Brutal Utopias: See pictures as the National Trust announces a Brutalist Architecture Celebration

This article originally appeared on Culture24.

National Trust to run brutalist tours of Southbank Centre, Sheffield's Park Hill and University of East Anglia

At a time when the often-derided legacy of brutalism is receiving something of a reappraisal, the National Trust is about to launch a series of pop-up openings of three concrete examples of the uncompromising 1960s architectural style.

The Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery will be the subject of public behind-the-scenes tours for the first time. Sheffield’s Park Hill Estate – Europe’s largest listed building – and the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, will also be explored during a ten-day programme the trust admits is a “significant departure” from its traditional picturesque attractions.

“Like them or not, it is indisputable that these places represent a distinct moment in British architectural history,” says Joseph Watson, the London Creative Director of the group.

“It’s not so very long since a generation spoke of ‘Victorian monstrosities’ and systematically worked to erase that era in built form. We are now in danger of doing the same with Brutalism.”

The tours aim to take brutalism, modernism and the Festival of Britain as their themes, leading visitors through underground tunnels, ventilation rooms and above performance spaces.

Park Hill is currently the subject of extensive renovations, and a two-year refurbishment programme is about to begin at the Southbank Centre sites.

Simon Gawthorpe, the Managing Director of property developers Urban Splash, says their work could create a “mid-century modern quarter” in Sheffield.

“The Park Hill building stimulates strong opinions,” he observes.

“There is almost reverence from admirers and intense emotions from those who have lived or visited it over the years.

“Our aim is to recapture the sense of community which was at the heart of the original vision.”

• Brutal Utopias: a National Trust Celebration of Brutalist Architecture runs from September 25 – October 4 2015. Visit Brutal Utopias for full details.

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Three places to see brutalist architecture

Hayward Gallery, London
Considered an icon of 1960s brutalist architecture, the gallery plays a vital role in the visual arts in the UK and internationally.

Workplace Gallery, Gateshead
This gallery is located in Owen Luder‘s brutalist architectural masterpiece Trinity Court, famous as the setting for the 1960‘s cult movie Get Carter starring Michael Caine.

Tate Britain, London
Concentrating on the collaboration between the sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi, the artist-photographer Nigel Henderson and the architects Alison and Peter Smithson in 1953, the current exhibition, New Brutalist Image 1949–55, highlights how this office project became the test-bed of ideas for the group’s design and installation of Parallel of Life and Art which underpinned the movement that the critic Reyner Banham would famously label ‘New Brutalism’.

Source: http://www.culture24.org.uk/art/architecture-and-design/art537513-brutalist-utopias-national-trust-southbank-centre-university-east-anglia-park-hill