Up until very recently I have taken Brutalism to be an architectural style recognizable by what I saw as an aggrandized aesthetic, an inelegant attempt to communicate power, a primitive epitome to bureaucratic authoritarianism, or a capitalist monument for a narcissistic and insecure plutocrat’s science fiction hallucination, a type of building that makes you want to snicker in conspiratorial delight behind someone’s back while you wonder to yourself “should I be worried?”
It seemed cold, and … brutal. I was so deep into my own conception of the aesthetic that I thought Brutalist architecture was called so because it was brutal. But in fact brut — according to a 2019 article in the New York Times — refers (or at least partly it does) to béton brut which is French for “raw concrete.” Brutalist architecture — cold, dark, damp — in cold, dark environments seems ill devised, I concluded.
And although my impressions of this tradition within architecture might sometimes ring true, I wonder if I’m mostly wrong. I have discovered that there is in fact much to be said for Brutalism, and in particular — I think — there is an argument to be made for the flavor which Michael Snyder (in the New York Times) called equatorial Brutalism, but which I think I’ll refer to as tropical Brutalism.
Take for instance the Museo de Antropología in Xalapa.
While undeniably Brutalist in manner, this building — designed by architect Paul Balev and opened in 1986 — still creates a refreshing welcoming atmosphere and feels light and wonderfully breezy.
An elegant blurring of indoors and outdoors is achieved by using concrete walls that many places feature a grid of small squares open to the outside — walking between the galleries the visitor might at times truly find herself confused about wheter she is indoors or in some type of a courtyard. Some places the concrete walls are replaced with segments of metal fence railing, which might or might not be gates towards the garden. The huge amounts of big-leaved rainforest plants generously distributed throughout the interior further blends the outside with the inside.
This interplay between the concrete, the metal railings, greenery, and air, transports the museum visitor to a fantasy of stumbling — explorer-like — upon long lost temple ruins in thick jungle. As a matter of fact the museum reminds us that Brutalist architecture might have a quite natural place within the tradition of Mesoamerican monumental architecture: The concrete, used in the way it is used here, spurs associations to the region’s pyramids and other archaeological remains of pre-Columbian buildings. The stairways leading up or down a few feet, scattered around in the building and connecting different plateaus to each other, certainly reads as a quote from this ancient architecture.
In turn, the methodical nature of the structures, the geometrical repetitions, and the (at further inspection) well manicured vein of the greenery, as well as the adeptly curated exhibitions of enchanting artifacts, leaves an impression of something — or someone — civilized, sophisticated, scholarly. (And you can easily fantasize that this someone is you.) These two intertwined narratives, creates an extraordinary space, intensly stimulating, yet calming and tranquil.
Sources:
- Snyder, Michael. “The Unexpectedly Tropical History of Brutalism” New York Times, August 15, 2019.