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Leave Brutalism Alone! · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
0:11
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck Bence
0:15
Speaker 1: here sitting in for Jerry, which we're all very happy about. Frankly,
0:18
Speaker 1: that's our preference. And this is stuff I'm kidding, and
0:22
Speaker 1: this is stuff you should know.
0:24
Speaker 2: It's been a while since you bagged on Jerry for
0:26
Speaker 2: no reason.
0:27
Speaker 1: I know things have felt weird. Now I just reset
0:30
Speaker 1: them again.
0:32
Speaker 2: I'm excited about this one. This is another if you're
0:35
Speaker 2: listening at home, we would really encourage you to try
0:38
Speaker 2: and follow along by looking up some photographs of some
0:41
Speaker 2: of the things we mentioned, because obviously we're talking about
0:44
Speaker 2: a design style of architecture, and those are always better
0:49
Speaker 2: when you can see some of this stuff and do
0:51
Speaker 2: so safely.
0:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's really difficult to describe a building in
0:55
Speaker 1: any really good terms, you know, or any way that
0:59
Speaker 1: you're just like, oh, I don't even need to see
1:01
Speaker 1: the picture of it. I totally got what you're saying.
1:04
Speaker 2: But we still try.
1:05
Speaker 1: We definitely still try, and probably of all the architecture
1:08
Speaker 1: there is, brutalist might be the easiest to describe without
1:13
Speaker 1: looking at it.
1:14
Speaker 2: Maybe true, But then when you look at brutalist things,
1:18
Speaker 2: there's so much variety within that category.
1:21
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And if you hadn't guessed by now we're
1:25
Speaker 1: talking about brutalism, if you didn't pick up from that
1:27
Speaker 1: exchange we just had or the title of this episode
1:31
Speaker 1: and brutalist architecture, even if you don't know what it is,
1:35
Speaker 1: you have almost certainly witnessed it, maybe even been inside
1:38
Speaker 1: a brutalist building, because they're very often public buildings, as
1:42
Speaker 1: we'll see, And brutalism is probably the most reviled, misunderstood,
1:50
Speaker 1: hated architecture of all time. It's just so easy to
1:55
Speaker 1: hate it, and so many people hate it for so
1:56
Speaker 1: many different, sometimes really weird reasons. But there also seems
2:01
Speaker 1: to be a renaissance and appreciating brutalism which is arriving
2:06
Speaker 1: just in time, because brutalist buildings are in really grave
2:10
Speaker 1: danger being torn down and erased from architectural history all
2:14
Speaker 1: over the world.
2:16
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, I learned a cool thing today which I
2:20
Speaker 2: never knew before. And I thought about this when I
2:23
Speaker 2: was in Mexico City, which has a lot of great
2:27
Speaker 2: brutalist architecture. Yeah, including I mean that airport's got to
2:31
Speaker 2: be brutalist.
2:32
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, as a matter of fact, it's got to be.
2:36
Speaker 1: I think it is. I didn't see that. It didn't
2:37
Speaker 1: come up in my research, but yes, Mexico City has
2:40
Speaker 1: a ton of good brutalism.
2:43
Speaker 2: But when I was there, I noticed some things and
2:45
Speaker 2: I was like, and I saw a couple like sort
2:49
Speaker 2: of that echoed sort of pyramid style brutalism, and I
2:52
Speaker 2: was like, wait a minute. I was like, these look
2:54
Speaker 2: like ancient mind temples, and if you look up like
2:58
Speaker 2: an ancient Mayan temple or it goes visit one like
3:01
Speaker 2: it's a totally brutalist thing. But I learned that apparently,
3:06
Speaker 2: originally these temples were very ornate. I saw. I can't
3:10
Speaker 2: remember where I got this, but I said, they were
3:13
Speaker 2: as ornate as any neoclassical edifice in Europe. But they've
3:17
Speaker 2: been stripped down over the years from war and looting
3:21
Speaker 2: and just time, and they became brutalist in the end.
3:24
Speaker 1: Huh weird. That's fantastic and totally surprising.
3:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they weren't originally built that way. But when
3:31
Speaker 2: you look at a mine temple compared to like some
3:33
Speaker 2: of these other you know, like office buildings, I'm like,
3:36
Speaker 2: you say this was came around in like England in
3:38
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties, and I say it came around long
3:41
Speaker 2: before that.
3:42
Speaker 1: So you hit upon something though that like these these
3:46
Speaker 1: mine temples are brutalist now, but they weren't before because
3:49
Speaker 1: they've been stripped of their decoration or whatever. That is brutalism.
3:53
Speaker 1: It's a type of architecture that from its outset, from
3:56
Speaker 1: the creation of the building, from design onward, it's meant
4:01
Speaker 1: to not have ornamentation. It's the it's the skeleton of
4:06
Speaker 1: the building, is the building. That's what brutalism is, or
4:09
Speaker 1: at least in part.
4:11
Speaker 2: Yeah. And if you've ever and like we said, we'll
4:14
Speaker 2: get into some of the variety within the style, but
4:17
Speaker 2: if you've ever seen a like a huge concrete, unfinished
4:23
Speaker 2: sort of concrete looking government building with the same little
4:27
Speaker 2: tiny windows and it just looks like this blocky monolith, Yeah,
4:31
Speaker 2: that is brutalism staring you in the face.
4:34
Speaker 1: Yeah. If you look at a building and suddenly Stalin
4:37
Speaker 1: just comes into your head, you're looking at a brutalist
4:40
Speaker 1: building almost certainly.
4:42
Speaker 2: Yeah. Or if you wonder what evil villains layer that is,
4:45
Speaker 2: it's probably a brutalist building.
4:47
Speaker 1: Right, exactly. I also had a brutalist epiphany in Mexico
4:51
Speaker 1: City recently. When we were down there. We went to
4:54
Speaker 1: one of the museums and they were having a brutalism exhibit,
4:59
Speaker 1: and it completely reversed my feelings about brutalism. I walked
5:04
Speaker 1: into that exhibit hating brutalism, and I walked out really
5:08
Speaker 1: appreciating it. And it turns out I didn't actually hate
5:12
Speaker 1: brutalism all this time. I hate ugly buildings, ugly, thoughtless, dumb,
5:16
Speaker 1: boring buildings, and that is not Brutalism is not synonymous
5:20
Speaker 1: with that. It's gotten a bad name over the years,
5:23
Speaker 1: and part of it is even the name itself brutalism.
5:26
Speaker 1: A lot of people think that the whole term was
5:29
Speaker 1: coined to describe like how the building makes you feel
5:32
Speaker 1: when you look at it. It's brutal, it's sharp, it's merciless,
5:38
Speaker 1: has zero compassion, it's dehumanizing. That's not what the term
5:42
Speaker 1: brutalism means at all. It actually refers to a type
5:45
Speaker 1: of concrete that the French architect and designer the Corbussier
5:50
Speaker 1: introduced called beton brute.
5:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, beton brute. I think the exact English translation is
5:57
Speaker 2: gross cement exactly.
5:59
Speaker 1: But they call it raw concrete.
6:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, which is to say, just a raw, unfinished,
6:06
Speaker 2: poored concrete. There are a lot of houses in our
6:11
Speaker 2: surrounding neighborhoods in Atlanta now that are being built sort
6:15
Speaker 2: of in this style, these huge, big concrete, blocky houses
6:19
Speaker 2: that are I think it's sort of a mishmash. It
6:21
Speaker 2: definitely echoes brutalism, but most of them still have a
6:26
Speaker 2: polished sort of concrete look to them, and that is
6:29
Speaker 2: not true true brutalism.
6:31
Speaker 1: No, And it's there's a lot of overlap between modernism
6:36
Speaker 1: and brutalism. They both were they both were going on
6:40
Speaker 1: at the same time. And some people say that brutalism
6:43
Speaker 1: emerged out of modernism. There's a big old that's a
6:45
Speaker 1: hornousness that we're not going to get into. But just
6:49
Speaker 1: using exposed unfinished concrete is not in and of itself
6:55
Speaker 1: a brutalist building. There's other elements as well that come
6:59
Speaker 1: into Yeah.
7:01
Speaker 2: But I think an interesting thing is brutalism, isn't I mean,
7:06
Speaker 2: you know, and you see it, but it's it's something
7:08
Speaker 2: that I saw this. I think it was a new
7:09
Speaker 2: York Times article that said it has always sort of
7:11
Speaker 2: lacked a really clear, well articulated set of principles.
7:15
Speaker 1: I saw that. I didn't agree with that. I thought
7:17
Speaker 1: it was very articulated.
7:20
Speaker 2: Oh well, I think the I think what it means
7:24
Speaker 2: more is it there's there's so much variety within those principles.
7:28
Speaker 2: You can't say it's just this, because depending on what
7:31
Speaker 2: region you are in the world, the brutalist architecture is
7:34
Speaker 2: going to look different, whether it's you know, Soviet Russia
7:37
Speaker 2: or postwar London, or in Brazil and Latin America. Brutalism
7:42
Speaker 2: grew out of the modernist tradition, so stuff there looks
7:45
Speaker 2: quite a bit different than it does in other parts
7:47
Speaker 2: of the world.
7:48
Speaker 1: It does. I think that they all share in common
7:50
Speaker 1: a core set of principles that is brutalism. That that's
7:55
Speaker 1: what I disagree with. I know that there's differences in
7:58
Speaker 1: all that. I just I just I didn't agree with
8:00
Speaker 1: that statement that the New York Times got it wrong, wrong, wrong.
8:05
Speaker 2: I'm with them. I'm down the paper record.
8:07
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about where this came from.
8:08
Speaker 2: Huh yeah, well, I mean, you know, it came out
8:11
Speaker 2: of the post war architectural rebuilding of so many cities
8:18
Speaker 2: around the world that were completely destroyed into rubble, and
8:22
Speaker 2: in particular this one couple, Peter and Allison Smithson in England,
8:27
Speaker 2: saw bombed out London and instead of seeing you know,
8:31
Speaker 2: a big bombed out mess where like, oh, we have
8:33
Speaker 2: to rebuild it, you know, more ornate and grander than before,
8:36
Speaker 2: they saw an opportunity and were inspired and said, why
8:40
Speaker 2: don't we start using this rubble and build some sort
8:45
Speaker 2: of unfinished looking places.
8:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's almost like they visually speaking they used
8:51
Speaker 1: the rubble as the material to build the new buildings
8:55
Speaker 1: and they didn't actually use that, but visually speaking they
8:59
Speaker 1: did that, and it was, like you said, in an
9:00
Speaker 1: acceptance of the current reality rather than a return to
9:03
Speaker 1: a previous reality, which is radical in and of itself,
9:08
Speaker 1: but that was the essentially. The Smithsons are credited with
9:13
Speaker 1: establishing brutalism as an architectural movement very frequently there. A
9:20
Speaker 1: critic named Rayner Banham is credited with coining the term
9:25
Speaker 1: brutalism that's wrong. He popularized it in a review of
9:28
Speaker 1: the Smithson's work. The Smithson's used it a couple of
9:31
Speaker 1: years before Bannam did, and a couple of years before that,
9:35
Speaker 1: a Swedish architect named Hans Asplind used it to describe
9:39
Speaker 1: a home that he designed an Uppsala called Via goth
9:42
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty nine. So at least as far back
9:45
Speaker 1: as nineteen forty nine the term brutalism was being used.
9:48
Speaker 1: But you kind of dug up and you had said
9:50
Speaker 1: at the outset evidence that brutalism was around before that
9:55
Speaker 1: term was ever used.
9:56
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I mean I think clearly they were inspired,
10:00
Speaker 2: inspired by stuff that came before them, maybe by mind
10:04
Speaker 2: temples and things like that, but no one was calling
10:06
Speaker 2: it brutalist obviously until then. And I don't think it
10:09
Speaker 2: was like a bonafide, a bona fide architectural movement until
10:14
Speaker 2: the post war, you know, sort of rebuilding.
10:18
Speaker 1: Right, and post war, because of all the rebuilding that
10:21
Speaker 1: was going on, brutalism was widely adopted across Europe, not
10:26
Speaker 1: just in the West but also in the Eastern Bloc
10:29
Speaker 1: because World War two just ravaged that continent and so
10:33
Speaker 1: a lot of countries had a lot of cities that
10:35
Speaker 1: needed to be rebuilt largely, and not just in Europe
10:38
Speaker 1: in Japan, particularly in Okinawa. Supposedly ten to twenty percent
10:45
Speaker 1: of the buildings that were around before World War Two
10:48
Speaker 1: were still around after as much as ninety percent of
10:51
Speaker 1: the buildings were destroyed, so they had a lot of
10:53
Speaker 1: rebuilding to do, and it just so happened at the
10:56
Speaker 1: time brutalism was this new kind of up coming, frankly
11:02
Speaker 1: beloved style of architecture. So it happened to be in
11:05
Speaker 1: the right place at the right time to become adopted
11:08
Speaker 1: around the world because all this rebuilding was going on.
11:11
Speaker 1: But the timing isn't the full explanation of the whole thing,
11:14
Speaker 1: is it? Is it?
11:15
Speaker 2: No, No, it's not. Because it was also a time
11:19
Speaker 2: where in the sort of the fifties through the seventies
11:23
Speaker 2: where the European nations that had colonized the world, that
11:28
Speaker 2: stuff started sort of going back the other way, and
11:31
Speaker 2: these countries were even either given their country back or
11:36
Speaker 2: they were flourishing. So in Latin America all of a
11:38
Speaker 2: sudden there was sort of a new prosperity going on.
11:42
Speaker 2: In Africa, there was you know, some of them were
11:45
Speaker 2: gaining independence, and so it all timed out with brutalism.
11:49
Speaker 2: So that's why you'll see like brutalism in Africa and
11:53
Speaker 2: brutalism in Latin America and brutalism in Japan. It's really interesting.
11:57
Speaker 1: The thing is, though, is we said that Modernism was
11:59
Speaker 1: in full swing same time, so you could say, well,
12:02
Speaker 1: why didn't they just choose modernism instead, And you know,
12:06
Speaker 1: a lot of them did. A lot of Modernist buildings
12:07
Speaker 1: were built in these same cities around the same time.
12:10
Speaker 1: But the reason brutalism truly became so ubiquitous around the
12:13
Speaker 1: world is because it was cheap. It was really cheap
12:16
Speaker 1: to make a brutalist building because they were essentially poured
12:21
Speaker 1: or slab concrete. There was no adornment to them. There.
12:26
Speaker 1: They were as we'll see, Brutalism takes a single unit
12:30
Speaker 1: very often like a like the smallest unit like a
12:34
Speaker 1: Saint apartment, and then redoes it over and over and
12:37
Speaker 1: over again. So there's a standardization of the process of
12:41
Speaker 1: the materials. So it just was. It was around the time,
12:45
Speaker 1: and it was a very cheap alternative to other much
12:48
Speaker 1: more ornate types of buildings like modernist buildings at the time,
12:52
Speaker 1: So that was one reason why it was so widely adopted.
12:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, and with that repeating thing, I mean, it can
12:58
Speaker 2: even just be like, well, like that airport in Mexico
13:01
Speaker 2: City with the circles, or what was the one the
13:07
Speaker 2: French guy like his very the habitat.
13:11
Speaker 1: The United Bitasion.
13:14
Speaker 2: Look, yeah, I mean if you look at that, that's
13:16
Speaker 2: another great example of these. You know, I guess they're windows.
13:21
Speaker 2: What are they?
13:22
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think they're balconies or like patios.
13:25
Speaker 2: Oh okay, it's hard to tell from like a distance,
13:27
Speaker 2: but it's just this repeated thing, and that's there's obviously
13:30
Speaker 2: a building efficiency when you're not adorning things and we're
13:34
Speaker 2: kind of repeating the same design feature over and over
13:37
Speaker 2: and over. Also, this is a time post war where
13:41
Speaker 2: people really started moving to the cities a lot more,
13:44
Speaker 2: especially in the Eastern Block. It's cheap. It was a
13:48
Speaker 2: cheap way to house tons of people as far as
13:50
Speaker 2: the US goes. That's when the federal government really beefed
13:54
Speaker 2: up and said, all right, we're going to be we're
13:56
Speaker 2: gonna take some steroids here and see what happens. And
13:59
Speaker 2: so all of a udd and you had a much
14:01
Speaker 2: larger bureaucracy and these they needed, you know, there were
14:04
Speaker 2: more people, more employees, and say need of these big
14:07
Speaker 2: federal government buildings. So you'll see a lot of some
14:10
Speaker 2: of the best brutalist architecture in American cities could be
14:13
Speaker 2: like the City Library like here in Atlanta, or like
14:19
Speaker 2: the IRS building or something like these big government buildings.
14:23
Speaker 1: Also, one of the reasons brutalism was such a great
14:25
Speaker 1: idea for government buildings is because they're so stable and
14:29
Speaker 1: they're so just yeah, immovable, And so the designers were like, well,
14:35
Speaker 1: it's going to remind people that the government is stable
14:38
Speaker 1: and you don't have to worry because the government's in control.
14:40
Speaker 1: Just look at the buildings that they operate out of.
14:44
Speaker 2: Yeah. DC has a lot of brutalist stuff.
14:46
Speaker 1: Right, Yes, it's a brutalist town. If you want to
14:49
Speaker 1: acquaint yourself with brutalist architecture, just walk around d C
14:53
Speaker 1: and look at the federal buildings. They are brutalists through
14:55
Speaker 1: and through.
14:57
Speaker 2: Should we take a break, but I say we take
15:01
Speaker 2: a break? Yeah, all right, because we need to go
15:03
Speaker 2: to Washington, d C.
15:04
Speaker 3: And apologize.
15:31
Speaker 1: Okay, Chuck, I didn't understand. Why do we have to
15:34
Speaker 1: apologize to DC?
15:36
Speaker 2: I don't know. It sounded like you were saying, I
15:38
Speaker 2: know you appreciate brutalism now, but it sounded like you
15:41
Speaker 2: didn't have much love for the DC style of brutalism.
15:45
Speaker 1: No, it's not that I've always appreciated DC because it's
15:48
Speaker 1: just so weird architecturally, isn't it that nothing can be
15:52
Speaker 1: taller than the Washington Monument. That's why there's no skyscrapers
15:55
Speaker 1: in DC. I think I've heard that the Monument or
15:58
Speaker 1: the Capitol Building one of the two. So yeah, it's
16:01
Speaker 1: a very low slong city. But that also is ready
16:06
Speaker 1: made for brutalist design too, because they're often like low, wide,
16:12
Speaker 1: hulking forms as well.
16:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're never going to see a brutalist tower.
16:18
Speaker 1: That's not true. There are some brutalist towers, but they're
16:21
Speaker 1: very rare, very very rare.
16:22
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean I've seen some skinnyish apartment buildings
16:26
Speaker 2: and things, but I guess I don't know. I'm thinking
16:29
Speaker 2: in terms of like skyscrapers.
16:31
Speaker 1: Well, do they have those the skyscrapers that we think
16:34
Speaker 1: of when we think of the cities today, those kind
16:36
Speaker 1: of came along and replaced brutalism and starting around the eighties. Yeah,
16:40
Speaker 1: so no, you wouldn't have seen that as brutalist because
16:42
Speaker 1: it's just wasn't brutalist.
16:44
Speaker 2: So it's not all concrete all the time. It's obviously
16:48
Speaker 2: a very big part that unfinished concrete of brutalism. But
16:52
Speaker 2: you might see a little brick in there every now
16:54
Speaker 2: and then, probably not going to be like some super
16:57
Speaker 2: colorful thing. You'll probably see some steel, ill obviously some
17:01
Speaker 2: glass I have seen, you know, and especially in Brazil
17:05
Speaker 2: and Latin America out of the modernist movement incorporating wood,
17:09
Speaker 2: and I'm a big fan of of like combining like
17:14
Speaker 2: cement and wood and natural things like that, natural elements
17:17
Speaker 2: with unnatural elements.
17:18
Speaker 1: So that's the new that's the new thing. That's brand
17:22
Speaker 1: spanking new. They call it organic brutalism, which is combining
17:26
Speaker 1: like a brutalist space with like organic touches to it. Yeah, yeah,
17:30
Speaker 1: you'd love that. So even though it's I don't even
17:34
Speaker 1: know if you can't say that it's not all concrete
17:37
Speaker 1: all the time. I think one of the basis of
17:40
Speaker 1: brutalism is that it's got to be concrete, right Or
17:42
Speaker 1: are you saying like other people have experimented with other
17:45
Speaker 1: stuff and still consider brutalist.
17:47
Speaker 2: No, no, no, I just mean like that every square
17:50
Speaker 2: inchoa gotch isn't concrete.
17:52
Speaker 1: But that it features very, very prominently. One of the
17:56
Speaker 1: things that, yeah, one of the things about this these
17:58
Speaker 1: reinforced concrete buildings is because they were using just unfinished
18:03
Speaker 1: concrete or you know, unadorned concrete, they figured out interesting
18:07
Speaker 1: ways to kind of play with the concrete so that
18:09
Speaker 1: every building didn't look exactly alike. So you'll often see
18:12
Speaker 1: like vertical ripples going down long tall columns that's a
18:18
Speaker 1: type of concrete. They'll be like aggregate, like maybe pebbles
18:23
Speaker 1: that are on the surface of the concrete. There's all
18:26
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff they did. But if at the end
18:27
Speaker 1: of the day it's all reinforced concrete and there's not
18:30
Speaker 1: like drywall over it, there's not like a nice paint
18:34
Speaker 1: job over it, there's no decorations or any kind of
18:38
Speaker 1: like woodwork or anything like that. It's just right the
18:42
Speaker 1: building itself. The point of brutalism is the building itself
18:45
Speaker 1: is allowed to stand on its own. And I saw
18:49
Speaker 1: somewhere that somebody said that if modernism is meant to
18:52
Speaker 1: be honest, then brutalism is brutally honest. Like what you
18:56
Speaker 1: see is what you get with the building.
18:59
Speaker 2: Oh, I like that.
19:00
Speaker 1: I do too.
19:02
Speaker 2: They like you said, there's a uh, there's a sense
19:05
Speaker 2: of permanence to a brutalist building. And I think that's
19:08
Speaker 2: another reason why government buildings like them, because, like you mentioned,
19:12
Speaker 2: they just sort of convey this thing of like, I
19:16
Speaker 2: know you hate banger taxes, but look at this IRS building.
19:18
Speaker 2: It's not going anywhere, right, It sends a message, it
19:22
Speaker 2: says ts.
19:25
Speaker 1: There's some other like basic parts of the brutalist concept.
19:29
Speaker 1: Chuck like that. The buildings tend to be angular, geometric, sculptural, blocky,
19:35
Speaker 1: top heavy. The windows are very frequently deep set. They're
19:39
Speaker 1: called fortress like. I don't know if you mentioned that
19:41
Speaker 1: one before, but it pops up almost everywhere when you're
19:44
Speaker 1: talking about what brutalism is. Fortress like seems to be
19:48
Speaker 1: like a very like just a common description. And then
19:54
Speaker 1: we talked about them being self repeating.
19:56
Speaker 2: Right yeah, yeah, and that was you know the reason why,
20:00
Speaker 2: because the efficiencies and the costs.
20:03
Speaker 1: Right. So sometimes some brutalist buildings will take like the
20:07
Speaker 1: single unit, like say it's an apartment building, and they
20:10
Speaker 1: will take the they'll design the one apartment building and
20:13
Speaker 1: they just repeat it over and over and over again,
20:15
Speaker 1: and then the next row over and over and over again.
20:17
Speaker 1: And by combining these modular units together, they it forms
20:22
Speaker 1: the building just through repetition. And so some people call
20:26
Speaker 1: it a fractal as far as architectural movements go, which
20:29
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense.
20:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, I appreciate it a lot, and
20:34
Speaker 2: I always have. But I get why people don't like
20:37
Speaker 2: a lot of these buildings. And I think that maybe,
20:40
Speaker 2: like you, previous to Mexico City only had in the
20:45
Speaker 2: in the brain like sort of one thing, which is God,
20:48
Speaker 2: that ugly building downtown that I have to go to
20:51
Speaker 2: get my driver's license or something exactly, and to expose
20:56
Speaker 2: yourself to more. And you know, we're gonna talk about
20:58
Speaker 2: some famous buildings, but you know, brutalism had a sort
21:02
Speaker 2: of a pre hatred going on before it even became
21:05
Speaker 2: a thing. The people that were I believe that was
21:09
Speaker 2: La Corbusier's how do you pronounce this building again?
21:14
Speaker 1: The unite do pitasion? That's right, I think so my
21:18
Speaker 1: high school friends can hold up.
21:20
Speaker 2: He designed this thing for working class families to house
21:22
Speaker 2: a lot of people, which was the whole idea, but
21:25
Speaker 2: no one wanted to live there. None of those people
21:27
Speaker 2: wanted to live there, so the intelligentsia of Marseille was like,
21:32
Speaker 2: you know, they appreciated that architecture, and there.
21:34
Speaker 1: Who moved in, right, they said sold.
21:39
Speaker 2: I also think it's interesting that they have been used
21:43
Speaker 2: in a lot of as the one here that I
21:46
Speaker 2: sent you in Georgia that is so cool looking, of
21:48
Speaker 2: all places, Noon in Georgia was used, as I believe
21:52
Speaker 2: in ant Man and the Wasp, as the evil villain's
21:55
Speaker 2: layer from the outside and clockwork orange, and like just
21:59
Speaker 2: this associate with evil villains or the bad guys or
22:04
Speaker 2: the communist Soviet block. It just sort of always had
22:08
Speaker 2: this reputation of like, you should probably hate this architecture.
22:12
Speaker 1: Also dystopian too, Like if you ever watch a movie
22:16
Speaker 1: or look at artwork set in a dystopia, if you
22:19
Speaker 1: look at the buildings, they are almost always brutalist in
22:23
Speaker 1: some way should perform often very frankly brutalist, right, Yeah,
22:26
Speaker 1: And it kind of makes sense because a lot of
22:28
Speaker 1: times dystopian settings are well they're set in the future,
22:33
Speaker 1: or that maybe they're post apocalyptic. Yeah, yeah, And it
22:36
Speaker 1: makes sense that if any kind of buildings is going
22:38
Speaker 1: to survive a brutalist building would survive far into the
22:41
Speaker 1: future or would survive in apocalypse, So it makes sense intuitively,
22:49
Speaker 1: But also I think brutalism gets used in that because
22:52
Speaker 1: it's so associated with things like dehumanization depersonalization, that the
22:57
Speaker 1: scales that they're built on are inhuman scales. And that's
23:00
Speaker 1: ironic because again, most of the brutalist buildings that were
23:04
Speaker 1: ever built were meant to be public buildings where you
23:06
Speaker 1: bring a lot of people together to do things like
23:09
Speaker 1: enjoy a ballet or a show or performance, or to
23:14
Speaker 1: live together as a community in like a tower or
23:17
Speaker 1: something like that, and yet they're The irony of it
23:20
Speaker 1: is that they're viewed as inhuman dehumanizing rather than humanizing,
23:25
Speaker 1: which is I think what they were after. But it
23:29
Speaker 1: just over time, it just became associated with the opposite
23:32
Speaker 1: of that.
23:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And you know, if you have an
23:36
Speaker 2: evil villain in your movie, you're not going to put
23:38
Speaker 2: them in a in a quaint cottage.
23:42
Speaker 1: Well maybe if they're on vacation and it's like a rental.
23:45
Speaker 2: One of my favorite examples of brutalism as a bad
23:48
Speaker 2: guy's place is in Karate Kid three, which I watched
23:54
Speaker 2: it when it came out, and I clearly hadn't watched
23:57
Speaker 2: it since because I'd forgotten all about it, and we
23:59
Speaker 2: watched it on vacation last year, and it is one
24:03
Speaker 2: of the most wonderfully awful movies I've ever seen. One
24:06
Speaker 2: of those bad movies that's a lot of fun to watch.
24:09
Speaker 1: Is that the one with Hillary Swank?
24:11
Speaker 2: No? No, that is I think the next karate Kid.
24:14
Speaker 2: Karate Kid three was the third of the you know,
24:18
Speaker 2: Daniel and Mister Miagi tail where he battled the bad
24:21
Speaker 2: guy Terry Silver, who was I think he was a
24:25
Speaker 2: Vietnam buddy of what's his name?
24:29
Speaker 1: I can't remember from the from the first one.
24:31
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, yeah, So Terry Silver's place is the ultimate
24:36
Speaker 2: brutalist bad guy lair, and it is the Ennis House
24:40
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles that was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
24:43
Speaker 1: Is that the Hell House or Hillhouse?
24:48
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean it's called the N's House.
24:51
Speaker 1: Because I've been at some Frank Lloyd Wright houses in
24:53
Speaker 1: Los Angeles and they're pretty awesome.
24:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, he's He definitely was not known as
24:58
Speaker 2: the brutalist architect, but there are a handful of his
25:04
Speaker 2: designs and if you look at Ennis House, it is
25:06
Speaker 2: like like super brutalist. And then when I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
25:11
Speaker 2: I saw the the West Hope House in Tulsa. Frank
25:17
Speaker 2: Lloyd right, Also, I think, if not purely brutalist, fairly brutalist.
25:23
Speaker 2: And then like you look at the Guggenheim, the Guggenheim
25:25
Speaker 2: is sort of brutalist as well.
25:27
Speaker 1: Right.
25:28
Speaker 2: I don't know if you could call it if you're
25:29
Speaker 2: a brutalist purist, a purialist. Jeez, if you would count
25:36
Speaker 2: the Guggenheim, because it's the concrete is much more smooth,
25:38
Speaker 2: but it's not not brutalist, you know.
25:41
Speaker 1: No, And I was mistaken. It's not Hill House. It's
25:44
Speaker 1: the house on Haunted Hill is what that that Ennis
25:47
Speaker 1: House stood in for. But it is super brutalist. And
25:50
Speaker 1: it's funny because you had mentioned that the Mayan architecture
25:54
Speaker 1: seems brutalist now, but it wasn't originally. It very much echoes. Yeah,
25:58
Speaker 1: some sort of mezzo American architecture, almost like a mishmash
26:03
Speaker 1: of it.
26:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, but it's you know, this is sort
26:07
Speaker 2: of what I was getting at, Like all of these
26:09
Speaker 2: reasons that people hate brutalism is why we are losing
26:13
Speaker 2: so many great brutalist buildings in the world. It's not
26:16
Speaker 2: a hard sell to tear these things down a lot
26:19
Speaker 2: of times in a city.
26:20
Speaker 1: No, And I have to say one other thing, the
26:24
Speaker 1: hatred of brutalism also is sometimes associated, depending on your
26:29
Speaker 1: political beliefs, it's associated with the welfare state, because so
26:34
Speaker 1: many were built as public housing. And so if you were, say,
26:39
Speaker 1: you know, right leaning, or probably very far to the right,
26:43
Speaker 1: you hate brutalism for that very reason. And it also
26:46
Speaker 1: is no coincidence that the era of brutalism ended abruptly
26:49
Speaker 1: at nineteen eighty, which is the time when Reagan and
26:53
Speaker 1: Thatcher came to power and the welfare state was like, nope,
26:57
Speaker 1: no more welfare state, or we're going to cut it
26:59
Speaker 1: so early that we're certainly not going to invest in
27:02
Speaker 1: any brutalist architecture any longer. And it became associated not
27:05
Speaker 1: just with totalitarian governments of the Eastern Bloc here in
27:09
Speaker 1: the United States, it also became associated on the right
27:12
Speaker 1: with welfare. And the right doesn't really like welfare very much,
27:17
Speaker 1: so they don't like brutalist architecture. Isn't that interesting?
27:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, super like they were looked at as blits a
27:22
Speaker 2: lot of times.
27:23
Speaker 1: Well, they became that way too, and that's that's another
27:26
Speaker 1: reason why that they're they're under such attack. They show
27:29
Speaker 1: their age pretty pretty poorly.
27:31
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, over the years because they're not adorned, because
27:36
Speaker 2: they have that rough concrete finish, water damage can happen
27:40
Speaker 2: a lot to cake can be really more evident. I
27:43
Speaker 2: think that Paul Rudolph, he's a and when you say,
27:47
Speaker 2: you know famous brutalist architect is you got to be
27:51
Speaker 2: in the know to kind of know these names.
27:52
Speaker 1: Right.
27:53
Speaker 2: It's not like a Frank Lloyd, right, But Paul Rudolph's
27:56
Speaker 2: Orange County Government Center in Gosha, New York was torn down.
28:00
Speaker 2: If you look this thing up, it is amazing looking.
28:03
Speaker 1: Yeah. I became a fan of Paul Rudolph's researching this.
28:06
Speaker 1: I'd never heard of him before, but he was good.
28:09
Speaker 2: That building is unbelievable. But they tore it down. And
28:12
Speaker 2: it wasn't just because like, oh look at this big
28:13
Speaker 2: blockie thing, but apparently it leaked from day one. There
28:18
Speaker 2: was constant mold, there were always water issues. They were
28:22
Speaker 2: having to closed courtrooms and move them around. And they
28:25
Speaker 2: just did a cost study and it was like, retrofitting
28:29
Speaker 2: and making this thing a workable government center isn't even feasible,
28:34
Speaker 2: so they tore it down.
28:35
Speaker 1: So I had a hard time getting to the bottom
28:37
Speaker 1: of this because I saw plenty of places that it
28:39
Speaker 1: was torn down. I also saw that it was going
28:41
Speaker 1: to be torn down, but they decided to do a
28:44
Speaker 1: retrofit or a rehab of it instead, and that the update,
28:51
Speaker 1: the refresh of it was so faithless to the original
28:54
Speaker 1: that it's no longer a brutalist building. I saw it
28:56
Speaker 1: described as disfigured.
28:59
Speaker 2: Interesting.
29:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, but either way, Paul Rudolph seems to be I
29:02
Speaker 1: think arch mag called him the unluckiest architect ever. Arc
29:08
Speaker 1: mag Is it arc or.
29:11
Speaker 2: Arch Is it architecture?
29:15
Speaker 1: Well, why don't you just call it arc mag? Then
29:17
Speaker 1: why do you have to add the H and make
29:19
Speaker 1: me look stupid in front of everybody.
29:22
Speaker 2: I'm with you, I think it's kind of an awkward name.
29:25
Speaker 1: Well, anyway, arc Slash arch Mag called him the unluckiest
29:29
Speaker 1: architect around because so many of Paul Rudolph's buildings are
29:35
Speaker 1: just being torn down left and right, and I don't
29:38
Speaker 1: even know that it's a distinct dislike of Paul Rudolph's work.
29:42
Speaker 1: I think it's just people are tearing brutalist buildings down,
29:45
Speaker 1: and his happened to be being torn down at a
29:48
Speaker 1: faster rate than other architects brutalist buildings.
29:52
Speaker 2: And I know we're going to get email from someone
29:53
Speaker 2: who works at that magazine that's like Chuck didn't know
29:55
Speaker 2: what he's talking about. We call it arc mag right exactly,
29:58
Speaker 2: Chocha's right mag Other buildings. Architect named Bertrand Goldberg designed
30:05
Speaker 2: the Prentice Women's Hospital in Chicago that was torn down. Yeah,
30:09
Speaker 2: it was gorgeous.
30:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, how are you going to look at that and
30:12
Speaker 1: be like that's an ugly building. It was a a
30:17
Speaker 1: elevated clover made of concrete. It was. It was gorgeous
30:21
Speaker 1: for sure, And at the very least, even if you
30:23
Speaker 1: don't think these buildings are gorgeous, I get that, but
30:27
Speaker 1: they're they're they're admirable for sure, like they're they're amazing
30:32
Speaker 1: achievements for sure. I just don't think that they're ugly
30:35
Speaker 1: across the board. I think there's plenty of amazing brutalist buildings.
30:38
Speaker 2: Out there, oh totally. It also doesn't help that and
30:42
Speaker 2: I think you found stuff from Jessica Stewart in My
30:45
Speaker 2: Modern met and Bigonia BESCO's great name in Arca magazine.
30:50
Speaker 2: That's a lot easier that they both talked about the
30:53
Speaker 2: fact that these are basically that they can be kind
30:56
Speaker 2: of a symbol of human abandonment, as what they said
30:59
Speaker 2: in Arkham magazine. And if it starts to decay, it's
31:02
Speaker 2: got these big, open bear concrete walls, so like obviously vandalism,
31:09
Speaker 2: it's just gonna be. It's a it's a perfect canvas
31:11
Speaker 2: for something like that. And I think Jessica Stewart's the
31:15
Speaker 2: one that said they you know, they basically symbolized urban
31:18
Speaker 2: decay at one point, and economic economic hardship.
31:21
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, that failure of the welfare state. And because
31:25
Speaker 1: they show their neglects so readily, because they're unadorned, because
31:30
Speaker 1: they're exposed concrete, they stood as symbols of like, yeah, look,
31:33
Speaker 1: how look how what a bad idea welfare is? Like
31:37
Speaker 1: it's just like this building is like a symbol of that.
31:40
Speaker 1: And by the way I've I've been pronouncing it ersa magazine.
31:45
Speaker 1: Oh is that not right?
31:49
Speaker 2: All right, we should take a break. We're gonna call
31:51
Speaker 2: these magazines up and get get the record set straight
31:53
Speaker 2: and then we'll be right back after this.
32:20
Speaker 1: So, Chuck, I'm glad you said Paul Rudolph's Orange County
32:24
Speaker 1: Government Center was in Goshen, New York, because I definitely
32:26
Speaker 1: would have said, gosh and no joke. And just want
32:30
Speaker 1: to say one more thing about that it had. It
32:33
Speaker 1: was made of three buildings. It had eighty seven roofs.
32:37
Speaker 1: Just wrap your head around that for a second, right exactly,
32:42
Speaker 1: But that's just just wonderful. Look up some of Paul
32:46
Speaker 1: Rudolph's work and you're gonna be like, this is super
32:48
Speaker 1: seventy's awesomeness. Like that guy was talented.
32:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. I think a lot of Frankloyd writes stuff
32:54
Speaker 2: leaked though as well.
32:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was very famous for like some guy he
32:58
Speaker 1: designed a house for said the roof is leaking on
33:00
Speaker 1: my desk, and Frank Floyd right, so move the desk
33:03
Speaker 1: if you ask me, these guys get way too much
33:06
Speaker 1: of a pass, like, because part of architecture is to
33:09
Speaker 1: make a building that doesn't leak too In addition to
33:12
Speaker 1: making it awesome, it's.
33:13
Speaker 2: Got to function as a as a place to live
33:15
Speaker 2: in or work in.
33:16
Speaker 1: Exactly when we were in Mexico City. We went with
33:20
Speaker 1: our two friends Mitch and Patrick, who are architects and designers,
33:23
Speaker 1: and I was explaining that to them too, and they're like, yeah,
33:26
Speaker 1: it's absolutely true. I was expecting pushback or whatever. They're like, no, no,
33:30
Speaker 1: like they people. People do give famous architects way too
33:33
Speaker 1: much of a pass, especially former legendary ones. Hopefully I
33:38
Speaker 1: didn't just get Mitch and Patrick in trouble.
33:40
Speaker 2: I don't think. So. Okay, they're out of the they're
33:42
Speaker 2: out of the club now, right. So if you're as
33:46
Speaker 2: far as brutalism coming back, it is coming back in
33:49
Speaker 2: certain ways. They're they're definitely. Even if you don't have
33:54
Speaker 2: like a let let's say you have like a modern house,
33:57
Speaker 2: or even not a modern house, you can decorate interior
34:00
Speaker 2: in a little bit more brutalish style, and you know,
34:04
Speaker 2: sometimes just a touch or two of that kind of
34:06
Speaker 2: thing can really give you what you're looking for.
34:09
Speaker 1: I'm not a big fan of that. Our house stuff
34:12
Speaker 1: Works office used to be I guess new brutalist interior design.
34:18
Speaker 1: It kind of chucked the boxes. I was never comfortable
34:21
Speaker 1: there now.
34:23
Speaker 2: I mean, isn't every office that's got concrete walls and
34:26
Speaker 2: exposed air ducts and edison bulbs, aren't they're all sort
34:31
Speaker 2: of new brutalists.
34:31
Speaker 1: Right kind of Yeah. And also it seems like little
34:36
Speaker 1: geometric pattern copper knickknacks on shelves that float that don't
34:41
Speaker 1: really serve that much of a purpose. They're just decorative.
34:43
Speaker 1: I don't like that either.
34:45
Speaker 2: We had that great mural though, really warmed that that
34:48
Speaker 2: plays up it did.
34:49
Speaker 1: I wonder what happened to that because we're not in
34:51
Speaker 1: that building anymore, but surely they preserve the mural in.
34:54
Speaker 2: That question mark table. Where the heck is that thing?
34:57
Speaker 1: I don't know in space? I think.
35:03
Speaker 2: Here though, in the twenty twenties, brutalism as an actual
35:06
Speaker 2: architectural style is making a bit of a comeback. Like
35:10
Speaker 2: I said, I've seen quite a few houses in the
35:13
Speaker 2: neighboring neighborhoods that are Some are just sort of like,
35:17
Speaker 2: you know, Hi, we're a blocky house, so that's more modern.
35:21
Speaker 2: But there are a couple that are are true brutalist,
35:24
Speaker 2: like concrete layers.
35:27
Speaker 1: It looks like there was a triumphant brutalist refurbishment here
35:32
Speaker 1: in Atlanta back in twenty eighteen. The Central Atlanta Library
35:36
Speaker 1: in downtown was designed by Marcel Brewer. Amazing building, but
35:41
Speaker 1: apparently that was the last work that Brewer completed before
35:46
Speaker 1: he died, and I guess some of the design and
35:49
Speaker 1: some of the actual construction didn't quite jibe, and some
35:51
Speaker 1: of his original intentions were covered up. Like there was
35:54
Speaker 1: an elevator that had to be centrally placed. That just
35:57
Speaker 1: screwed things up quite a bit. And then they came
36:00
Speaker 1: along and they added more lights, they refurbished the place,
36:04
Speaker 1: they got rid of that central elevator, they opened it up.
36:07
Speaker 1: There was a there's like a zigzagging staircase that's amazing.
36:11
Speaker 1: That's now much more prominent, And in doing so, they
36:14
Speaker 1: actually made the building closer to Marcel Brewer's original intentions
36:19
Speaker 1: with his design than it was when it was built
36:22
Speaker 1: when Marcel Brewer was still alive. So like, that's an
36:25
Speaker 1: example of the ideal of what's being done with brutalist buildings.
36:31
Speaker 1: The opposite end is that they're being torn down because
36:33
Speaker 1: people vote them as like the ugliest building of all time?
36:36
Speaker 2: Right, should we rattle off some of these famous ones? Yes, well,
36:42
Speaker 2: architecture architect wise, is it Lewis or Louis? I never know.
36:48
Speaker 2: I think Lewis, but Lewis Khan was usually the first
36:54
Speaker 2: nam ial here. If people are kind of throwing the
36:56
Speaker 2: brutalist architect name around.
37:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean, like you can make a pretty
37:02
Speaker 1: good case that brutalism. I don't know if it's because
37:06
Speaker 1: the buildings were meant to take center stage or whatever,
37:08
Speaker 1: but there aren't. It's just not household names compared to
37:12
Speaker 1: other movements, you know what I mean. Lewis Khan is
37:15
Speaker 1: definitely far and away the most famous, but I saw
37:18
Speaker 1: that he's technically not even a brutalist. He just used
37:20
Speaker 1: brutalist elements. There are some like we talked about Paul
37:23
Speaker 1: Rudolph of Vegenza, Sleigh Richter, Marcel Brewer. There's a lot
37:30
Speaker 1: of other really great I think Erno Goldfinger people you
37:34
Speaker 1: just have never heard of. These are just random names.
37:37
Speaker 1: It sounds like that a writer made up. No, they're
37:39
Speaker 1: actually legit architects. They just aren't. Like this movement didn't
37:44
Speaker 1: have like star power like some of the other movements did.
37:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like we said, like Frank Lloyd Wright has
37:51
Speaker 2: done a thing or two, but he's not known for that.
37:54
Speaker 2: I am pay has dabbled in it in New York city.
37:58
Speaker 2: If you see kIPS Bay Plaza by impay, very much brutalist,
38:03
Speaker 2: but that's not how you know his name was made.
38:06
Speaker 1: No, no, but there are ones there like Nope, I'm
38:08
Speaker 1: brutalists through and through. The Smithson's obviously were brutalists because
38:13
Speaker 1: they founded the movement and one of the things they
38:16
Speaker 1: completed was robin Hood Gardens, which was a housing estate
38:19
Speaker 1: from nineteen seventy two and it was.
38:23
Speaker 2: It's okay, brutal as brutal as brutalism gets it is.
38:27
Speaker 1: And part of it was demolished, just part of it right,
38:31
Speaker 1: and it was actually acquired. Three stories of the building
38:34
Speaker 1: were acquired by the Victorian Albert Museum to preserve it
38:38
Speaker 1: because it's just such a fine example of brutalist architecture,
38:41
Speaker 1: even though to me it's kind of ugly. But London,
38:45
Speaker 1: because this was the epicenter of the brutalist movement, the
38:48
Speaker 1: creation of it, it has a lot of good examples
38:52
Speaker 1: of really good brutalist buildings. What Prince Charles has to
38:56
Speaker 1: say about them, notwithstanding.
38:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, King Charles, but he Prince when he said that
39:02
Speaker 2: the Royal National Theater of London was a quote clever
39:05
Speaker 2: way of building a nuclear power station in the middle
39:07
Speaker 2: of London without anyone objecting, right, I think it's cool looking.
39:12
Speaker 2: I like it.
39:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say it's hilarious. But he's a
39:14
Speaker 1: madman for saying that. I think he came up with
39:16
Speaker 1: a clever quip and was going to use it at
39:18
Speaker 1: all costs, because anyone who looks at the Royal National
39:21
Speaker 1: Theater it isn't like that's an amazing building, is wrong.
39:26
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Wrong.
39:28
Speaker 2: Yeah. It was also at the time, Princess Charles's best
39:33
Speaker 2: stab at it telling a joke.
39:34
Speaker 1: Well, he was apparently well known for being a mean
39:37
Speaker 1: critic in the media about architecture in particular. I didn't
39:40
Speaker 1: realize that, but that was like one of his greatest
39:43
Speaker 1: hits from what I can tell. But the thing about
39:45
Speaker 1: the Royal National Theater, it had really great horizontal and
39:50
Speaker 1: vertical lines that were harmonious, which can be unusual for
39:55
Speaker 1: a brutalist building, but even more unusual, it fit the
39:58
Speaker 1: site that it's it's on. It's not imposed like every
40:03
Speaker 1: other brutalist building of all time. If there's ever been
40:05
Speaker 1: a brutalist building that fit the site that Royal National Theater,
40:09
Speaker 1: is it.
40:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure? For my money. If you want to
40:14
Speaker 2: have your socks knocked off by a blocky architectural gym,
40:19
Speaker 2: then you should go to Montreal and look at Safti's
40:23
Speaker 2: habitat sixty seven. It was built for the nineteen sixty
40:26
Speaker 2: seven World Spare there in Montreal, and it is super
40:30
Speaker 2: cool looking. It looks like something a child might build
40:34
Speaker 2: out of building blocks.
40:35
Speaker 1: I've got one. The Peace Center in Hiroshima. I really
40:39
Speaker 1: feel like every American should go there. It's amazing. The
40:42
Speaker 1: Japanese in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki being bombed
40:46
Speaker 1: by nuclear bombs, their response was to build this peace
40:50
Speaker 1: center to preserve what happened for generations to come, so
40:55
Speaker 1: that it never happened again. They turned peacenik rather than
41:01
Speaker 1: retributive or vengeance. It's a pretty amazing response if you
41:05
Speaker 1: think about it. And so it's a pretty amazing center.
41:08
Speaker 1: And Kenzo Tonge, who was a student of like Corbusier,
41:13
Speaker 1: started it in nineteen fifty and it's just a long
41:18
Speaker 1: rectangular structure that seems to be kind of floating on
41:22
Speaker 1: the horizon. It's just a really amazing place, really amazing museum.
41:26
Speaker 1: It just has a it's just it gets you in
41:30
Speaker 1: ways that like I'd never been gotten before.
41:34
Speaker 2: Just five years after the bomb was dropped too, so
41:36
Speaker 2: that like how heavy was that still in the air,
41:39
Speaker 2: you know?
41:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean in Hiroshima, like it's I mean,
41:42
Speaker 1: it's a part of the town. Oh, they preserved a
41:46
Speaker 1: bank that was just completely wasted, but the frame was
41:49
Speaker 1: still there. It's preserved. They build a fence around it
41:52
Speaker 1: and the blocks are still where they landed after the
41:56
Speaker 1: bomb was dropped, like it they didn't touch it after that,
41:58
Speaker 1: They just cording it. Often now it's part of this
42:02
Speaker 1: the museum. Parts of the city, entire parts of the
42:05
Speaker 1: city have become part of this living outdoor museum. It's
42:08
Speaker 1: just amazing.
42:11
Speaker 2: Japan. It's got to happen for me one day.
42:13
Speaker 1: Yes it does. And seriously, go to Hiroshima. It's really something. Yeah,
42:17
Speaker 1: it's also a really cool town too. In addition to
42:20
Speaker 1: the whole museum segment on it.
42:23
Speaker 2: Right, if you go to Tunisia and tunis the hotel
42:28
Speaker 2: do lack and if you look at the if you
42:31
Speaker 2: look at that building and you say, man, if you
42:34
Speaker 2: chopped off the back of that thing, that would be
42:36
Speaker 2: a sand crawler that the jaw was rolled around in
42:38
Speaker 2: in Star Wars, then you would probably not be surprised
42:42
Speaker 2: to know that and supposedly inspired George Lucas. I say
42:47
Speaker 2: it had to have been, because when you look at
42:49
Speaker 2: that building, it looks just like that thing, that inverted pyramid.
42:53
Speaker 2: Four hundred and sixteen rooms over ten floors. It's really something,
42:57
Speaker 2: and inverted pyramids are sort of a brutalless thing as well.
43:00
Speaker 2: But it's a great example.
43:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean it was open in seventy three
43:04
Speaker 1: and he was there shooting in the like years later,
43:06
Speaker 1: so it was definitely there in Tuness while he was there,
43:10
Speaker 1: So I buy that totally. One of the most famous
43:14
Speaker 1: brutalist buildings in the United States, if not in the world,
43:17
Speaker 1: is the Geyisol Library you see San Diego. It was
43:20
Speaker 1: originally called the Central Library, but Ted Geisel, doctor Seuss's widow, Audrey,
43:25
Speaker 1: donated twenty million dollars in the university said let's just
43:28
Speaker 1: rename it in honor of you.
43:30
Speaker 2: And Ted, well, she said ten million dollars and they
43:34
Speaker 2: kept the name, and she was like fifteen, right, and
43:37
Speaker 2: then she said, what do I gotta do to get
43:39
Speaker 2: our name on the front of that thing?
43:41
Speaker 1: Right?
43:42
Speaker 2: This building is amazing. I mean, and this is again
43:45
Speaker 2: as an example of how like just sort of the
43:49
Speaker 2: variety that you can find in a brutalist building when
43:52
Speaker 2: you look at this compared to the robin Hood Gardens
43:55
Speaker 2: building in London.
43:56
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, this one really prominently makes use of glass,
44:00
Speaker 1: which can be rare for a brutalist building. And yet
44:04
Speaker 1: when you look at it, you're like, that is a
44:05
Speaker 1: brutalist building. It's just an amazing, beautiful brutalist building.
44:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love it. I can't wait go back to
44:12
Speaker 2: Mexico City and see some of that stuff for sure.
44:15
Speaker 1: Also, I would strongly advise anyone not to make a
44:19
Speaker 1: drinking game out of how often we say brutalist in
44:22
Speaker 1: this episode, because we said it a lot.
44:25
Speaker 2: They already have drinking games of all that stuff on Reddit.
44:28
Speaker 1: I know, but don't do this one because you would die.
44:32
Speaker 2: Soone said I counted how many times you said like
44:34
Speaker 2: in the like episode, and I was like, well, yeah.
44:38
Speaker 1: It was kind of the name of the episode.
44:40
Speaker 2: How many times did we say lama in the Lama episode?
44:43
Speaker 1: Right?
44:44
Speaker 2: Well, Plus we had our additional likes because we talk
44:46
Speaker 2: like regular people.
44:49
Speaker 1: One other thing too, Chuck, if you want to see
44:52
Speaker 1: cool post apocalyptic brutalist architecture used really adeptly an illustration.
44:59
Speaker 1: Go check out Eternal Dystopia's YouTube videos. Did I send
45:04
Speaker 1: you that one called Research Center? It's like drone music,
45:07
Speaker 1: but it's the video is like just this. It's like this,
45:11
Speaker 1: like a dystopian brutalist building, kind of set in the
45:13
Speaker 1: haze and sometimes it's raining. I'll send it to you again.
45:17
Speaker 1: It's really amazing. But the drone music alone is pretty cool.
45:20
Speaker 1: So check that out.
45:20
Speaker 2: You had the drone lately.
45:22
Speaker 1: I am because it's not distracting. It helps you. Yeah,
45:25
Speaker 1: it helps me focus, you know, I like it. Well,
45:28
Speaker 1: check said he likes it, which means everybody that it's
45:31
Speaker 1: time for listener maw.
45:34
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh boy, it's another correction. But Josh, this one
45:37
Speaker 2: is on me.
45:38
Speaker 1: Okay, now you're talking.
45:41
Speaker 2: I think the first one may have been on us.
45:43
Speaker 2: But in the Nuclear Boy Scott episode, we said USS
45:46
Speaker 2: Enterprise was a nuclear submarine. Yeah, it's in fact an
45:49
Speaker 2: aircraft carrier. But the big one was when we had
45:52
Speaker 2: our sort of brief debate about military discharge and I
45:55
Speaker 2: was just wrong, wrong, wrong, because I thought if you
45:58
Speaker 2: just served all your time, then they just called it
46:02
Speaker 2: leaving the military.
46:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, you just stopped showing up one day.
46:05
Speaker 2: You just stop showing up, or you call it retirement
46:09
Speaker 2: or whatever. I didn't think it was. I thought any
46:11
Speaker 2: time you left before your time was up was the
46:13
Speaker 2: only time it was called the discharge. Sure not. So
46:15
Speaker 2: we heard from a lot of our current service members
46:18
Speaker 2: and veterans, but this one's from Scott Oliver. He said, guys,
46:24
Speaker 2: what Chuck said was not correct. Any way you leave
46:27
Speaker 2: the service is some form of discharge. And then he
46:30
Speaker 2: goes over this was the most detailed one. So we're
46:32
Speaker 2: going to read these discharges. You got the honorable discharge.
46:36
Speaker 2: It's the highest level, given to those who complete their
46:38
Speaker 2: service and are discharged or are discharged early for no
46:41
Speaker 2: faults of their own, like a medical issue. That's what
46:44
Speaker 2: you want to shoot for.
46:45
Speaker 1: Sure.
46:46
Speaker 2: General discharge lower level, but given to those who have
46:50
Speaker 2: like a minor misconduct or a performance issue. I was
46:54
Speaker 2: going to hazard a comical guess on what that might be,
46:57
Speaker 2: but I'm not gonna. Okay, there's other than honorable or
47:01
Speaker 2: the ot H. That's a negative level. So now you've
47:05
Speaker 2: crossed the rubicon and you're not good anymore. And it's
47:10
Speaker 2: given to people who have serious misconduct or violations of regulations.
47:16
Speaker 2: Then there are two more. You've got the bad conduct
47:18
Speaker 2: discharge or the BCD. This is actually punitive, and that
47:22
Speaker 2: is if you were convicted by a court martial for
47:25
Speaker 2: something like desertion or assault or there and then you
47:29
Speaker 2: know we've got last, don't you. Yeah, dishonorable and that
47:34
Speaker 2: is a punishment for a serious offense, like committing a felony.
47:38
Speaker 2: Sorry for being pedantic, guys, you weren't at all, Scott.
47:41
Speaker 2: But as a veteran, I find myself particularly attuned to
47:44
Speaker 2: Roney's statements about military matters, and that's every veteran, Scott,
47:49
Speaker 2: So you're in good company, and we heard from a
47:51
Speaker 2: lot of service members and all apologies for screwing that up.
47:55
Speaker 2: Sometimes when I say things off the dome without researching,
47:58
Speaker 2: quite often in fact, i'm dead wrong.
48:01
Speaker 1: Man. Well, you really owned it, Chuck, like somebody with
48:04
Speaker 1: an honorable discharge.
48:06
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you.
48:07
Speaker 1: It was Scott Scott Oliver. Thanks a lot, Scott. You
48:11
Speaker 1: weren't pedantic at all. Chuck's right. That was very nicely
48:14
Speaker 1: put and we appreciate being schooled. And also, Chuck, thank
48:19
Speaker 1: you for selecting one where you were wronging, not me.
48:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess we were military school.
48:25
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch of this like
48:26
Speaker 1: Scott did and school us and do it nicely. We
48:29
Speaker 1: love that kind of thing, you can send it in
48:32
Speaker 1: an email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff
48:38
Speaker 1: you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
48:40
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