Architectural Design, April 1957

If Academicism can be defined as yesterday’s answers to today´s problems, then obviously the objetives and aesthetic of a real architecture (or a real art) must be in constant change. In the immediate post-war period it seemed important to show that architecture was still possible, and we determined to set against loose planing and form-abdication, a compact disciplined, architecture.

Simple objetive, once achieved, change the situation, and the techniques used to achieve them become useless.
So new objetives are established.
From individual buildings, disciplined on the whole by classical aesthetic techniques, we moved on to an examination of the whole problem of human associations and the relationship that building and community has to them.From this study has grown a completely new attitude and a non-classical aesthetic.
Any discussion of Brutalism will miss the point if it does not take into account Brutalism´s attempt to be objective about “reality” the cultural objectives of society, its urges, its techniques, and so on. Brutalism tries to face up to a mass-production society, and drag a rough poetry out of the confused and powerful forces which are at work. Up to now Brutalism has been discussed stylistically, whereas its essence is ethical.