As many of these works are controversially becoming a heritage, either listed or destroyed, this essay concludes with some speculation on the possibilities of light and delicate retrofitting strategies, and new smart technologies for the coming Soft Utopianism of the near future. The essay’s methodology is derived from recent Hegelian thinking, with McLuhan’s media theory which explains the ascendancy and descent of utopian modern ought in post-war, concrete, infrastructural architecture. The paper will closely interrogate the relevant temporal and spatial boundaries of utopian thinking in architecture culture of the late 20thC and how Brutalism architecture accelerates but also obsoletes aspects of utopianism, following from a strict teleological reading of the utopian impulse. This essay will perform an analysis of the hardening of utopian thought and practice within the evidence of selected constructions, by architects both known and unknown. From Gideon’s branding of the movement in 1966, Brutalism comes before the corporate turn to postmodernism, and the recent critiques of the postmodern ghostly utopianism (Jameson, R. It is believed that the utopian undercurrent in Brutalism necessarily becomes conceptually and materially brittle. This essay will investigate and interrogate the claims made for Brutalism as a type of realism, tested against the evidence in the building (as artifact), so as to clarify and calibrate the relation between Brutalism architectural strategies and tactics, and the discourse of utopianism. This paper in architectural theory and speculative urbanism seeks to reexamine the claims made against the utopianism of modern architecture (Tafuri, Rowe) as an ideological condition, so as to open up a more nuanced and exploratory discourse of the hardening of utopianism in the late modernist works or in urban architecture generically typecast as Brutalism architecture (Breuer, Sert, Rudolph, and others internationally). 2013-01 Brittle Utopias before Soft Utopias
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