroy Dearborn), page 181, Nonetheless, despite its radical appearance, Brutalism could claim, if not legitimacy, at least ancestry in pre-World War II modernism.

   Synonyms: New Brutalism