The Barbican Centre in London in all its sublimity.

This morning I awoke, like I often do, and fired up my laptop from which I lazily scrolled through the various news and sports websites; an act which encompasses the entirety of my pre-shower morning routine. During my virtual stroll from webpage to webpage, I came across Hannah Jane Parkinson’s joyous article That glorious mix of chilly air and clear, bright skies? There’s a word for that. The Ronseal title precedes a brief rumination around the sensation experienced through the “glorious mix of chilly air and clear, bright skies” and reveals that the word to describe such a feeling is Apricity.

Apricity, defined as the warmth of the sun in winter is, personally speaking, one of the best sensations to encounter when traversing the city. It is in these climatic conditions where cities look their most resplendent. Walking between glistening buildings and under trees casting dazzling shadows, as I feel the gentle warmth of the sun not saturating, but rather embalming me, is something I will always cherish. It is also in these conditions where the most simultaneously derided and cherished forms of architecture is, depending on your point of view, either at its least offensive or at its very best.

The controversy of Brutalism is eloquently captured by the masterful Jonathan Meades in his 2014 BBC documentary Bunkers, Brutalism and Bloodymindedness, as “an offensive din to many ears, but concrete poetry to mine”. Brutalism derives its name, not from ‘brutality’, but rather from the French term beton brut, which translates as raw concrete; as many of you will know, and concrete is a much-derided building material. As argued by Meades in his 2002 essay Raw, concrete is often followed by ‘jungle’, ‘wasteland’ or ‘monstrosity’, and is viewed as “sullen, grey, stained, recidivist”. Yet, concrete was used as a cheap and solid building material in the provision of public housing in the years following world war 2 — therefore providing an essential role in the return to post-war normality.

In his book Brutal London Simon Phipps laments the “state of the dismal and feeble architecture which is now prevalent in our cities” and argues that the current state of affairs “has, perhaps, allowed for the greater appreciation and rehabilitation of Brutalism”. As an architectural style, Brutalism is indebted to the pursuit of the sublime, rather than of beauty or elegance. This may be stating the obvious, but it does go some way to explaining the aesthetics of this much derided architectural form. The concept of the sublime emerged from the thought of Edmund Burke, who stated in his 1756 essay A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, that “whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime”. In Burke’s view:

“The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is astonishment: and astonishment is that state of the soul in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of the sublime, that, far from being produced by them, it anticipates our reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force. Astonishment, as I have said, is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree; the inferior effects are admiration, reverence, and respect.”

Apologies for the extensive quotation, but it really captures the intended essence of Brutalism. A Brutalist building is designed to be, in Meade’s wording, ‘confident’, and according to Carlo Navato, “there is no reason why we should instinctively feel comfortable with it, coming as we do, from a culture that historically values above all else in its architecture, the quaint, the pretty, the accessible, and the easily digestible”. Brutalism is big, brash and imposing, all in the pursuit of the sublime, as a vehicle for delivering architecture which, in the words of Burke, is there to provoke feelings of astonishment.

Now, this is where the two apparently opposed strands of this essay — apricity and Brutalism — entwine. Brutalism is often severely portrayed, by which I mean it is usually cast in black and white and photographed through austere perspectives, or is viewed as “the decor of dystopian films, literature and comics, just as gothic is for horror”. When a Brutalist building is viewed on an overcast or rain-soaked day, the gloom of the grey clouds enmeshes with the grey/beige of the raw concrete, thus creating a miserable, gloomy spectacle. Conversely, on a very hot sunny day, the intentionality of creating ‘uncomfortable’ buildings, which impose themselves upon us, only results in a feeling of oppression. It seems as if Brutalist architecture, through its sheer essence, cannot win; overcast and raining = gloomy and miserable, hot and sunny = oppressive.

A picture of the Barbican Centre in London on a sunny day. Contrast this image and the one below. For my mind, this image demonstrates the impact of a bright sunny day on the aesthetics of Brutalism.

This is where the notion of apricity is of value. A sunny winter’s day in the U.K is often described as ‘fresh’; a fresh day is, therefore, the source of apricity. It is on these days where Brutalist buildings are able to stand tallest and proudest. Hannah Jane Parkinson stated that “contrast is what makes life sing”; I for one, agree. When I read George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia a few years back, for some unknown reason one of the things which stuck with me was his description of when spring finally arrived on front lines of the Spanish Civil War, and how the blue in the sky ‘softened’.

A sunny winter’s day embodies a certain harshness defined by the imbued contrast contained within its existence. The cold air coupled with the warming sun is a testament to this, as is the sight of a concrete tower jutting upwards towards the hardened blue of a winter’s sky. A fresh winter’s day will make almost any building look more radiant, but, owing to the intended sublimity of a Brutalist building, this effect is magnified when looking at a big concrete one. Perhaps this feeling is mirrored between the positivity of a sunny day punctuating the grey of an English winter and the purposeful, self-confident surging of a Brutalist building. Who knows for sure, but all I know is when a Brutalist building sits before a backdrop of an apricity laden day, it looks nothing short of sublime. Therefore it is on these days where the seemingly personal, quaint feelings of apricity match the muscular assertiveness of Brutalism; resulting in, as Meades said, concrete poetry.

By Will Brown

Doctoral Researcher at Loughborough University

[email protected]

All sources are linked in text.

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