Conservation אדריכלות ישראלית Architecture of Israel #132 February 2023 | | 88 Net concrete construction was an important means in restoring bombed western cities after World War II. The advantage of the method was that it was cheap and fast and didn’t require extra decorative cladding, while perfectly matching the then current modernist code. The problems began when the unbearable ease of the method veered out of control, yielding megalomaniacal structures - mainly public buildings such as parking lots, civic and commercial buildings, universities, libraries and municipalities, demolishing in its wake every good part of city centers all over the world, east and west. The unrestrained power that the style enabled,both civic and market forces, has caused uncontrolled destruction of urban tissue that had evolved organically for centuries, with brutal deletion of local identity. And so, a critical hybridization of the two keywords that characterized the method "Bruit" and "Brutal" gave the style its unflattering moniker, "Brutalist Architecture". And, in line with the prevailing principle along the history timeline of architecture, every style rises on the ashes of the previous one; the conservation campaign during the 80s' flourished, with its increasing power causing the opposite extreme, a total negation of every bare concrete building. Conservation bruit, brutal, brutalist Hilit Karsh, Ami Rar It is important, however, to emphasize that bare concrete is not an architectural style, rather, a method of construction that has not been eliminated from the world. Concrete has been and probably will remain the most applied construction material, and bare concrete details have not lost their legitimacy, becoming an important design component of the Postmodern genre, which did not negate the monochromatic shades of concrete as long as they were balanced by other colors and materials. In recent decades this trend succeeded in returning dignity to exposed concrete, with classical examples of interest in various places around the world, with brutalist structures becoming cultural icons (for example, Tado Ando in Japan and Boston architects in the United States, who called for a re-style while removing the negative connotation. And here one must also highlight a less desirable feature of bare concrete which recently emerged in the framework of the compulsory green architecture campaign; this is the very low thermal resistance of concrete, requiring an extra layer of cladding to achieve thermal efficiency (the thermal resistance of a 20cm thick concrete wall is less than a 3cm thick foam polystyrene layer). Whether or not Brutalism is merely favored by architects looking for the "architectural truth", this important feature actually works against the bare concrete method, since climatic reference is an essential element in modernist architecture, which adopted the aesthetic perception of the Machine – the Capitol Complex in Chandigarh by Le Corbusier, the Nakagin Capsule Tower by Kisho Kurokawa, which was recently demolished, the (megalomaniacal) Royal National Theatre designed in 1976 by Denys Lasdun, the London Barbican Centre designed in the 1970’s by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, and many, many well known others. Interestingly, as part of the implementation of local expressions that International style allows, some bare concrete buildings marked an important stage in the development of Israeli architecture, among them: The Central Library at Ben Gurion University, designed by of NadlerNadler-Bikson, which proffered the use of bare concrete as an identified construction style of the Negev university, the Faculty of Engineering at Tel Aviv University designed in 1986 by Louis Kahn, Lady Davis High School in Tel Aviv designed in 1976 by Ram Karmi, and the Bat Yam Municipality Building designed by Eldar Sharon, Zvi Hecker and Alfred Neumann, before its time with its climate awareness via the ventilation chimneys (ignorantly
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgzNzA=