Log 64: Toward a Newer Brutalism, or the Undecorated Shed

As guest editor Emmett Zeifman wrote in his prompt for Toward a Newer Brutalism, or the Undecorated Shed, “Log 64 appropriates New Brutalism as a found theory of architecture that looks like exactly what it is made of.” To wit, Matthew Au, David Eskenazi, Mira Henry, Mireia Luzárraga and Débora Mesa discuss the assembly of materials, while material flammability is the concern of Dan Spiegel and Megumi Aihara. Clark Thenhaus manipulates 3D printed concrete, Zak Garone Leazer and Fernando Garrido Carreras interrogate stone, Salmaan Craig addresses the properties of heat, and Andrea Machado Romero and Eric Kyle Cheung pose maintenance as a design question. The envelopes of heating and cooling plants are analyzed by Daniel Jacobs and Brittany Utting; Mohamed Sharif heralds SO – IL’s rejection of the double-loaded apartment building corridor; and Anna Neimark celebrates Gehry Associates return to a Brutalist architecture in homes for veterans in West Los Angeles. Housing is also the focus of pieces by both Albert Pope and Andrew Holder, at vastly different scales, while Vanessa Grossman revisits the Brutalist work, including a house, of João Batista Vilanova Artigas. Aaron Forrest, Adam Frampton, Jeannette Kuo, Ajay Manthripragada, Jesús Vassallo and Yasmin Vobis talk with Emmett Zeifman about their work; Mark Foster Gage and Todd Gannon exchange views on Brutalism today, and Mark Linder reconsiders Alison and Peter Smithson’s “brutal intelligence” and “vulgar sophistication.” Mingru Han assess Liu Jaikun’s Chinese Brutalism, Preston Scott Cohen makes an argument for isomorphism, Joe Day posits a brut nouveau, and Peter Eisenman asks who’s Brutalist today. Wes Jones probes the meaning of form follows function, MOS draws up an undecorated shed, Daria Moatazed-Keivani builds with students, and Cameron Rowland documents “public use.” In assembling these voices under the rubric of Newer Brutalism, Zeifman writes, “Naming something provokes debate over the definition of terms, sustaining critical discourse and advancing architecture toward a conscious relationship to its history, limits, and potentials.”