Year: 1951
Maison Jaoul
With the flat exposed concrete arches and the exposed brickwork of the walls, the Maisons Jaoul and Unité d´Habitation are Le Corbusier’s first béton brut project. Banham and many others believe the houses blazed the trail for brutalism.
Mill Owners Building
The structure is derived from the context: the building is oriented according to the prevailing winds. It overlooks the river and the daily spectacle of people washing clothes, buffaloes, and donkeys while standing in the water. The east and west façad…
Carrières Centrales Housing Project
The Smithsons compare this North African housing project with its socio-political intentions in the Golden Lane competition. Banham remarks: “The thin stick-and-matchbox aesthetic in which this ethic of permissiveness was offered in Morocco hardly acc…
Villa Shodhan
This villa was initially designed for Surottam Hutheesing, President of the Ahmedabad Mill Owners’ Association. In the end, the luxurious bachelor residence was actually built for Shyamubhai Shodhan on an entirely different plot. A parasol roof above …
Villa Sarabhai
The Villa Sarabhai is situated in Shahibag on the east side of the river. Parallel brick walls create long rooms. Strong beams allow the creation of wide rooms and large windows. These spaces together form a long series of vaults. Lengthwise, the house …
Secretariat Building
Shortly after independence in 1949 India was in a phase of finding its own identity. With his massive buildings made of exposed concrete and brick in Chandigarh and Ahmedabad Le Corbusier was, in 1951, one of the key masterminds stimulating the new arch…
St. Matthew Church (Matthäuskirche)
The refined use of concrete is still strongly influenced by the churches Auguste Perret designed. At the same time, a fledgling anonymous volume can be discerned here. This places it between the Classicism of the 1920s and the sober, brutalist concrete …
Yale Art Gallery
In 1955 Banham ranked this building as the second most important example of brutalism after the Smithsons’ design for the Hunstanton School. That said, he felt Kahn’s handling of details was too “arty” and the visual unity of inside and outside …
Groothandelsgebouw
The Groothandelsgebouw is a large office building next to the Central Station of Rotterdam. It was built for companies which lost their office spaces during the German bombardment in 1940. The pavilion on the roof used to house a cinema. The perimeter b…