The New Brutalism: Ethic vs. Marxism? Ideological Collisions in Post-War English Architecture (original) (raw)

2020

Abstract

At the end of the Second World War, an intense ideological confrontation took place in England, where the principles of reconstruction were established around the ‘low rise’ and ‘high rise’ dichotomy. The debate was influenced by a politicized generational divide, pitting the legacy of Howard’s Garden City model, supported by those who called themselves ‘Marxists’, against Le Corbusier’s Unite at Marseille, defended by a younger generation of architects who took a ‘non-Marxist’ position. The various political tendencies were translated into stylistic rules that addressed types, city configuration, and even materials, according to a rich constellation of new labels: the New Humanism derived from Soviet Social Realism, the William Morris Revival and People’s Detailing, the New Picturesque advocated as a democratic model by Nikolaus Pevsner, and the New Empiricism reworked by Eric de Mare on the Cooperative Housing Schemes of the Swedish welfare state. It is in this context that the Ne...

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