Professional Documents
Culture Documents
• A great deal of reconstruction work was executed, which was largely modeled on
the official architecture of Sweden's long-established Welfare State, which
comprised an architecture of shallow-pitched roofs, brick walls, vertically boarded
spandrels and squarish wood-framed picture windows, the latter either left bare or
painted white.
This so-called “people's detailing” became, with local additions, the received
vocabulary of the left-wing architects of the London County Council ( LCC ).
• The gratifying populism was rejected outright by Alison and Peter
Smithson, the initial proponents of the Brutalist ethos.
• The Brutalists responded to the challenge of “people's detailing” by
making a direct reference to the socioanthropological roots of popular
culture.
The distant past and the immediate future fused into one.
Thus the shed was furnished not only with an old wheel and a toy aeroplane but also
with a television set. In brief, within a decayed and ravaged (i.e. bombed out) urban
fabric, the “affluence” of a mobile consumerism was already being envisaged, and
moreover welcomed, as the life substance of a new industrial vernacular.
Richard Hamilton's ironic
collage for this exhibition, entitled
Just what is it that makes today's
homes so different, so appealing,
not only inaugurated Pop culture
but also crystallized the domestic
image of the Brutalist sensibility.