Who were the Brutalist architects behind the Oscar-nominated film?
A firm favourite for Oscar glory this year ‘The Brutalist’ is not a biopic but rather a film loosely based of several real people. All share one common denominator; they were the godfathers of Brutalism, an influential, and divisive architectural movement.
The Brutalist, which has been nominated for 10 Oscars, tells the story of a Hungarian-born Jewish architect who escapes the Holocaust to flee to the United States where he strikes up an uneasy relationship with a plutocrat.
Adrien Brody plays the hero Lászlò Tòth who arrives in his adopted home in 1947 and is recruited by Guy Pearce, the smooth-talking but somewhat dangerous Harrison Van Buren to work on a hugely ambitious modernist building project.
Viewers may be wondering who this genius architect was? The answer is he never existed.
The Brutalist is not a biopic but rather an amalgam of several real people.
All share one common denominator; they were the godfathers of Brutalism, an influential, and divisive architectural movement.
Director Brady Corbet, who made the film on a relatively shoestring budget of $10 million, said a series of real-life figures were the inspiration for the hero of the film.
Brutalism was a form of design which used exposed, untreated concrete and steel to make striking buildings.
However, this provoked contrasting reactions. Detractors claimed it was cold and ugly, while admirers praise it claiming it produced some of the most striking buildings of the 20th century.
Brutalism sprang up in the post-war era when functionality rather than comfort was the most important factor.
Who were the real ‘Brutalists’?
Among them was Marcel Breuer, a Hungarian German modernist architect. He shares much with the fictional Tòth character.
He was Jewish, born around the turn of the 20th century and later emigrated to the United States.
His most famous buildings are all characterised by huge slabs of concrete.
There is the flying-carpet-shaped entrance to the UNESCO buildings in Paris (1956), the belltower at St John’s Abbey in Collegeville in Minnesota (1954) and the airborne sky bridges at the New York University Bronx buildings.
Another well-known design by Breuer was 945 Madison Avenue, a large modernist-brutalist art-gallery structure, now known as the Breuer Building, in New York.
Another important figure in this movement was Ernö Goldfinger.
ADVERTISEMENTHis brutalist home in the leafy London suburb of Hampstead is among his most famous creations.
Balfron and Trellick towers, two striking blocks of flats in London, are also among his most famous – or infamous – works.
In 1996, when the National Trust opened his own home in Hampstead, Balfron and Trellick towers became listed buildings, and his work was rediscovered by a new generation of architecture fans.
Louis Kahn, who emigrated from Estonia to the United States as a young boy, was hailed as one of the most influential architects of the 20th century.
ADVERTISEMENTThe Biological Institute in California was designed to create a research institute in collaboration with pioneering polio researcher Jonas Salk who commissioned the work in 1959. The Kimbell Art Museum in Texas (1972) showcases vaulted structures. What makes it special are the wing-shaped aluminium reflectors that help to diffuse the light inside the museum.
Another of Kahn’s best-known works is the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, in India (1974). Its iconic brick façade has become famous. Unfortunately, Kahn did not live to see this design completed.
Nazis, spies and artists: the reaction to the Brutalists
Goldfinger’s brutalist home in Hampstead, so appalled James Bond creator Ian Fleming, who was a war time spymaster, that he named one of his most famous villains after the architect.
The Hungarian architect was outraged and threatened to sue the writer but relented when he received six free copies of the novel that bore his name.
ADVERTISEMENTBoth Goldfinger and Breuer were associated with the Bauhaus movement, a visionary art school founded by Walter Gropius.
The movement only lasted between 1919 and 1933, but Gropius’s concept was to combine art, architecture and design under one modernist, forward-looking platform.
Other architects associated with this movement were Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
Bauhaus was condemned by the Nazis who linked it to Judaism and communism and called it ‘degenerate art’.
ADVERTISEMENTWhen the Nazis came to power in the early 1930s, this meant the disciples of Bauhaus were in danger.
Fearing for their future, Breuer and Gropius fled Germany. Unlike the penniless fictional Tòth character, Breuer and Gropius were wealthy. The artist Otto Dix was less lucky. His paintings were labelled “an insult to the German heroes of the Great War” in a state-sponsored exhibition called Degenerate Art.
Painter and sculptor Otto Freundlich, whose sculpture Der Neue Mensch (The New Human) was used to illustrate the cover of the catalogue for the Degenerate Art exhibition.
An innovator in the Dada movement, his cubist works were a German answer to his friend Picasso, and he fled to France.
ADVERTISEMENTThe Spanish artist used his influence to get Freundlich freed from jail but he was later sent to the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland. The 64-year-old was executed as he was no good for forced labour.
Brutalism has inspired some passionate supporters.
British artist Tracey Emin condemned recent proposed alterations to a brutalist 1960s apartment block in her hometown of Margate in Kent.
Arlington House, an 18-storey block which was built in 1963 with pre-cast concrete panels and sliding glazed windows has a wave design to reflect the nearby sea.
ADVERTISEMENTGuillermo Sevillano and Elena Orte won the 2024 EU Prize for Contemporary Emerging Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award for the design of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez library in Barcelona.
The building resembles a huge pile of books and succeeds in its purpose: to get people to read. People were queueing out of the door when Euronews Culture arrived to interview the couple last year.
“I think Brutalism is more of a style than a movement. It has inspired various reactions. Some people are big fans while others do not like these big hunks of concrete,” he told Euronews Culture.
Sevillano said whatever the reaction to this style of architecture, brutalism has had a wide-ranging influence around the world.
ADVERTISEMENTHe admires the work of the late Paulo Mendes da Rocha, the Brazilian architect, who is a disciple of brutalism.
His best-known works include the Guaimbe Residential Building in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s pavilion at Expo 70 in Osaka in Japan, the Serra Dourada Stadium in Goiânia in Brazil and Saint Peter Chapel also in Brazil.
Sevillano also pointed to the influence of this striking style in Japan and India.
‘The Brutalist‘ is in cinemas now.
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