Abstract | When thinking of monstrous and soulless architecture, 60s brutalist architecture often comes to mind. Arguably it is not just the perceived vastness of the designs, their excessive focus on technology and functionality, and the homogeneous materials used in many buildings that account for this negative view, but the fact that these materials were pre-fabricated and mechanically assembled on site. Buildings were suddenly no different than industrially and serially produced cars or household appliances. But was this always the case? Often seen as a paradigm of brutalist concrete architecture, the construction of London’s South Bank Arts Centre involved highly skilled and traditionally trained craftsmen, in particular the concrete work. The accounts of some of the men who worked on the site reveal this labour-intensive building process together with the everyday social environment in which the works took place. By examining excerpts from their stories, the chapter suggests that we may reclaim the ‘soul,’ the human imprint, of brutalist architecture in its making. The visible and sometimes imperfect traces of the human hand in the structure and surfaces of the South Bank Arts Centre evoke the meticulous and physically demanding work of the hundreds of men that worked on the site. Their accounts today, several decades later, convey vividly their everyday experiences, conversations, fears and aspirations while they built the complex. The South Bank Arts Centre illustrates how the collective meaning of architecture may change when the history of its making is made known. |
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