White Ley 1990

SAHGB Publications Limited
Banham and 'Otherness': Reyner Banham (1922-1988) and His Quest for an Architecture Autre
Author(s): Nigel Whiteley
Source: Architectural History, Vol. 33 (1990), pp. 188-221
Published by: SAHGB Publications Limited
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Banham and 'Otherness'
Reyner Banham (I922-I988) and his quest for an
architecture
autre
by NIGEL WHITELEY
With the death of Peter Reyner Banham in March 1988 at the age of 66, the architectural
world lost one of its most distinguished historians and irrepressible critics. His career,
by normal academic standards, was wide-ranging and helps to explain his unconven-
tional and, at times, idiosyncratic approach to architecture. During the war Banham
very successfully studied at the Bristol Aeroplane Company's engine division, thereby
acquiring a thorough grounding in the theory and practice of mechanical engineering.
An evident enthusiasm for technology was combined with a rigorous training in art
history under Nikolaus Pevsner at the Courtauld Institute from where he graduated in
1952.
Banham began contributing on a regular basis to the ArchitecturalReview in 1952 (on
whose editorial board sat Pevsner), eventually joining it as an assistant editor in 1959-
the time he successfully completed his controversial doctorate on the architecture and
ideas of the Modern Movement, again under Pevsner. Banham's first book - Theory
and Design in the First Machine Age (1960) - was substantially based on his doctorate,
and in 1964 he entered academia at the Bartlett School of Architecture in University
College, London, where he became professor in 1969. Two other major texts - The
New Brutalism (1966) and The Architectureof the Well-TemperedEnvironment (1969) -
date from this period. In 1976 he moved to the United States, taking up professional
appointments at the universities of Buffalo and California. In I987 he was appointed to
the apex of architectural history chairs - Professor of Architectural Theory and
History at New York University - but tragically died before he was able to take up the
post.
The early and decisive combination of technology, journalism and scholarship
accounts not only for Banham's robust, committed yet disciplined and incisive style of
writing, but also his keen interest in varied and various cultural artefacts from buildings
to cars. For, unlike most writers about the arts, Banham was equally at home whether
discussing conventional 'high art' architecture, the styling of household appliances, or
the latest science fiction puppet series on television. He contributed to a cross-section of
journals and magazines, not all of which were architectural. From 1958 until the late
1970s, for example, he wrote regularly for (first) New Statesmanand (later) New Society
about architecture, technology, and popular culture.
However all-encompassing his subjects, there was an underlying commonality in
Banham's writings that could be traced to his quest to find a dynamic and persuasive

BANHAM AND OTHERNESS I89
alternativeto the conventional thinking and operational lores that, in his view, blighted
most contemporary architecture and design. This quest was at its most intense in the
1950s and it is the subject of this essay. During this decade Banham often referred to the
idea of an architectureautre:where did the idea come from? what did he mean by it? why
did he seek it? and what influence did it exert on his subsequent criticism?
Banham first used the term une architectureautre in an article about 'The New
Brutalism' which appeared in The ArchitecturalReview in December I955.1 The term
was supposed to be analogous to the concept of un art autre, the subject and title of a
book written by the French art critic Michel Tapie and published in Paris in I952.2
What Tapie had had in mind in employing the term were the post-war anti-formal and
anti-classical tendencies that could be observed in both America and Europe. A
significant number of painters in the aftermath of the war felt unable or unwilling to
return to the confident and often elegant formal coherence that characterized the work
of Modernist 'masters' such as Matisse and Mondrian. The supposedly 'timeless'
qualities of great art - the relational and hierarchic ordering of colours, shapes and
spaces, the disinterested and 'objective' control of the artist, the heroic content -
seemed entirely inappropriate to a society which, at least in Europe, had been
physically and psychologically devastated by war. In America, some artists reacted
against the post-war materialism, complacency, and the enthusiasm for the 'atomic
age' which, they felt, would inevitably lead to the holocaust. The attitude amongst this
tendency of artists was one of urgency and an almost brutal directness that rejected
previous hopes and solutions.
There were three main tributaries which made up art autre. The first - the one
pre-war legacy - was the process-orientated Surrealism that made use of automatic
and semi-automatic techniques which, its proponents believed, extracted the uninhibi-
ted and primordial subconscious. One of the chief characteristics of this so-called
'absolute' Surrealism was the primacy of process over form and formalist control, of
unfinishedness over the resolvedness associated with 'great' art. For Arshile Gorky, a
Surrealist-influenced artist working in America and greatly influential on the post-war
generation of American painters, the value of process and unfinishedness was its
vitality:
When something is finished, that means it's dead doesn't it? I believe in everlastingness.I never
finish a painting- Ijust stop working on it for a while. I like paintingbecauseit's something I
never come to the end of... The thing to do is always to keep startingto paint, never finishing
painting.3
This almost metaphysical attitude to unfinishedness was eagerly imbibed by the 'New
American Painters' of the post-war years and can be clearly detected in the work and
statements of a major artist such as de Kooning whose energetic and gutsy work of the
late I940S and early I950s was a rebuke to the sure-footed control of European painters:
'... French artists have some "touch" in making an object. They have a particular
something that makes them look like a "finished" painting. They have a touch which I
am glad not to have'.4 The European Modernists' desire to impose order was also
foreign to de Kooning: 'The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order
into it is a very absurd point of view'.5 Flux was an acceptable - even desirable - state
of being.
13

I90o ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 33: I990
_ - -.
- ^ 'I"r. L *? .v .
Fig. I JacksonPollock, Europe, 1950ducoon canvas
Pollock'scontributionto art autre was his non-relational,non-hierarchic
compositionswhich
eschewedconventionsoffigure againstgroundand orderedpoints offocus
The second art autre tributary was also to be found in American painting, most
convincingly in the work ofJackson Pollock (Fig. i). Pollock was greatly influenced by
the process of orientation of Absolute Surrealism and the notion ofunfinishedness and
flux. Echoing Gorky, Pollock was attracted to the notion that '. .. there is no beginning
and no end'.6 Yet what makes Pollock a more radical painter than either Gorky or de
Kooning is not his 'splash and dribble' technique but his rejection of figure/ground
relationship in favour of an all-over, non-hierarchic composition without value
contrasts or contrived points of focus. This stage of development occurred in the late
1940S in works like Full FathomFive (1947), and came to its apotheosis in paintings such
as Autumn Rhythm and One, both of 1950. To a Modern art public weaned on European
canons of formal order, balance and qualitative judgement, Pollock's work seemed
bewildering and even subversive. Indeed, even for a would-be radical like Banham
(aged 28 in Ig50), Pollock's work was
... almost incomprehensibleto Europeaneyes. Yet it left an indelible 'image' on many minds
and when it seemed to be time to try and overthrow the classicaltradition (and with it, the
dominance of Francein Europeanintellectuallife) then Pollock was immediately remembered,
and became a sort of patron saint of anti-arteven before his sensationaland much published
death (which occurredin I956).7
Pollock's major contribution to artautrewas his non-relational 'composition' which no
longer employed a hierarchic ordering of discrete parts. This anti-formalism was to
have a profound influence on Banham's nascent architectureautre.

BANHAM AND OTHERNESS I9I
The thirdmajorcomponent of artautrewas the artbrutchampionedbyJeanDubuffet:

a 'raw art' untainted by polite conventions of civilized refinement. Art for Dubuffet
was nothing to do with taste, classical harmony or skill, but an innermost and
primordial impulse that existed in everyone and which should be communicated
directly and spontaneously. Dubuffet looked towards the work of psychiatricpatients,
the 'mad andthe criminal'for this trueartuncontaminatedby artistsandartinstitutions.
He describedgraffiti as '. . . our state of civilisation, our primitive art . ..' because'the
wall gives its voice to that part of man which, without it would be condemned to
silence'. The wall was a '. . . reminderof a primitive existence' and '. . . may be one of
the most faithful mirrors'.8Dubuffet opened his collection of artbrutin Parisin I947.
Only 63 of the 200 works in the first exhibition of artbrutin 1949 were by artists, but this
was justified by Dubuffet on the grounds that 'Art is not the exclusive domain of a few
initiates. It is a common asset, barred to no one. You enter without a key, sometimes
without even knowing it, led by instinct'.9
Dubuffet's own work exemplified the art brut anti-aesthetic (Fig. 2). Surfaces of
various materials including mud, sand, glue and asphalt revealed apparently haphazard
scratches and blemishes:
I've found myself suggesting certainmaterials,not so much those with a 'noble' reputation,like
marbleor exotic woods, but insteadvery ordinaryones with no value at all like coal, asphaltor
even mud ... in the name of what ... does man bedeckhimself with necklassesof shells, andnot
spiders webs, with foxs' furs and not their guts, in the name of what I'd like to know? Mud,
rubbish and dirt are man's companions all his life; shouldn't they be precious to him, and isn't
one doing man a service to remind him of their beauty?10
Dubuffet's reference to 'beauty' was significant, because it underlines that he was

certainly not antithetical to art itself - as unsympathetic critics claimed - but was
instead seeking a new beauty which owed nothing to classical aesthetics and accepted
taste. This was a state of affairs which Banham's architectureautre aesthetic was to
parallel.
Three aspects of Dubuffet's work helped to shape the emerging art autre. First was
Dubuffet's insistence that creation is not individualistic, but universal: '... there is only
a single man in the universe, whose name is Man -and if all painters signed their works
with this name: "Picture painted by Man" see how pointless any questioning would
appear'.11 But here was a universality that, although timeless, was of an entirely
different order from the aestheticallytimeless and permanent works upheld by Modern-
ist artists and critics. Dubuffet's universality referred to the primordial urge to make a
mark as an assertion of existence in a hostile and unforgiving world. The resulting form
- the second important aspect of artbrut- was, by traditional artistic standards, brutal
and ugly in its uncompromising anti-formalism. Third - and in some ways the most
important aspect for later architectural thought, especially the New Brutalism - was
Dubuffet's attitude to materials which was inclusive and non-hierarchical. No material
was rejected out-of-hand because of a lowly status. Each and every material was as
good as any other: each had its own characteristics, however conventionally unappeal-
ing, and must be used 'as found'.

I92 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 33: I990
Fig. 2 Jean Dubuffet, Gymnosophy, 1950, oil on canvas

Dubuffet'sprimitiveand crudepaintingsoutragedcriticsandpublicalike in the early 195os.
Spontaneity,directness,rawnessand 'authenticity'matteredmoreto Dubuffetthansophistication,
craftsmanshipand refinement
An art autre then, at its most dynamic and radical, brought together flux and
unfinishednessas a state of being; non-hierarchicand non-relationalanti-formalism;a
primordial universality;and a direct, anti-elegant, even ugly use of forms, materials
and colours. Artautrewas not a new formalism, andcertainlynot a new style, but a new
and tough attitudeto creatingthat eschewed high-minded and classicalnotions of Art.
Banham'sunderstandingof artautreand its implications, as we shall see, was sound.
For any misinterpretationsthat may have arisenwere dispelled by direct contact with
the one British artist whose work during the I95os could most convincingly be
described as art autre:Eduardo Paolozzi. On graduating from the Slade in 1947,
Paolozzi had moved to Paris for more than two years. During his stay there he met
many artistsincluding Brancusi,Giacometti, Arp, TristanTzaraand Dubuffet. Access
to Mary Reynolds' large collection of Dada and Surrealistdocuments, and visits to the
Museede l'Hommeand Dubuffet's collection of art bruthelped to immerse Paolozzi in
modes of anti-artand artautre(Fig. 3).
Banham met Paolozzi when the latter gave his celebrated'Bunk' slideshow (more
accurately, epidiascope-show) at the first meeting of the newly-formed Independent
Group in 1952.12 Although the subject matter of the slideshow - advertisements,
science fiction illustrations,robots, food, consumergoods andtechnologicalhardware,
most of it from American popularmagazines- was proto-Pop, the mannerin which

Fig. 3 EduardoPaolozzi, Head, 1953,
regardfor logic, development, continuity, scale or meaning. The anti-art brut

certainlyis consistent with
character Paolozzi's sculpture of the 195osmovedwhich had
changed from the Giacometti- and Picasso-influenced work ofSurrealismand Picasso
to the
rough-hewn and primitive Dubuffet-inspired heads and figures
ofuenedby art brut in
IndependentGroup was a source of great stimulation

The for Banham. Its place in art
the images were projected - one image speedily after the other with little or no
commentary or explanation - had a marked anti-art character. Paolozzi showed no
and primitiveDubuffet-inspiredheads and figures of the To

rough-hewn
history is assured by its cont,coributinuity, scale or interest in AmericanI95os.
ensuing popular
over-emphasize the Pop elementsof his graphic work at theexpenseof his continuing
the
of culture
culture and mass media which led on to British Pop art. But 'o' s
only one
changed from of the group. Equally work
and Picassinterestsfluenced
theusiacometti- concerns
important were I94the
history is assuredby its contribution ensuing interestin Americanpopular
to theinfluassessmential.s
case, of Paolozzi's work.
withautre
technology
culture and massmedia whichprovedmmon
and art
outlookwhich,
ledon toerrorqually
in Banham's
British Pop art.But 'pop'culturewasonly one
ource of
the first season of Independent stimulation for2, devised
great seminars byplace in art
Its
Banham.
ofIndeed,
the enthusiasms andinterestsof theGroup
group. Equallyimportantwere the concerns
with technologyand artautrewhich, in Banham'scase, provedequallyinfluential.
Indeed,the firstseasonof IndependentGroupseminarsin I952, devisedby Banham,
centred on science and technology: Banham's contribution was a talk on the machine
aesthetic of the Modern Movement. It was not until the second (and final) series of
seminars in 1954-55 that popular culture became one of the dominant themes. In that
series Banham talked about the symbolism of Detroit car styling; Alison and Peter
Smithson discussed American advertisements and architecture; and Richard Hamilton
analyzed the styling of consumer goods. However, of equal importance in the series,
convened by Lawrence Alloway andJohn McHale, were the themes of recent fine art,

and communicationtheories. Artautreremainedan undercurrent,sometimes surfacing

in a talk such as 'Werethe DadaistsNon-Aristotelean?',posed by Alloway and Edward
Wright.
To the extent that a single IndependentGroup mentalityexisted, it could be argued
that it was broadly pro-artautreand, as faras high culturewas concerned,anti-art.The
term 'anti-art' and its two different usages must, however, be clearly understood.
'Anti-art'can be used to describethe type of Dada work which subvertednothing less
than the whole institution and activity of art - Duchamp's moustache painted on a
reproductionof the MonaLisaexemplifies this approach;or it can referto work which
subverts not art itself, but a particularaestheticand set of values- in mid century that
aestheticwas classicalwith its connotationsof timelessness,sophisticationand cultural
prestige.
The choice of the name IndependentGroup13was itself significant because those
associatedwith the group sought to distancethemselves and be independentfrom the
concept of 'High Art' as it was expressed by Herbert Read, then president of the
Instituteof ContemporaryArt (where the IndependentGroup met). For Banham and
the others, Readpersonifieda seriousandhigh-minded approachwhich, like the young
post-war artistsand intellectualsin revolt in Europe and America, they believed to be
outdated and elitist. Read representedboth a 'High Art' attitude and the British art
establishment which was seen as increasingly powerful and complacent. Hamilton
recallsthat the '. . . one binding spiritamongst the people at the IndependentGroup . ..
was a distastefor HerbertRead'sattitudes'.14 In Banham'sopinion, his generationhad
grown up under the 'marble shadow' of Read's classicalaestheticsand were vehem-
ently beginning to rejectit in the early I950s:
Wewereagainstdirectcarving,pureform,truth,beautyandallthat... whatwe favouredwas
motionstudies.We also favouredroughsurfaces,humanimages,space,machinery,ignoble
materialsandwhatwe termednon-art(therewas a projectto burySirHerbertundera book
entitledNon-ArtNotNow).15
This was an anti-artantidoteto Read'sArtNow (1933)which had been revisedin 1948.

Banham was rejecting the High Modernist values of universality, permanence and
disinterestednessand seeking instead a dynamic and genuine alternative:an 'anti-art'
that was other.
As we will see, there were four areas in which Banham linked art autre and
architecture:a revision of architecturalModernism; technology; popular culture;and
the New Brutalism. At the time of the Independent Group meetings, the most
promising seemed the New Brutalismbecauseits chief practitioners,Alison and Peter
Smithson, were both members of the group and seemed highly sympathetic to the
notion of an artautre.In 1953, the year between the two IndependentGroup series, the
Smithsons had been co-organizerswith Paolozzi and the experimentalphotographer
Nigel Hendersonof the exhibition ParallelofLifeandArt, held at the ICA. ParallelofLife
andArt contained 122 large, grainy-texturedphotographs of machines, slow motion
studies, X-rays, materialsunderstress, primitive architecture,children'sart, vegetable
anatomy and other miscellaneousimages - the only 'high art'image permittedwas a
photograph of Pollock working on painting- which flouted conventional standards

BANHAM AND OTHERNESS 195
Fig. 4 Parallel of Life and Art exhibition,ICA, London, 1953

The criteriaof'imagability'and emotionalimpactwereemphasizedby the aformal,environmental
layout which underminedthe spectator'ssupposedlydisinterested
and detachedcontemplation
of formal order, beauty and meaning. The criterion of selection was 'imagability' and
emotional impact. The photographs - many large in size and ignoring scale - were
hung environmentally from walls, ceiling and floor (Fig. 4). Organization was assi-
duously non-hierarchic and, akin to art autre, anti-formal. Banham adjudged that the
exhibition undermined '. .. humanistic conventions of beauty in order to emphasise
violence, distortion, obscurity and a certain amount of"humeur noir" . . . [it] was a
subversive innovation whose importance was not missed'.16 While most visitors might
have agreed with Banham's description of the exhibition, they would have seen it in
negative, not positive terms. Indeed, many critics and architects, Banham wrote, '...
complained of the deliberate flouting of the traditional concepts of photographic
beauty, of a cult of ugliness, and "denying the spiritual in Man"'.17
Parallel of Life and Art revealed that the Smithsons shared Paolozzi's art autre
sympathies. They were well-versed in art autre tendencies - they had even seen
Pollock's work in I950 at the Venice Biennale - and Banham's hope was that they
would develop a genuine architectureautre. For a while it seemed that it might happen in
the guise of the New Brutalism.
In some ways there were strong parallels in the reaction to the current and recent
scene between the New Brutalism and art autre- the most obvious is the rejection of a
transcendent classical aesthetic- but there were also striking dissimilarities. Whereas
artautreturned its back on Modernism as a whole, the New Brutalism signalled a return

to the attitudes of the Modernism of its early period. 'It is necessary to create an
architecture of reality', wrote the Smithsons,
an architecturewhich takes as its startingpoint the period 19I - of de Stijl, Dada and Cubism
... An artconcernedwiththenaturalorder[originalauthors'italics], the poetic relationshipbetween
living things and environment. We wish to see towns and buildings which do not make us feel
ashamed, ashamedthat we cannot realisethe potential of the twentieth century, ashamedthat
philosophers and physicists must think us fools, and paintersthink us irrelevant. We live in
moron-made cities. Our generationmust try and produce evidence that men are at work.18
The tone of the passage recalls Dubuffet and, although the New Brutalists and artautre
artists were scrutinising different sources, they were both seeking a rekindling of the
primitive and direct attitudes to creation in their disciplines which, for all their
differences in chronological location, both parties believed to be essentially a-historical.
The most immediate source of hostility to the New Brutalists (who, to all extents
and purposes in the early 1950s, were Alison and Peter Smithson) was the 'New
Empiricism' or 'New Humanist' architecture, characterized by pitched roofs, brick or
rendered walls, window boxes and balconies, paintwork, and picturesque grouping.
The sources for the style were the British 'Ideal Home', Picturesque planning,
'townscape' studies (popularized by the ArchitecturalReview after the War), recent
Swedish architecture and, at least in the case of the London County Council architects,
a firm Marxist belief in social realism with its unintentionally condescending 'people's
detailing'. The origins of the term 'The New Brutalism' - both the straightforward
and esoteric - have been examined elsewhere19 and we need here only note that it
combined, as the Smithsons pointed out, a '. .. response to the growing literary style of
the ArchitecturalReview which, at the start of the fifties, was running articles on ... the
New Empiricism, the New Sentimentality, and so on';20 reference to beton brut (raw
concrete) which had been one of the most controversial features of Le Corbusier's
recently finished Unite block in Marseilles, and, not least, the art brutof Dubuffet.
The term was first used in public by Peter Smithson to describe a small house project
of 1952 for a site in Soho, London. The statement which accompanied the design
indicates an art brutaesthetic of materials asfound:
It was decidedto have no finishesat allinternally,the buildingbeing a combinationof shelterand
environment. Bare bricks, concreteand wood ... It is our intention in this building to have the
structureexposed entirely .. 21
The belief in 'truth to materials' is part of the legacy of the aesthetico-moral tradition of
the nineteenth century that continued into the present century. Its manifestations
percolated through Modernist art and architecture, whether Henry Moore or Mies van
der Rohe, but where the New Brutalists parted company with the Modernists was in
the end to which the means were put. Modernists ultimately believed that each material
had intrinsic qualitiesthat could be brought out by the artist so as to create beauty. The
New Brutalist attitude to materials was to present them as fact, the effect of which
might be inelegance and even ugliness.
The occupant of such a building would certainly need to be in tune with art brut
aesthetics: inelegance and conventional ugliness would appeal to the majority of
residents as much as the Purist machine aesthetic architecture of Le Corbusier or Mies

:....: ...
Fig. 5 Alison and Peter Smithson,School, Hunstanton,Norfolk, 1954
the starknessand directnessof the
The ScienceRoom, on completionof the building,demonstrates
design
van der Rohe. However, to the sort of aficionadowho wrote in praise of their work, the
Smithson's buildings radiated
... a feeling quite unlike the undefined, accidental quality of the romantic school, which
incorporatesimitation nature effects. On the contrary, the Smithsons' houses emphasize the
intimate feeling of shelter. One is in a space that representsall space, oneself orientatedto the
matterwithin which the house standsand out of which it is built. Every partof the house seems
in balancewith the essential brutalityof man.22
The commentator went on to praise the Soho house in particular as
... one of the artists'highest poetic achievements... Everything in the interior that meets the
eye is co-ordinated- air, light, glass, the dynamic, tense horizontalplanesin ceiling and floor,
createa sense of spaceat once definitiveandinfinite. Withineverythingcontributesto the balance
of space, equilibriumembodied in greaterand lesservolumes, re-establishinga sense of intimate
brutality at the very moment of participationin surroundingnature.23
The use of materials and the aesthetic ends to which they were put was the cause of
much confusion and controversy in the Smithsons' early buildings and projects.
Nowhere was this more apparent than in their best-known early works - the school at
Hunstanton in Norfolk (Fig. 5). Although the design of the building (1950) predates the
term, the school is accepted (especially by the Smithsons) as one of the key buildings of
the New Brutalism. In its use of undisguised steel and glass the building appeared to
resemble the work of Mies but, in an assessment of the school written on its completion

in 1954, Banham argued that it was free of the '. . .formalism [present author's italics] of
Mies van der Rohe. This may seem a hard saying, since Mies is the obvious
comparison, but at Hunstanton every element is truly what it appears to be .. ..24
Banham developed the point to discuss the resultant
... new aestheticof materials,which must be valuedfor the surfacesthey have on deliveryto the
site - since paint is only used where structurallyor functionallyunavoidable- a valuationlike
that of the Dadaists, who acceptedtheir materials'as found', a valuationbuilt into the Modern
Movement by Moholy-Nagy at the Bauhaus.It is this valuationof materialswhich has led to the
appellation'New Brutalist',but it should now be clearthat this is not merely a surfaceaesthetic
of untrimmed edges and exposed services, but a radicalphilosophy reachingback to the first
conception of the building. In this sense this is probably the most truly modern building in
England, fully acceptingthe moral code which the Modern Movement lays upon the architect's
shoulders. It does not ingratiateitself with cosmetic detailing, but, like it or dislikeit, demands
that we should make up our minds about it, and examine our consciences in the light of that
decision. 25
Setting aside the inconsistencies of Moholy-Nagy's use of materials - he is presum-

ably referring to Moholy's kinetic sculpture rather than his more formalistic product
design - Banham is emphasizing the 'new' or art autreattitude, not only to materials,
but to the building's total conception and execution. This shifts the term of reference
away from aestheticissues to a moral one. It is not, however, to be confused with the
aesthetico-moralapproach beloved by nineteenth- and twentieth-century rationalists
who were convinced that their true style or aesthetic had moral authority. The
Smithsons and Banham both adopted James Stirling's dictum of'a style for the job'
which implied a pragmatic and inclusive attitude to visual matters, not a preconceived
or ideal one.26
The same was true for the plan of the building. Hunstanton's plan was essentially
symmetrical and many critics thought this showed the influence of Rudolf Wittkower's
recently published ArchitecturalPrinciples in the Age of Humanism, and Colin Rowe's
researches into mathematics and proportion in architecture. 27 Certainly the Smithsons
were aware of this recent scholarship and, equally certainly, they were influenced by it.
But the influence they absorbed and applied was filtered through the anti-idealist
outlook of the New Brutalism. Classical planning - or even classical proportions -
could be used in a New Brutalist building because New Brutalism was inclusive. The
quintessential change, however, was that the transcendent and idealist associations of
classicism - the metaphysical dimension in which the particular always referred to the
general - were dropped so that any classical aspect was merely another option, another
tool at the architect's disposal, and on a par with all others.
These distinctions between classical aesthetics and pragmatics - crucial if one is to
understand the influence of art autre on architecture in this period - seemed to have
eluded most commentators whosejudgements were based on superficial visual charac-
teristics. They were of the same order of misunderstanding as occurred in art a decade
later when formalist aesthetics were applied to Minimal sculptures by Robert Morris
and Donald Judd. In the case of the Hunstanton school, this confused thinking led
Philip Johnson in 1954 to applaud the 'inherent elegance' of the Smithsons' design
influenced, so Johnson thought, by Mies. He regretted that, in their succeeding work,

* E""
^..^^ ..... ^ a^sa^.:.:.l

_.... .... :
: .6 Alio
Fig. and Peer Smithson,Golden Laneproject,192
Fig. 6 Alison and Peter Smithson,GoldenLaneproject,1952

This drawingby the Smithsonsillustratesthe anti-formalismof theproject.Layout is determined
by the topographyof the site ratherthan by anyformal orderingorpicturesqueaesthetic.The
architectshopedthis would lead to a 'roughpoetry'absentfrom contemporaryarchitecture
the Smithsons had '... turned against such formalistic and "composed" designs
towards an Adolf Loos type of Anti-Design which they call the New Brutalism (a
phrase which is already being picked up by the Smithsons' contemporaries to defend
atrocities) .. .'.28 By then the New Brutalism was synonymous in most critics' minds
with raw concrete and was being discussed in primarily stylistic terms. The Smithsons
themselves tried to make the point that '... Brutalism has been discussed stylistically,
whereas its essence is ethical'.29 The aesthetics of art brut and the concept of art autre
were passed over by all but a tiny number of informed practitioners and critics.
Whether such an uncompromising ethico-aesthetic high ground should be foisted on
the sensitive and delicate minds that daily populated the school was a moot point. While
the purchasers of one of the Smithsons' private houses probably knew what they were
taking on - at least they had the alternative to buy somewhere else - this was
obviously not so for the users or inhabitants of an architecturebrutpublic building. The
Smithsons' attitude was redolent of the-architect-as-moral-crusader and artistic trail-
blazer that had characterized early Modernism: the public was expected to come to
terms with what could be a stark and unforgiving architecture.
The anti-formalism of the Smithsons in the I950s can best be observed in their
unsuccessful entry for the City of London's Golden Lane public housing competition of

200 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 33: 1990
I952 (Fig. 6). The New Brutalists were, according to the Smithsons, committed to
being
... objective about 'reality'- the culturalobjectivesof society, its urges, its techniques,and so
on. Brutalismtries to face up to a mass productionsociety, and drag a rough poetry out of the
confused and powerful forces which are at work.30
The first sentence sounds distinctly like an anti-idealist, almost amoral stance; the
second recalls Dubuffet's pronouncements about art brut. 'Reality' related to the way
that the Smithsons believed that working-class people actually lived, rather than the
way that middle-class architects thought they should live, and it formed the basis of
these two projects. Their Golden Lane project incorporated the idea of the street deck
(subsequently taken up by Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith at Sheffield) which they hoped
would facilitate a community-orientated life akin to the traditional terraced street. New
Brutalism was, its proponents believed, essentially humane and 'user friendly' albeit
based on a rather heroic and unrealistic view of working-class lifestyles which were
becoming considerably lessprimeval than the Smithsons supposed (or hoped). The deck
was also a means of circulation - albeit for pedestrians - in much the same way that a
road normally was, and it linked clusters of buildings. The anti-formalism of the
project was most clearly in evidence in the layout of the blocks which were not
arranged in any aesthetically ordered or systematic way but were sited according to the
topography of the site. Nor was this in the Picturesque tradition of 'consulting the
genius of the place' and enhancing it: the Smithsons' attitude to layout was, like their
attitude to materials, 'as found'.
The Smithsons developed their topographical approach in their Sheffield University
extension (1953) and 'Cluster City' (1957) projects which continued the rejection of the
'geometry of crushing banality' that, in their view, characterized Modernist planning
schemes.31 Cluster City's emphasis on the '... realities of the situation, with all their
contradictions and confusions'32 brings to mind Robert Venturi's influential Complex-
ity and Contradictionin Architecturewhich it predates by nine years. The similarity
between the two serves to remind onejust how much the anti-formalism of the 1950s
was taken up in the next decade.
Banham's first major article on the New Brutalism appeared in the Architectural
Review in December 1955. In it he discusses the Smithsons' Soho house, Hunstanton
school, Sheffield University extension and several other projects including their
competition entry for Coventry Cathedral (195I). All were illustrated. Banham is
unambiguously partisan about the New Brutalism and not only praises the Smithsons'
work, but attempts to locate the New Brutalism in the contexts of post-war,
anti-classical aesthetics, and architectural history. Non-architectural illustrations
accompanying the article include an 'all-over' painting by Pollock ('Number Seven-
teen', 1949 - a work also illustrated in Un Art Autre - but misdated by Banham as
1953); an art brut burlap piece (undated) by Albert Burri described as '... typically
Brutalist in his attitude to materials ...',33 a Paolozzi head of 1953 exhibiting
'sophisticated primitivism',34 a Magda Cordell 'anti-aesthetic human image figure',35 a
photograph of window graffiti by Nigel Henderson; and an installation shot of Parallel
of Life and Art.

BANHAM AND OTHERNESS 20I
The chief characteristicsof the New Brutalismwere summarizedby Banham as 'I,

formal legibility of plan; 2, clearexhibition of structure,and 3, valuation of materials
for their inherent qualities "as found"'.36 However, Banham acknowledged that this
description could also apply to non-Brutalist buildings, such as Mies's Lakeshore
apartments.He therefore suggested a furtherkey ingredient: 'In the last resort what
characterisesthe New Brutalismin architectureas in paintingis preciselyits brutality,
itsje-'en-foutisme,its bloody-mindedness'.37In exactly parallelingthe artbrutquality of
architectureand painting, Banham significantly disregardsthe social and functional
dimension of architectureover painting. He goes on to question whether Louis Kahn's
Yale Art Centrecould be acceptedinto the Brutalistcanon, but ultimatelydecidesin the
negative:
... the Smithsons'work [atHunstanton]is characterised
by anabstemiousunder-designingof
the details,andmuchof the impactof the buildingcomesfromthe ineloquencebut absolute
consistencyof suchcomponentsas thestairsandhandrails.By comparison,Kahn'sdetailingis
arty ...38
Banham (unlikethe users of the building)appreciatedthe artlessness/anti-artquality of
the Hunstanton school where 'water and electricity do not come out of unexplained
holes in the wall, but are delivered to the point of use by visible pipes and manifest
conduits'.39 Such a comment anticipates Banham's enthusiasm for 'High Tech'
architecture in the I970s and I980s.
It is clear that what Banham likes about the New Brutalismis its generallyartautre
character.Of the Sheffield University project Banham wrote that its '. .. aformalism
becomes as positive a forcein its composition asit does in a paintingby Burrior Pollock
. ..'40 and he applauds the aformal siting of the blocks which '... stand about the site
with the same gracelessmemorabilityas martellotowers or pit-headgear'.41It is at this
juncture that Banham introduces the idea of unearchitecture autre:
... Sheffieldremainsthe most consistentandextremepointreachedby anyBrutalistsin their
searchfor Une Architecture Autre.It is not likely to displaceHunstantonin architectural
discussionsas the primeexemplarof The New Brutalism,but it is the only building-design
whichfullymatchesup to the threatandpromiseof ParallelofLifeandArt.42
Banham regardedParallelofLifeandArt as the 'locusclassicus'43 of the New Brutalism:a
visual and conceptual manifesto of the artautreaesthetic.
So, by late 1955, Banham had nailed his colours to the mast of unearchitecture autre.
He was later to detail the requiredqualitiesmore systematically:
... an architecturewhose vehemencetranscendedthe norms of architectural expressionas
violentlyas the paintingsof Dubuffettranscended the normsof pictorialart;an architecture
whoseconceptsof orderwereasfarremovedfromthoseof'architectural composition'asthose
of Pollockwereremovedfromtheroutinesof painterlycomposition(iebalance,congruenceor
contrastof formswithina dominantrectangular format. .); anarchitecture
asuninhibitedin its
responseto the natureof materials'asfound',as werethe composersof 'musiqueconcrete'in
theirresponsesto naturalsounds'asrecorded'.44
The abandonmentby musiqueconcrete of the traditionalstructuresof western music '. ..
gave a measure of the extent to which "une architectureautre" could be expected to
abandon the concepts of composition, symmetry, order, module, proportion,
"literacy in plan, construction and appearance"'45as it had been understood from

Fig. 7 Alison and Peter

_ times to Smithson,EduardoPaolozzi and
_. an_aesthetic matte.......... _ __ Nigel Henderson,'Patioand
Pavilion' at This is Tomorrow
exhibition,WhitechapelArt
Gallery, London, 1956
of the lae15s-Cuse
projects it frxmThegroup aimedat a primeval
tohisconform
de_tion,to butin1956Banexpression of architecture
comprisingan enclosedspace (the
btin
the:i~"~ Thi iToooe pavilion) in the world (the
symbolic1~~~~~~. patio). Fragmentsof humble
that the moexistence
believed_'~
Du~ werescatteredaround
classical times to the Modern Movement. Clearly, for Banham architectureautre was
essentially an aestheticmatter and questions about function and the daily demands of the
architecture's occupants were secondary if not minor.
The Smithsons' New Brutalist work may have satisfied Banham's definition up to
the time of his December I955 article, and there were occasions when their Brutalist-
derived projects of the later I95os - 'Cluster City' for example - continued
to conform to his definition, but in I956 Banham began to doubt the architecture
autre integrity of the Smithsons' New Brutalist work, and turn towards a new
source of anti-art alternatives. Ironically, this new source also directly involved the
Smithsons.
The project which Banham had doubts about was the Patio and Pavilion environment
which the Smithsons, Eduardo Paolozzi and Nigel Henderson worked on together for
the This is Tomorrowexhibition of I956. Inspired by the way that East Enders used their
backyards and sheds for a diversity of activities and pursuits, Patio and Pavilion was a
symbolic semi-recreation of Henderson's own backyard in Bethnal Green. Just as
Dubuffet believed that the more individual a mark, the more it signified all humankind,
so Patio and Pavilion represented (according to the artists' statement in the exhibition
catalogue) '. .. the fundamental necessities of the human habitat in a series of symbols.
The first necessity is for a piece of the world - the patio. The second necessity is for an
enclosed space - the pavilion. These two spaces are furnished with symbols for all
human needs'. 46 The debris of daily life scattered around the exhibit - a bicycle tyre,
rocks, tools, a pin-up - symbolized desires and aspirations that were basic and
unheroic in the art brut sense (Fig. 7).
Banham disliked two interrelated aspects of the exhibit: its traditionalism and its
artiness. Commenting on the group's statement, he wrote,
Such an appealto fundamentalsin architecturenearly always containsan appealto traditionand
the past - and in this case the historicising tendency was underlinedby the way in which the
innumerable symbolic objects ... were laid out in beds of sand in a manner reminiscent of
photographs of archaeologicalsites with the finds laid out for display. One or two discerning
critics ... describedthe exhibit as 'the garden-shed'aestheticbut one could not help feeling that
this particulargardenshed ... had been excavatedafterthe atomic holocaust, and discovered to
be part of Europeantraditionof site planning that went back to archaicGreece and beyond.47

...*~ . .:: : Fig. 8 Alison and Peter

Smithson, 'SugdenHouse',
Watford,1956
had
they itsattempt
frequently.emphasiedtheIn to combine
arhtcue(nldnheeryMdroeet. architecturebrutewith
as alet y d dn in s
be h of suburbia,
'SugdenHouse'was,
a tradtomutbaiaording
that,
Banham,for to Banham,a'subtly
and To Banm
appearance'.48 t was the Smi ' lt ' subversive'
y building
'--,-.-'----
wa.: ~j
Banhamcould not fairly accusethe Smithsons of inconsistencyabout 'the past' because

they hadfrequentlyemphasizedtheirdesirefor continuitywith the earlierperiodsof
architecture(includingthe early Modern Movement). Furthermoreartautreitself could
a a traditionin searchof fundamentals.The key differencewas
be legitimately described
that,for Banham, tradition must be attitude-led:notform-led; the Smithsons were
a
becoming seduced by the appearanceof the primitive, t the
aestheticofart brut.Patioand
Pavilionwas too self-conscious and 'arty' - ineleganceand bloody-mindedness had
given away to elegance and formal ordering.
Banham did not completely change his mind in I956 about the Smithsons' New
Brutalst-influenceedwork. Their 'Sugden House' in Watford (completed in t957;
Fig. 8), a mixtureof suburbiaand architecture
brute,was describedby one offended
commentatoras a '. . . shockingpieceof architectural
illiteracyin plan,construction
and appearance'.4 To Banham
itathe
was Smithsons' last 'subtly subversive' build-
ing.49 Later work such as their next important building, t Economist
the Cluster in St
James's,London(I959 to I964), demonstrated
moreconventionalarchitectural
solu-
tions in which the Smithsons turned their backson the notion of unearchitecture
autre.
The same was true of the New Brutalism as a movement.Wmhereonce for Banham it
hadpromisedto be an alternativeto conventionalarchitecture, it rapidlybecamejust
anotherstylisticoption characterized
by rough-cast concrete: 'In the last resortthey
[both the Smithsons and other are
Brutalists] dedicatedto the traditions of architecture
as the world has come to know them:theiraimis not 'unearchitecture autre'but, as
ever, 'vers une architecture'.50
Few Brutalistswould have disagreed- nor, by the
I960s, would they havebelievedit shouldbe otherwise.
If Brutalismhadseemedto holdthe greatestpotentialfor unearchitecture autrein the
early to mid I95OS,it was another- popular culture- that seemed most hopefulin
956. The Independent Group'sforayinto popularculture topics in the I 954/55 season
- which includedBanham'sown musingsaboutthe symbolismof contemporary
Detroitcars- led directlyto two historicallyimportantmanifestations of earlyPop

204 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 33: I990
source
aestheticofotherness
,
U'?: I' '_.,, , ,'(: k-,
exhibition,Whitechapel
Art Gallery,London,19.6
culture in 1956: the exhibit by Richard Hamilton, John McHale and John Voelcker at
the This is Tomorrowexhibition, and the Smithsons' House of the Future. Both projects
shared a common concern with the 'reality' of contemporary consumer society which
logically necessitated a downplaying of grand and heroic pronouncements on the part
of the artist-architect. Like Paolozzi and the Smithsons in their Patio and Pavilion
exhibit, Hamilton et alia rejected any abstract-Constructivist-classical notion of ideo-
logy and form. But, whereas the Smithsons sought an eternal and visually timeless
version of the primitive, Hamilton et alia argued that 'what is needed is not a definition
of meaningful imagery but the development of our perceptive potentialities to accept
and utilise the continual enrichment of visual material'.51 Their exhibit (Fig. 9) -
notorious for its inclusion of a life-size photograph of Marilyn Monroe, a sixteen-foot
high robot with flashing lights from The ForbiddenPlanet, close-up photographs of
food, optical effects and 'rotorelief discs, and jukebox which played the hits of the day
- was not a programme, but a sample of the sensory bombardment that was the reality
of modern urban life. (To accompany it, Hamilton produced his first and famous work
of Pop art:Just what is it that makes today's home so different,so, appealing?) Many critics
were dismissive but Banham applauded the '... general desire to smash down all
barriers, prise open all watertight compartments, and get ideas and sensory responses
on the move ... I find it the most exciting thing I have seen in an exhibition for years
'.52 Banham valued the exhibit for its attitude of openness, its dynamism, flux and
anti-formalism.

Fig. Io Alison and Peter

ii.'irii9!s891The~~~~ Smithson, 'House of the Future',
i t
::.:di;'?~ N-1956
March, 956 (Fig. ). nWith the 'House of the Future',
the Smithsonswere comingto
termswith popularcultureand its
in whih
reality ' potentially
radvical i mplications
tI~Q`N jforarchitecture
ii;"??
The Smithsons' House of the Futur wa produced e s for the Ideal Hom exhibitione of
March, acter956 zedo)
(Fig In the second Independent Group season, the Smithsons had
given a lecture on the gulf between consumer ideals and conventional architectural
solutions Their
thinking followed
this line argument: of
Mass production is establishing
advertising our whole patternlife - principles,
of morals, aims,
aspirations
and standard
ofbliving We must somehowthe get measureof this interventionif we
are t matchoits powerful andexciting impulses with our own.revaluation
Here
Here we we can
can
the see Smithsons
see the Smithsons
purporting purporting to accept
to
the 'realityaccept
of thethe 'reality of the situation',
situation',
namely 'the cultural objec tivesofsocietyr its urg techniques
its es on'4 - a
so and
realityin production
whenmass
which, advertising is dominant. This seems atodds with the
art brut primitivism of the New
Brutalism it but
testifies theto eclecticinclusiveness
that characterized the thinking of the Independent Group. Nowhere isthisbetter
illustrated thanin a statement of 955nderway:
i954 has been a key year. It has seen Americanadvertisingrival Dada in its impact of overlaid
imagery; that automobile masterpiecethe Cadillacconvertible, parallel-with-the-ground(four
elevations) classicbox-on-wheels; the startof a new way of thinking by CIAM; the revaluation
of the work of Gropi the us repainting
t of the villa at Garches.n,
The Smithsonso anti-traditional anti hier archical grouping includes both 'high' and
'popular' culture which, when mixed with their art autre sympathies, guaranteed an
explosive cocktail.
Brutalism usually implied single, if not unique buildings. An architecture which
came to terms with popular culture would have to be mass producible. This, the
Smithsons pointed out, was already underway:
... the mass production industries had already revolutionised half the house - kitchen,
bathroom, laundry, garage g without the interventionof the architect,and the curtainwall and
14

the modular pre-fabricatedbuilding were causing us to revise our attitude to the relationship
between architectand industrialproduction.56
The House of the Future took this development to a further stage. It was an ingenious
mixture of building industrialization and Detroit-influenced car styling. The compo-
nents that comprised the House were to be mass produced but, as with car production,
each component was used only once in each unit (house). This solved the problem of
industrialization leading to repetition and standardization with the resultant visual
dullness. With the Smithsons' approach there was the possibility for an annual model
change and even customization from a kit of parts. The crucial difference from the
other experimental all-plastics houses of the I950s - such as Coulon and Schein's
Maison Plastique, also of 1956 - was the House's shameless styling and consumer
appeal. The other plastics houses were essentially in the tradition of mass-produced
pre-fabricated housing which stretched back in its current form to early Modernism.
The House of the Future looked not towards architecture for guidance, but towards the
apogee of advanced consumer product design: the American automobile.57
The House of the Future represented a radical break with conventional architectural
practice and thinking. Traditionally, styles of and trends in product design had
followed in the wake of the 'mother' art, architecture. The Smithsons were turning that
structure on its head and proposing an architecture that took its lead from industrial
design, so offering the public (as Banham wrote in a review) 'new aesthetic and
planning trends and new equipment, as inextricably tangled together as the styling and
engineering novelties on a new car'.58 Could this be an even more authentic architecture
autrethan the New Brutalism? Banham realized that to draw a parallel between a house
and a car in particular, or consumer products in general, was misleading - at least in
one respect. In a letter to the author in 1980 he explained:
Appliancesaremade in one place, shippedto anotherto be sold, and then consumed somewhere
else. The bulk of housing ... is made, sold, and consumed in one and the same place, and that
place is a crucialaspect of the product.59
Houses are, therefore, not like consumer products because they are not portable;
consumers attitudes to them are not the same. On the other hand a house couldbe like a
consumer product if it was thought of as a piece of industrialdesign. This, Banham felt,
was a bigger mental leap than might be imagined for it required the architect to become
immersed in technology. This type of architect would have to ditch all of the high
cultural attitudes that he had imbibed as a student, and most of the architectural habits
he had picked up. It was no good having a superficial smattering of technological
information because it would be misunderstood or outdated. What was needed was a
thorough understanding of the nature of technology itself, and a wholehearted
commitment to it.
The architect's attitude to technology and technology's relationship to architecture
were the two issues that Banham was finding increasingly central to his doctoral
research into the Modern Movement of the 'first machine age' in architecture. This
caused major difficulties with his supervisor, Nikolaus Pevsner, whose commitment to
a sachlichkeitModernism based on classical aesthetics had been expounded in his seminal
Pioneersof the ModernMovement, published in 1936, and subsequent articles. By the mid

I95os these issues had crystallized and Banham raised them in an article that is now
acknowledged as a landmark in the revised history of Modernism. In 'The Machine
Aesthetic', which appeared in the ArchitecturalReview in April 1955, Banham asserted
that
The 'MachineAesthetic' of the PioneeringMastersof the Modern Movement was ... selective
and classicizing, one limb of their reaction against the excesses of Art Nouveau, and it came
nowhere near an acceptanceof machineson their own terms or for their own sakes.60
This was because '. . . theorists and designers of the waning Twenties cut themselves
off not only from their own historical beginnings, but also from their foothold in the
world of technology'.61 Ultimately, the 'pioneering masters' - Le Corbusier, Gro-
pius, Mies et alia - accepted the machine and technology only on a superficial,
symbolic and stylistic level. The lack of depth in their understanding led them to
misinterpret temporal effects for timeless aesthetic conditions: they thought the 'boxy'
look of post World War One cars was the result of the attainment of mechanical
sophistication and the 'type-form' which corresponded to the pure phileban solids
beloved by architects. Evolution of technology and art had apparently culminated in an
all-powerful aesthetic universalism.
Those visual characteristics may have coincided at a particular historicaljuncture but
the experimental studies into the performance of shapes in motion presaged '. . the
rapid revolution of an anti-Purist but eye-catching vocabulary of design . .62 for cars
and other forms of transport. Streamlining had come into being. Architects, however,
paid little attention to these developments and held on to forms which, technologically,
were becoming increasingly dated. In the conclusion to Theory and Design in the First
Machine Age, published in I960, Banham continued the theme of his I955 article:
As soon as performancemade it necessaryto pack the components of a vehicle into a compact
streamlinedshell, the visual link between the InternationalStyle and technology was broken ...
though there was no particularreasonwhy architectureshould takenote of these developments
in anotherfield or necessarilytransformitself in step with vehicle technology, one might have
expected an art that appearedso emotionally entangledwith technology to show some signs of
this upheaval.63
None was evident amongst the pioneering masters and Banham concluded that their
way of thinking owed little to live technology but much to classical aesthetics.
Had Modernists really considered the fundamental condition of technology they
would have realized that the only constant was change. In I955 this was, in Banham's
opinion, still one of the most pressing issues:
... we are still making do with Plato becausein aesthetics,as in most other things, we still have
no formulatedintellectualattitudesfor living in a throwaway economy. We eagerly consume
noisy ephemeridae, here with a bang today, gone without a whimper tomorrow - movies,
beachwear, pulp magazines, this morning's headlinesand tomorrow's TV programmes- yet
we insist on aestheticandmoralstandardshitchedto permanency,durabilityandperenniality'.64
The acceptance of the 'new' conditions would require a new aesthetic and this could
lead to the architectureautre Banham so desired. Although an acceptance of expenda-
bility lay behind the styling of the American design - such as Detroit cars -
worshipped by Banham and other Independent Group members, it was only in an
isolated case like the House of the Future where it was manifested in architecture.
14*

Another - and more significant - exception Banham found to this general rule was
the Futurists whom Banham rediscovered during his researches into the Modern
Movement during the g950s. They emerge as central to the revised version of
Modernism in Banham's doctorate which eventually was published as Theory and
Design in the First Machine Age. It appeared to Banham that Modernist architects and
historians in the I93os and '40s - such as Walter Gropius, Sigfried Giedion and, indeed
Pevsner - had tidied up the history of their movement to the extent that certain key
aspects of it - in particular Futurism and Expressionism - had been excluded as if they
had been madmen in the family who needed to be kept away from the gaze of the
public. What particularly appealed to Banham is that they represented an architecture
autrewithin Modernism: an alternative to an architecture of classical aesthetics that, in
the case of Futurism, went some considerable way to running with live technology.
The nub of the matter was that sachlichkeitModernists made technology conform to
classical aesthetics; the Futurists sought a new aesthetic based on the condition of
technology.
Futurism dates back to I909 when F. T. Marinetti, the founder and chief protagonist
of the movement, delivered a series of outspoken and uncompromising manifestos to
provoke a reaction in the Italian art world and free, as Marinetti described it, '. . . this
land from its smelly gangrene of professors, archeologists, ciceroniand antiquarians'.65
Like many other artists at the time, the Futurists believed they were witnessing the
dawning of a millennium. Like the 'pioneering masters' they looked at the machines
around them but saw no lessons inherent in the precision of machinery, no mathemat-
ical order nor classical harmony, but power, dynamism and excitement of the new
technology which should not be observed with the detached air of the academic, but
experienced for all its compulsive sensations. Jettisoning the aesthetic and cultural
conventions of the past, the Futurists embraced the radically new beauty of the
twentieth century, '... the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with
great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath - a roaring car that seems to ride on
grapeshot is more beautiful than the Victoryof Samothrace'.66
A celebratory and romantic spirit infused all the Futurists' outpourings, including
the 'Manifesto of Futurist Architecture', published in 1914 and written by Marinetti
and Antonio Sant'Elia.67 The 'New City' was urgently needed, the authors declared,
because the current city belonged to the past:
As though we - the accumulators and generators of movement, with our mechanical
extensions, with the noise and speed of our life - could live in the same streets built for their
own needs, by the men of four, five, six centuriesago.68
The Futurist city represented a vision that ran counter to the static and controlled
classicism of the 'pioneering masters'. Dynamism, energy and movement were
paramount:
We must invent and rebuild the Futuristcity: it must be like an immense, tumultuous, lively,
noble work site, dynamic in all its parts; and the Futuristhouse must be like an enormous
machine ... the lifts must climb like serpentsof iron and glass up the housefronts. The house of
concrete, glass and iron . . ., extremely 'ugly' in its mechanicalsimplicity ... must rise on the
edge of a tumultuous abyss: the street . . . will descend into the earthon severallevels ...69

It is not hardto appreciatethe sense of identificationthe sympathizerswith post-war art

autremust have felt with the Futurist sensibility. Here was an aesthetic of flux, of
unfinishedness and of 'ugly' vitality. Furthermore,the Futuristshad come to terms
with the condition of technology in the twentieth century: '... the fundamental
characteristicsof Futuristarchitecturewill be obsolescenceand transience.Houses will
last less long than we. Each generationwill have to build its own city'.70 Obsolescence
andtransiencehadnever beforebeen elevatedto the position of essentialcharacteristics.
The Futuristshad squarelycome to terms with the idea that technology is in a state of
continual change.
In the light of his interest in technology and quest for an architecture
autre,Futurism
seemed tailor-made for Banham in the 1950s. His first major article on Futurism
deals with Sant'Elia and was published in the Architectural Review in May 1955
the time when the whole issue of architecture autre was taking shape. Much of
the article is concerned with establishing the facts about the authorship of the
Manifesto, and informing an as yet uninformed readershipabout Sant'Elia'soutput.
Banham conclusively reasons that Sant'Elianeeds to be acknowledged as a 'pioneer
of the InternationalStyle' becausehe was able to '. .. combine a complete acceptance
of the machine-world with an ability to realize and symbolize that acceptance
in terms of powerful ... form'.7 Banham also argues that Sant'Elia had contem-
porary relevance and so is even more appropriateas a guide to an architectureautre:in
'... basing his whole design on a recognition of the fact that in the mechanized city
one must circulateor perish ... [he] seems to have foreseen the technological cities of
the Fifties .. ..72
Banhamcontinuedhis rehabilitationof Futurismwith a lectureto the Royal Institute
of British Architectsin 1957,73an articlein Artsmagazinein I960,74 and, of course, the
publicationof TheoryandDesignin theFirstMachineAge in 1960. In the Artsarticleand,
to a lesser extent, in Theoryand Design, Banham presents Futurism not as a dead
art-historical movement, but as a relevant and urgent attitude to living in mid
twentieth-centurysociety. In Arts,he recallsthe rediscoveryof Futurismin about 1954,
at a time when his generation were in full revolt against the Herbert Read version of
Modernism. Banham draws a number of parallelsbetween Futurismand contempo-
raryexperimentationand innovation - Russolo's 'Art of Noises' and musiqueconcrete;
and Marinetti's 'Words in Liberty' and Beat poetry for example. Machine-age para-
phenalia listed by Boccioni in one of the manifestos and quoted by Banham -'...
gramophone, cinema, electric advertising, mechanistic architecture, skyscrapers ...
nightlife ... speed, automobiles, aeroplanes ...' - are found to accord with con-
temporary life: '... hi-fi, stereo, cinemascope and (in Richard Hamilton's succinct
phrase) "Polaroid Land and all that jazz" .75 He continues:
As RichardandI andtherestof uscamedownthestairsfromtheInstituteof Contemporary

Arts
those combative evenings in the early fifties, we stepped into a London that Boccioni had
described, clairvoyantly. We were at home in the promised land that the Futuristshad been
denied, condemned instead to wander in the wilderness for the statutory forty years ... No
wonder we found in the Futuristslong lost ancestors,even if we were soon conscious of having
overpassed them. Overpassedor not, they seemed to speak to us on occasions in precisely the
detail that the ghost spoke to Hamlet.76

Having made out the case for its prophetic aspect, Banham offered its lesson:
While life remainsas Futuristas it has been, indeed becomes increasinglyso, concepts of art and
aestheticsbased on eternalvalues will probably continue to prove perishable,like Roger Fry's,
while Futurism,founded on change and 'the constantrenewalof our environment', looks to be
the one constant and permanentline of inspirationin twentieth-centuryart.77
This is Banham's argument for Futurism as anti-art, as art autre with implications for
architectureautre.
Banham allots a whole one of the five sections in TheoryandDesign in theFirst Machine
Age to an examination of Futurism, but it is in the book's conclusion where he develops
its full architectureautre status and brings it into the debate about contemporary
architectural thinking. Having praised Futurism's positive attitude to technology and
chastised Modern Movement architects for cutting themselves off from the 'philo-
sophical aspects of Futurism',78 Banham links Futurism with the then contemporary
work of Buckminster Fuller:
Thereis something strikingly, but coincidentally,Futuristaboutthe Dymaxion House. It was to
be light, expendable,made of those substitutesfor wood, stone andbrickof which Sant'Eliahad
spoken, just as Fuller also shared his aim of harmonising environment with man, and of
exploiting every benefit of science and technology. Furthermore,in the idea of a centralcore
distributing services through surrounding space there is a concept that strikingly echoes
Boccioni's field-theory of space, with objects distributing lines of force through their
surroundings.
Many of Fuller'sideas, derived from a first-handknowledge of building techniquesand the
investigation of other technologies, reveal a similarly quasi-Futuristbent . ..79
Whether Fuller would have been happy to have been likened to the Futurists is highly
doubtful for he thought of all European Modernists as artists (and therefore primarily
concerned with aesthetics) rather than technologists/problem-solvers. Banham quotes
at length in the conclusion Fuller's vitriol about European designers which, interest-
ingly - for it establishes a formal link between Fuller and Independent Group
members - comes from an at-the-time unpublished letter of I955 from Fuller to
Independent Group member and Fuller-enthusiast John McHale.80 In part it reads:
The 'International Style' brought to America by the Bauhaus innovators, demonstrated
fashion-inoculationwithout necessity of knowledge of the scientificfundamentalsof structural
mechanics and chemistry. The InternationalStyle 'simplification'then was but superficial.It
peeled off yesterday's exterior embellishment and put on instead formalised novelties of
quasi-simplicity, permitted by the same hidden structuralelements of modern alloys that had
permitted the discardedBeaux-Artsgarmentation.
... the Bauhausand Internationalused standardplumbing fixturesandonly venturedso faras
to persuademanufacturersto modify the surfaceof the valve handlesandspigots, and the colour,
size, and arrangements of the tiles. The InternationalBauhaus never went back of the
wall-surfaceto look at the plumbing... they never enquiredinto the overallproblemof sanitary
fittings themselves ... In short they only looked at problems of modificationsof the surfaceof
end-products, which end-products were inherently sub-functions of a technically obsolete
world.81
Banham uses Fuller to place the Modern Movement in conceptual and cultural
perspective. By featuring Fuller's criticisms of 'International Style' architecture,
Banham exposes the artisticbias of Modernism and the fact that it was in search of, first
and foremost, a machine aesthetic rather than a profound or radical application of

Fig. ii BuckminsterFuller, the Dymaxion DeploymentUnit, 1944

A laterversionof the 1927prototype,this buildingwas exhibitedin the sculpturegardenof the
Museumof ModernArt in New York.Hundredsweremanufacturedfor militaryuse duringthe
war
technology to architectural problems. It rejected a radical, otherapproach in favour of a

traditional, architecturalone.
Fuller's closest point of contact with Futurism was his touchstone that the chief
characteristic of technology was the 'unhaltable trend to constantly accelerating
change'.82 An 'architectural' solution was only one possible solution to a functional and
technological problem as far as Fuller was concerned, and even then it was not
'architecture' as it was generally recognized. His 'Dymaxion House' of 1927 (Fig. I I)
was not equivalent to a Modernist object-type 'machine for living in' with its
connotations of aesthetic formalism, but part of Fuller's
... concept of air-deliverable, mass-produceable,world-around, human life protecting and
nurturingscientificdwelling serviceindustryas meansof transforminghigh scientificcapability
from a weaponry to livingry focus, thereby to rendersuccessful all world's people instead of
only a few, on the premise that a comprehensibleanticipatorydesign service could, through
increasedtechnicalefficiency and upping of overallperformanceper pounds of world resources,
bring about physicalsuccessfor humanity- never to be obtainedon politicalreform- thereby
eliminating fundamentalcauses of war.83

Other 'architectural' solutions by Fuller - such as the 'Wichita House' of 1946 (an
updating of the 'Dymaxion House', and his famous geodesic domes, which are highly
unconventional in visual terms - are well known although Fuller described himself as
an 'inventor' rather than an architect. Banham emphasized this distinction:
... the architecturalprofession startedby mistaking him for a man preoccupiedwith creating
structures to envelop spaces. The fact is that, though his domes may enclose some very
seductive-seeming spaces, the structure is simply a means towards, the space merely a
by-product of, the creation of an environment, and that given other technical means, Fuller
might have satisfiedhis quest for ever-higherenvironmentalperformancein some more 'other'
way. 84
Architects were generally extremely hostile to Fuller's work, arguing that it ignored
one of the most vital ingredients of architecture in the traditional sense: the aesthetico-
symbolic. Philip Johnson spoke for many: 'Let Bucky Fuller put together the
dymaxion dwellings of the people so long as we architects can design their tombs
and monuments'.85 By his commitment to problem solving, his attitude to technol-
ogy, and his lack of interest in aesthetics, Fuller really did seem to offer an architecture
autre.
Fuller may seem to provide the obvious model for Banham for an architectureautre
but, around the time of Theory and Design, Banham can justifiably be accused of
inconsistency. The problem revolves around the issue ofjust how autreBanham wants
his architecture to be. Theory and Design, Banham acknowledged, was a revisionist text
which sought to counter the discrimination which had taken place since the late I920s
towards sachlichkeitor Pevsnerian Modernism. Therefore, Theory and Design empha-
sizes the Expressionist and, especially, Futurist aspects and legacy of Modernism.
Banham did not argue his case on formalistic or stylistic grounds which he saw as
relatively unimportant - hence his lack of interest in the architectural Neo-
Expressionism of the 1950s. While Pevsner interpreted Le Corbusier's Ronchamp,
Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum, or Eero Saarinen's TWA terminal
as significant (although not beneficial) architectural developments, to Banham
they represented little more that the continuation of the work of the heroic, form-
giving Modernist artist-architect: 'New shapes notwithstanding, it is still the
same old architecture, in the sense that the architects involved have relied on their
inherited sense of primacy in the building team, and have insisted that they alone shall
determine the forms to be employed'.86 His interest in Expressionism in Theory and
Design is not to do with form so much as content - the significations and 'meanings'
of Expressionist work and the implications for the value system of Modernism.
His main argument for Futurism, as we have seen, was in terms of its attitude to
technological society: that cultural activity responded positively and directly to
technological progress.
Yet Banham also praises Futurism on more than one occasion for its image of
modernity. Of one of Sant'Elia's most fully worked out perspectives of 'The New
City', Banham wrote in Theory and Design that it brought '. . . together skyscraper
towers and multi-level circulation in an image that has dominated modern ideas of
town-planning right down to the present time',87 And in his ArchitecturalReview article
of 1955, Banham favourably compares Sant'Elia with Adolf Loos remarking that,

whereas the latter often produced a '. . collection of rather dull boxes', Sant'Elia
created
... formswhichareexcitingin virtueof theirmechanisticinspiration.Infact,puttingthe total
corpusof drawingsagainstthetextof his manifesto,we seethathe wasamongtheveryfirstto
combinea completeacceptance of the machine-world with an abilityto realizeandsymbolize
thatacceptance
in termsof powerfulandsimplegeometricform.88
The importance attachedby Banham to the imageof modernity is at odds with the
radicalproblem-solving attitudeof Fuller.In fact, the idea of imagefeaturesstrongly in
Banham'scriticismin the I95os and it feeds directlyinto his idea of an architecture autre.
He discussed what 'image' meant to him in his 1955 'New Brutalism' article:
A greatmanythingshavebeencalled'animage'- S. M. dellaConsolazioneatTodi,a painting
byJacksonPollock,theLeverBuilding,the1954 Cadillacconvertible,theroofscapeof the Unite
at Marseilles,any of the hundredphotographsin Parallelof LifeandArt ... WhereThomas
Aquinassupposedbeautyto bequodvisum.placet (thatwhichseen,pleases),imagemaybedefined
asquodvisumperturbat-thatwhichseen,affectstheemotions,a situationwhichcouldsubsume
the pleasurecausedby beauty,but it is not normallytakento do so, for the New Brutalists'
interestsin imagearecommonlyregarded... asbeinganti-art,or at anyrateanti-beauty in the
classicalaestheticsenseof the word. But whatis equallyas importantas the specifickindof
response,is thenatureof its cause.WhatpleasedSt Thomaswasanabstractquality,beauty-
whatmoves a New Brutalistis the thingitself,in its totality,with all its overtonesof human
association.These ideasof courselie close to the generalbody of anti-Academicaesthetics
89
currentlyin circulation...
Banham argued that New Brutalist architecture - especially the Smithsons' Hun-
stanton school - was strong in imagabilityand he might well have included Sant'Elia's
visions in the list of 'images' for they, too, had the kind of direct and emotional appeal
that was the reverse of disinterested. Indeed, it might be argued that Sant'Elia's visions
had little else because the corpus of his work included no plans, technical specifications
or formal elevations: only what might with justification be called 'artist's impressions'
of the Futurist city. With his penchant for science fiction it is easy to understand why
Banham was attracted to Sant'Elia's work, but one feels that his enthusiasm and
subjective response had got the better of his disinterested critical faculty.
Science fiction was a shared interest amongst Banham, Alloway, McHale and
Hamilton, and had been a key element during the second season of the Independent
Group deliberations in I954/55. Powerful and emotive imagery was an important
aspect of the sort of science fiction consumed by Banham and friends, and they were
convinced it had a purpose and role beyond the merely entertaining. According to
Alloway, the currency of the symbols used in science-fiction magazines '. .. is an index
of the acceptance of technological change by the public in the United States. Science
fiction alone does not orientate its readers in a technological and fast-moving culture
but it is important among the attitude-forming channels'.90 Science fiction could,
Independent Group members believed, provide the sort of images that shapedattitudes.
The assumption underlying Banham's praise for Sant'Elia's imagery was that it could
do the same.
Banham was applying very different standards to Sant'Elia than he was to Fuller.
One of the chief reasons Sant'Elia was a potential source of architectureautrewas because
of the power of his machine-age imagery. In this sense Sant'Elia was aform-giver but,

unlike the commonly-acclaimed Modernist form-givers, he was an anti-classicist,

anti-formalist form-giver. Fuller, on the other hand, was a source (and practitioner) of
architectureautrebecause of his radical, problem-solving approach.As Banham acknow-
ledged: 'Bucky isn't a form-giver and the only significant form he has given us is the
geodesic dome, and what's significant about that is not the architectural shape but the
radical thinking behind it'.91 Had Banham applied the architectureautre standards he
applied to Fuller to Sant'Elia or even the Smithsons, he might have dismissed them, in
the final analysis, as too involved with aesthetics and architecture.
Several key aspects of his architectureautre were raised by Banham in a series of five
articles and discussions he wrote or edited for the ArchitecturalReview in I960. They
appeared under the general heading 'Stocktaking', reflecting, no doubt, the dawning of
the new decade and the feeling that the time was ripe for assessment of the current state
of architectural thought. The topics included the relationship between conventional
architectural habits of thought and technological ones; recent scientific and technologi-
cal methodologies and their implications for architecture; the role of the traditional
architect - 'universal man' - in the age of science; and a reassessment of the Modern
Movement. The final piece was a set of responses92 - mostly unsympathetic - to the
main premise underlying the series which Banham defined thus: '... technology will
impinge increasingly on architecture in the next ten years, and that technological habits
of thought are hostile to architectural habits of thought'.93
The series was less a comprehensive stating of Banham's theory of architectureautre
than a snapshot of his views at a particular juncture. The dominant influence on
Banham in the series was undoubtedly Buckminster Fuller. In the first piece, 'Tradition
and Technology', Banham countered the apparently radical
... Functionalist slogan that 'a house is a machine for living in' ... because it begins by
presupposing a house. Far more seditious to the established attitude of architects is the
proposition that, farfrom caravansbeing sub-standardhousing, housing is, for many functions,
sub-standardcaravans'.94
He continued, in the same vein, that'. .. it becomes possible to define "home" without
reference to hearth or roof, but simply as the integration of a complex of intrapersonal
relationships and mains-services'.95 Here was Banham at his most Fulleresque. A
genuinely radical scientific and technological attitude, he argued in 'The Science Side',
... could sweep away architectureas we know it now and leave in its place, precisely, that other
architectureproduced by the team-work of specialists in colour, heating, lighting, acoustics,
market-research,group psychology - an architecturecomparableto other aspects of creative
technology - such as aircraftdesign or television- that areneitherencumberednor ennobled
by a great traditionsuch as architectscarrywith them everywhere they go .. .96
This led Banham to the conclusion in 'The Future of Universal Man' that the architect
must either become a member of an integrated team - contributing, perhaps,
organizational skills, or talents akin to the product design stylist - or receive a
comprehensive and scientific education. The latter was very close to Fuller's stated
belief that an architect's education should comprise '. . . chemistry, physics, maths,
bio-chemistry, psychology, economics, and industrial technology'.97 But it was even
closer to Hannes Meyer's pronouncement of 1928 that a house '.. . is an industrial
product and the work of a variety of specialists: economists, statisticians, hygienists,

BANHAM AND OTHERNESS 2IS
climatologists, industrial engineers, standardisation experts ... and the architect? ...
he was an artist and now becomes a specialist in organisation!'98
The attitude to architecture expounded by Bauhausler Meyer would seem tailor-
made to fit in with Banham's theory of architectureautrebut Banham paid little attention
to Meyer in either his Modernist revisionist articles in the ArchitecturalReview or, even
more surprisingly, in Theoryand Design. In the whole of the book he is mentioned only
three or four times, and then just in passing or in a brief, rather dismissive passage
which relates Meyer to the 'neo-Rationalist movement' which, influenced by Lissitsky,
viewed architecture as the '. . product of the materials and techniques employed'.99
Yet, had Banham wished to do so, he could have cited Meyer's essay of I928
'Building' which was published in one of the Bauhaus books100 -as a major source of
architectureautre, for it contains many sentiments with which Banham sympathized. An
'anti-architectural' spirit pervaded the essay: 'architecture as "a continuation of the
traditions of building" means being carried along by the history of architecture'. 10 The
rejection of conventions and traditions may remind one of Futurism, but the key
difference between Meyer and Sant'Elia/Marinetti was the tone of the writings and
attitudes. Banham was not attracted to the 'neo-Rationalist' tones of Meyer whose
hard-edged functionalism and orthodox Marxism coloured his pronouncements with
an air of moral superiority and earnestness. This contrasted greatly with Fuller's
all-embracing (if overwhelming and often eccentric) outlook, and the Futurists'
romantic and celebratory spirit.
Banham enjoyed his science fiction and could neverbe accused of earnestness. But the
extent to which he embraced the Futurists' tone of enthusiasm and commitment
constantly surprised - and frequently horrified - those who believed he should be
more dispassionate and conventionally academic in his writing. This came through
most forcibly in Banham's concluding section to the 'Stocktaking' series: a short essay
which Banham entitled 'Science For Kicks?'. Banham himself had no doubt that the
architect should engage in science for kicks although he was also quite aware that
Such a proposal will shock and repel a large number of persons inside the sciences, and quite a
number of persons outside the scienceswhose theoreticalposition is basedon the idea of science
as a tough and noble discipline that they themselves do not follow, but would if their callings
permitted them ... 102
What he meant by playing something for kicks was

... a way of using the mind for pleasure,orjust the hell of it, in such a way thatit flourishes,not
vegetates ... the more trout you fish, the more rock'n'rollyou consume, the better it gets. In
addition, the company of fellow-addicts also brings its rewards . . . sharpeningone another's
appreciation of the art.103
as had been the case with the shared interests between members of the Independent
Group. In the case of most 'finite, simple kick-seeking', a point could be reached where,
first, expertize and then, comprehensive knowledge and understanding could produce
boredom with the activity being studied, but science
... is neither finite, nor simple. Its primaryfascinationwill always be that no man can embrace
the whole of it, and even in one particularfield, the limit of researchis apt to be advancingfaster
than even the talented amateur can pursue. In Science-fiction, which is science-for-kicks in

2I6 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 33: I990
almost its purest form, not only do new fields of subject-matter constantly open up for
exploitation, but old ones areequally constantlybeing revived becausethey have been extended
by new researchor theoreticalrevision.104
Science was so crucialto existence as we know it that
The man who doesn't get any kick out of sciencewill, by definition, get no kick eitherfrom the
Twentieth Century which ... knows no other God ... The man who plays sciencefor kicks is,
in our presentsituation, a life-enhancer,andif he functionsin the visualfield he will be the better
able to producethe kind of symbols by which we identify ourselvesas membersof the scientific
adventureto which we are all committed in our smallest acts .. .105
The architect,therefore,has a responsibility
to play sciencefor kicks, otherwise he'. .. is
clearly unfitted to put up monuments symbolizing or otherwise expressing its
values'.106 The advanced state of knowledge means that for the practitioners of
architecture '... to pretend to take science "seriously" is an act of monstrous
arrogance'.107 Banham did acknowledge that
... the kind of expertise needed to enjoy the productionsand achievementsof technology and
science, and to go on enjoying them, is not necessarilythe same kind of expertiseas thatrequired
to createor control them, but - in practice- the overlapsareconsiderable,andthe connoisseur
of space-fiction, for instance, must get to know a lot about ballistics,rocket dynamics, gravity,
radiation,planetaryatmospheres,galacticstructuresand cosmic dust if he is to get anythinglike
the full value for his addiction.108
So, the architect playing science fiction for kicks is a combination of Fuller (whom
Banham mentions in his essay) and Marinetti/Sant'Elia,but certainly not Hannes
Meyer. 'Science for kicks' is nothing less than an attitudefor life: 'The man who plays
science for kicks is committed to a growing enjoyment of a growing body of ideas and
experience. He is in it for life - unless his nerve fails'. 109
The last sentence of the piece is pure Banham:
Thelesson... seemsto be clear- to go on withourscientificsurf-rideon whichwe arenewly
launched,to playit forallthekicksit canproduce,andstaywithit tillit is exhausted,insteadof
tryingto jump off whilewe thinkthe goingis good andfindingourselvesat the mercyof the
next breakerbehind.110
Nothing could better illustrate Banham's ability in writing to infuriate and seduce!
Nothing could, moreover, as perfectly encapsulatethe attitude that underpinnedhis
theory of architecture
autrethan his 'Sciencefor Kicks' piece, especiallywhen readwith
the knowledge of his work over the previous half decade: the dislike and distrust
of academic values and classical aesthetics; the partisan commitment to a cause,
demonstrated in the New Brutalism;the often cavalierattitude to considerationsof
use and function; the enthusiasmfor the latest facet of glamorous science or desirable
industrial design, celebratedat IndependentGroup meetings; and the wholehearted
acceptance of technological experimentation and change, epitomized by Futurism
and Fuller.
By the end of 1960, with the publicationof TheoryandDesignin theFirstMachineAge
and the 'Stocktaking' series, Banham had established both his reputation and his
notoriety. In his quest for an architecture autrehe had also worked out the main
parametersaroundwhich he was to judge architectureand design during the rest of his
career. Looking back on his writing from 1981, he acknowledged that '... my

consuming interest, through thick and thin, hardback and limp, is what happens along
the shifting frontier between technology and art'. 1
In the early I96os most of his architectureautrepreoccupations of the I95os remained
undiluted. In a lecture he gave to the Royal Institute of British Architects in February
1961 he again called for architects to look beyond architecture to the sciences - in this
case the human sciences and the 'new biology'.112 The audience response to the lecture
- which generally ranged from bewilderment to hostility - was not untypical of the
architectural profession's reaction to Banham's provocations. The theme of the sixth
congress of the International Union of Architects in 1961 was the relationship of
architecture and technology and a few months later in the ArchitecturalReview Banham
castigated the architectural profession for their 'heroically naive' statements about
technology. 113Architects still had a superficial understanding of technology that paid
no heed to what Banham argued were its fundamental conditions.
Banham continued to promote the architectureautre attitude to technology as
epitomized by Fuller but by the end of 1963 was admitting:
What I can'tbe sureaboutis whetherBucky's rulesandthe ruleswhich govern architectureas we
know it are mutually exclusive. When I wrote TheoryandDesign, I was convinced it was an
either/or situation. But where Mrs Moholy [Sibyl Moholy-Nagy], for instance, disagreeswith
what I wrote then is that she cannot conceive of anyone coming down in favour of the
engineer-technologist in preference to the architect. As for myself, I am currently in a
half-and-halfposition: radicaltechnology like Fuller'swill displacearchitectureeven if it doesn't
replace it. 114
This seemed to indicate a significant softening of Banham's point of view because she
had certainly consistently presented the attitudes and values as mutually exclusive
throughout the I950s. What Banham probably realized was that the chance of
architects changing their attitudes was so remote that continuing to maintain an
uncompromising position would be as fruitful as banging one's head against the
proverbial - and architecturally traditional - brick wall.
Not that Banham's commitment to an architectureautre arising out of technology
diminished. In 1965 he proposed the 'Unhouse':
... when it contains so many services that the hardwarecould stand up by itself without any
assistancefrom the house, why have a house to hold it up?Whenthe cost of all this tackleis half
the total outlay what is the house doing except concealing your mechanicalpudendafrom the
stares of folks on the sidewalks.115
Banham's interest in the radical use of technology and technological habits of thought
culminated in his The Architectureof the Well- TemperedEnvironment,published in 1969.
It was the first book to study seriously the history of mechanical services and their
relation to architectural form, and was intended to counterbalance the conventional
view of architectural history. Fuller remained a hero: he was hailed as one of the major
figures of this other tradition and praised for his '. . . willingness to abandon the
reassurances and psychological supports of monumental structure'.116
One of Banham's best-known areas of criticism in the I96os and I970S was popular
culture. From I958 to 1965 in the New Statesman,and from 1965 until his death in New
Society Banham had a regular column dealing not only with current architecture, but
also design, technology, the mass media and popular - then Pop - culture. Banham's

contribution to an understanding of Pop culture was on two levels: that of the

development of a theoretical basis for Pop in terms of its technological and cultural
relevance to the conditions of the day; and second, the informal yet critical exami-
nations of the ephemeras of Pop culture and design. Regarding the latter, between 1965
and I970, for example, topics included paperback book covers, sunglasses, chairs as
art, the cult film Barbarellaand the cult television programme Thunderbirds,household
gadgets, the intimacy of recorded vocals on record, Argentinian buses, American
drag-racing, customized Minis, and the design thinking behind the Austin Maxi and
Ford Capri. Underlying all of this criticism was a belief that Pop culture had to be
judged by germane standards. As he wrote in 1962: 'The addition of the word
expendable[original italics] to the vocabulary of criticism was essential before Pop ...
could be faced honestly .. .'.117
Yet when it came to a possible Pop architecture, Banham had reservations in the
early I960s. In Motifin 1962 he categorically stated:'. .. there is no Pop architecture to
speak of, and never will be in any ultimate sense, because buildings are too damn
permanent'. 118 It seemed as if, because of his argument that architecture and industrial
design were significantly different, the Smithsons' House of the Future had been a false
promise of an architectureautre. But by 1965 Archigram had burst onto the scene.
Archigram's achievement, according to Banham in 1965, was in creating '. . . the first
effective image of the architecture of technology since Buckminster Fuller's Geodesic
domes first captivated the world fifteen years ago'. 119The imagery Fuller created may
have been the by-product of his solutions but Archigram's combination of technology
and imagery appealed to Banham in the same way as had Detroit cars in the I950s.
Playing 'science for kicks' the Archigram way implied the sort of open-mindedness
Banham adjudged was necessary in a fast-moving and ever-changing age. Banham
expanded on this point in I967 when discussing Archigram's design method:
The essence, and the value ... is in its running dialogue with currentimages immediately they
appear.It is the instantassignmentof values, however temporary,to each new image, however
puerileand improbable,the moment it swims into the architecturalviewscreen, thatjustifiesthe
fuss we all make over Archigram .. 120
Archigram provided the ideal vehicle for an architectureautre comprising 'science for
kicks', Pop culture, and full-blooded commitment.
Banham remained to his death partisan in his criticism. Any architect who seemed to
be seeking an 'architecture of technology' - such as Archigram and, later, Norman
Foster or Richard Rogers - would receive enthusiastic support. Architecture that
captured the spirit of Futurism - such as 'Spaghetti junction' or War of the Worlds-
influenced hotel interiors - would be almost guaranteed a positive review. On the
other hand, architecture redolent of academicism, classicism, conservatism or tradi-
tionalism would receive short shrift: hence Banham's dismissive reaction to Post-
Modernism (and especially Post-Modern Classicism) and neo-vernacular design. Pop
culture that expressed the spirit of the technological/expendable age - customized
Bedford vans or decorated ice-cream vans - would invariably be praised. It came as no
surprise that Banham was attracted to America and eventually settled there. He closely
identified with the Americans' positive attitude to technology and their dumping of the
European 'cultural baggage' of taste and classical aesthetics. As well as numerous

articles - such as 'The Great Gizmo' (1965)121 - extolling the virtues of the American
attitudeto design, he wrote two books which directly deal with aspects of the American
'dream': Los Angeles: The Architectureof Four Ecologies (1971); and Scenes in America
Deserta (1982). His last book, A ConcreteAtlantis (1986), reassessed the relationship
between American industrial building and European Modern architecture.
There is little doubt that Banham could justifiably be accused of bias in his criticism,
but he was neither troubled by the need for academic respectability and acceptance nor
concerned to hedge his bets lest he was proved wrong or misguided. Few have the
courage to acknowledge that '.. . I have changed my mind - the only way to prove you
have a mind is to change it, otherwise you might as well be a robot or a magnetic tape
.. 122 This attitude enabled Banham to
... addresscurrentproblems currently,andleave posterity to wait for the hardbacksand Ph.D.
dissertationsto appearlater... The misery (andsplendour)of such writing, when it is exactly on
target, is to be incomprehensibleby the time the next issue comes out- the splendourcomes, if
at all, years and yearslater, when some flip, throw-away, smarty-pants,look-at-me paragraph
will prove to distill the essence of an epoch far better than subsequentscholarly studies ever
can. 123
Underlying all Banham's criticism was a commitment not to form nor even a system of
aesthetics, but to an attitude.And it was this attitude - derived from post-war art autre
with its undercurrent of anti-traditionalism and anti-convention- which was manifest
throughout Banham's quest for an architectureautre.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Fig. 4 Nigel Henderson

Fig. 5 John Maltby
Figs 7 and 9 Sam Lambert
Fig. 8 WilliamJ. Toomey
NOTES
I R. Banham, 'The New Brutalism', Architectural

Review, December 1955, pp. 355-6I.
2 Michel Tapie, Un art autre(Paris, 1952).
3 Arshile Gorky quoted in Edward Lucie-Smith's Movementsin Art Since 1945 (London, I969), p. 32.
4 Willem de Kooning, 'Artists' Session, New York' (I951) in Herschel B. Chipp, Theories of Modern Art
(California, 1968), p. 565.
5 Willem de Kooning, 'The Renaissance and Order' (I950) in Chipp, op. cit., p. 556.
6 Jackson Pollock, 'Statement' (I95I) in Chipp, op. cit., p. 548.
7 Banham, The New Brutalism(London, 1966), p. 6i.
8 Dubuffet quoted in Germain Viatte, 'Primitivism and Art Brut' in Aftermath:France1945-54, New Imagesof
Man, Barbican Art Gallery exhibition catalogue (1982), p. 74.
9 Ibid., p. 74.
io Jean Dubuffet, 'Rehabilitation de la boue' (1946), translated in Aftermath,op. cit., pp. 99-Ioo.
I Jean Dubuffet (I944), quoted in Viatte in Aftermath,p. 75.
I2 For the origins of the Independent Group see Whiteley, Pop Design- Modernismto Mod:Pop
TheoryandDesign
in Britain, 1952-1972(London, 1987), ch. 3.
13 See Fathersof Pop video by Miranda Films (London, I979).
14 Ibid.
I5 Banham, 'Futurism for Keeps', Arts (December 1960), p. 33.
i6 Banham, The New Brutalism,p. 62.
17 Banham, The New Brutalism,p. 356.
I8 Alison and Peter Smithson, 'Statement', ArchitecturalReview (April 1954), pp. 274-75.

19 See Banham, The New Brutalism,p. Io.

20 Alison and Peter Smithson, WithoutRhetoric- An Architectural
Aesthetic(London, 1973), p. 2.
2I Alison and Peter Smithson, 'Statement' (1954), p. 274.
22 Letter from Kenneth Scott to the Editor of ArchitecturalDesign reprinted in anon, 'The New Brutalism',
ArchitecturalReview (April 1954), p. 274.
23 Ibid., p. 274.
24 Banham, 'School at Hunstanton, Norfolk', Architectural Review (September 1954), p. 152.
25 Ibid., p. I53.
26 See Banham 'The Style for theJob', New Statesman(14 February 1964), p. 26I, and his introduction toJames
Stirling, RIBA drawings collection (London, I974).
27 Colin Rowe, 'The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa: Palladio and Le Corbusier Compared', ArchitecturalReview
(March 1947), pp. IOI-o4; Rudolf Wittkower, ArchitecturalPrinciplesin the Age of Humanism(London, 1949).
28 Philip Johnson introductory statement in Banham, 'School at Hunstanton, Norfolk', p. 151.
29 Alison and Peter Smithson, 'Thoughts in Progress', ArchitecturalDesign (April 1957), p. I3.
30 Ibid., p. 113.
31 Alison and Peter Smithson, 'Cluster City: A New Shape for the Community', Architectural Review (November
I957), p. 334.
32 Ibid., p. 333.
34 Ibid., p. 359.
35 Ibid., p. 359.
36 Ibid., p. 357.
37 Ibid., p. 357.
38 Ibid., p. 357.
39 Ibid., p. 357.
40 Ibid., p. 361.
41 Ibid., p. 361.
42 Ibid., p. 361.
43 Ibid., p. 356.
45 Ibid., p. 68.
46 This is Tomorrowexhibition catalogue, Whitechapel Art Gallery (1956), n.p.
48 Ibid., p. 67.
49 Ibid., p. 67.
50 Ibid., p. 69.
51 This is Tomorrow.
52 Banham, 'Not Quite Painting or Sculpture Either', Architects'Journal(I6 August 1956), p. 219.
53 Alison and Peter Smithson, 'But Today We Collect Ads' Ark (November I956), p. 50.
54 Peter and Alison Smithson, 'Thoughts in Progress', p. I 3.
55 Alison and Peter Smithson, 'Statement' (1955), reprinted in WithoutRhetoric- An ArchitecturalAesthetic
(London, 1973), p. 2.
56 Alison and Peter Smithson, 'But Today We Collect Ads', p. 50.
57 Two more projects by the Smithsons, both published in 1958, continued this theme - see Alison and Peter
Smithson, 'The Appliance House', Design (May I958), pp. 43-47; and 'The Future of Furniture', Architectural
Design (April 1958), pp. I75-8o. In the brief for these projects, the Smithsons set themselves the task that the
houses be mass-producible by advanced technological means; be capable of dense grouping; and 'contain a
glamour factor' (p. 117) so they would appeal to sophisticated taste.
58 Banham, 'Things to Come?', Design (June 1956), p. 25.
59 Banham in a letter to the author dated 12 August I980.
60 Banham, 'Machine Aesthetic', ArchitecturalReview (April I955), p. 255.
6i Banham, Theoryand Design in the First MachineAge (London, I960), p. 327.
62 Banham, 'Machine Aesthetic', p. 255.
63 Banham, Theoryand Design in the First MachineAge, p. 328.
64 Banham, 'Vehicles of Desire', Art (September 1955), p. 3.
65 F. T. Marinetti, 'The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism' (1909), in Umbro Apollonio (ed.), Futurist
Manifestos(London, I973), p. 22.
66 Ibid., p. 2I.
67 For details on the relative contributions of Sant'Elia and Marinetti, see Ulrich Conrads (ed.), Programsand
Manifestoson 20th centuryArchitecture(London, 1970), pp. 34-38.

BANHAM AND OTHERNESS 22I
68 Sant'Elia, 'Manifesto on Futurist Architecture' (1914), in FuturistManifestos,p. 34.

69 Ibid., p. 36.
70 Ibid., p. 38.
7I Banham, 'Sant'Elia', ArchitecturalReview (May I955), p. 301.
72 Ibid., p. 30I.
73 Banham, 'Futurism and Modern Architecture', RIBA Journal (February 1957), pp. I29-39.
74 Banham, 'Futurism for Keeps', Arts (December 1960), pp. 33-39.
75 Ibid., p. 37.
76 Ibid., pp. 37-39.
77 Ibid., p. 39.
79 Ibid., p. 327.
80 Buckminster Fuller, 'Influences on my Work' (1955), in James Meller (ed.), The BuckminsterFuller Reader
(London, 1972), pp. 44-68.
81 Ibid., pp. 64-66.
82 Ibid., p. 64.
83 Marshall McLuhan, 'Buckminster Fuller Chronofile' (I967), in Meller, p. 30.
85 Philip Johnson, 'Where We Are At', ArchitecturalReview (September 1960), p. I75.
86 Banham, 'Stocktaking', ArchitecturalReview (February I960), p. 96.
87 Banham, Theoryand Design in the First MachineAge, p. 19. I
88 Banham, 'Sant'Elia', p. 301.
go Lawrence Alloway, 'Technology and Sex in Science Fiction' Ark, no. 17 (I956), p. 20.
9I Banham, 'Home Thoughts from Abroad', IndustrialDesign (August 1963), p. 78.
92 Banham, J. M. Richards, Nikolaus Pevsner, Hugh Casson and H. de C. Hastings, 'Propositions', Architectural
Review (June I960), pp. 381-89.
93 Ibid., p. 382.
94 Banham, 'Stocktaking', p. 94.
95 Ibid., p. 94.
96 Banham (with A. C. Brothers, M. E. Drummond, R. Llewelyn-Davies), 'The Science Side', Architectural
Review (March 1960), p. 190.
97 Buckminster Fuller, 'The Architect as World Planner' (I96I), in Conrads, p. I80.
98 Hannes Meyer, 'Building' (1928), in Conrads, p. I20.
Ioo See Conrads, pp. 117-20.
IoI Ibid., p. 19.
102 Banham, 'Propositions', p. 388.
103 Ibid., p. 388.
104 Ibid., p. 388.
o05 Ibid., p. 388.
Io6 Ibid., p. 388.
107 Ibid., p. 388.
Io8 Ibid., p. 388.
o09 Ibid., p. 388.
IIo Ibid., p. 388.
i I Banham, Design By Choice (London, 1981), p. 7.
I 12 Banham, 'The History of the Immediate Future' RIBAJournal (May I96I),
pp. 252-69.
113 Banham, 'What Architecture of Technology?', ArchitecturalReview (February 1962), p. 97.
I14 Banham quoted in Ann Ferebee, 'Home Thoughts From Abroad', IndustrialDesign (August 1963), p. 78.
15 Banham, 'A Home is not a House' (1965), reprinted in ArchitecturalDesign (January 1969), p. 45.
II6 Banham, The Architectureof the Well-TemperedEnvironment(London, 1969), p. 265.
II7 Banham, 'Who is this Pop?', Motif, no. io (1962/3), p. 12.
II8 Ibid., p. 52.
119 Banham, 'A Clip-on Architecture', Design Quarterly,no. 63 (1965), p. 30.
I20 Banham, review of Peter Cook's Architecture, Action and Plan, ArchitecturalDesign (August I967), p. 352.
121 Banham, 'The Great Gizmo', IndustrialDesign (September I965), pp. 49-59.
122 Banham, Design by Choice, p. 7.
123 Ibid., p. 7.


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The thirdmajorcomponent of artautrewas the artbrutchampionedbyJeanDubuffet:

Dubuffet's reference to 'beauty' was significant, because it underlines that he was

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Fig. 2 Jean Dubuffet, Gymnosophy, 1950, oil on canvas

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Fig. 3 EduardoPaolozzi, Head, 1953,

regardfor logic, development, continuity, scale or meaning. The anti-art brut

IndependentGroup was a source of great stimulation

and primitiveDubuffet-inspiredheads and figures of the To

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and communicationtheories. Artautreremainedan undercurrent,sometimes surfacing

This was an anti-artantidoteto Read'sArtNow (1933)which had been revisedin 1948.

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Fig. 4 Parallel of Life and Art exhibition,ICA, London, 1953

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Setting aside the inconsistencies of Moholy-Nagy's use of materials - he is presum-

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^..^^ ..... ^ a^sa^.:.:.l

Fig. 6 Alison and Peter Smithson,GoldenLaneproject,1952

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The chief characteristicsof the New Brutalismwere summarizedby Banham as 'I,

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Fig. 7 Alison and Peter

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...*~ . .:: : Fig. 8 Alison and Peter

Banhamcould not fairly accusethe Smithsons of inconsistencyabout 'the past' because

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Fig. Io Alison and Peter

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It is not hardto appreciatethe sense of identificationthe sympathizerswith post-war art

As RichardandI andtherestof uscamedownthestairsfromtheInstituteof Contemporary

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Fig. ii BuckminsterFuller, the Dymaxion DeploymentUnit, 1944

technology to architectural problems. It rejected a radical, otherapproach in favour of a

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unlike the commonly-acclaimed Modernist form-givers, he was an anti-classicist,

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What he meant by playing something for kicks was

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contribution to an understanding of Pop culture was on two levels: that of the

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Fig. 4 Nigel Henderson

I R. Banham, 'The New Brutalism', Architectural

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19 See Banham, The New Brutalism,p. Io.

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