Banham and 'Otherness': Reyner Banham (1922-1988) and His Quest For An Architecture Autre

Banham and 'Otherness': Reyner Banham (1922-1988) and His Quest for an Architecture
Autre
Author(s): Nigel Whiteley
Source: Architectural History , 1990, Vol. 33 (1990), pp. 188-221
Published by: SAHGB Publications Limited
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1568555
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Banham and 'Otherness'
Reyner Banham (I922-I988) and his quest for an
architecture autre
by NIGEL WHITELEY
With the death of Peter Reyner Banham in March 1988 at the age of 66, the architectural
world lost one of its most distinguished historians and irrepressible critics. His career,
by normal academic standards, was wide-ranging and helps to explain his unconven-
tional and, at times, idiosyncratic approach to architecture. During the war Banham
very successfully studied at the Bristol Aeroplane Company's engine division, thereby
acquiring a thorough grounding in the theory and practice of mechanical engineering.
An evident enthusiasm for technology was combined with a rigorous training in art
history under Nikolaus Pevsner at the Courtauld Institute from where he graduated in
1952.
Banham began contributing on a regular basis to the Architectural Review in 1952 (on
whose editorial board sat Pevsner), eventually joining it as an assistant editor in 1959-
the time he successfully completed his controversial doctorate on the architecture and
ideas of the Modern Movement, again under Pevsner. Banham's first book - Theory
and Design in the First Machine Age (1960) - was substantially based on his doctorate,
and in 1964 he entered academia at the Bartlett School of Architecture in University
College, London, where he became professor in 1969. Two other major texts - The
New Brutalism (1966) and The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment (1969) -
date from this period. In 1976 he moved to the United States, taking up professional
appointments at the universities of Buffalo and California. In I987 he was appointed to
the apex of architectural history chairs - Professor of Architectural Theory and
History at New York University - but tragically died before he was able to take up the
post.
The early and decisive combination of technology, journalism and scholarship
accounts not only for Banham's robust, committed yet disciplined and incisive style of
writing, but also his keen interest in varied and various cultural artefacts from buildings
to cars. For, unlike most writers about the arts, Banham was equally at home whether
discussing conventional 'high art' architecture, the styling of household appliances, or
the latest science fiction puppet series on television. He contributed to a cross-section of
journals and magazines, not all of which were architectural. From 1958 until the late
1970s, for example, he wrote regularly for (first) New Statesman and (later) New Society
about architecture, technology, and popular culture.
However all-encompassing his subjects, there was an underlying commonality in
Banham's writings that could be traced to his quest to find a dynamic and persuasive

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BANHAM AND OTHERNESS I89
alternative to the conventional thinking and operational lores that, in

most contemporary architecture and design. This quest was at its m
1950s and it is the subject of this essay. During this decade Banham often
idea of an architecture autre: where did the idea come from? what did he
did he seek it? and what influence did it exert on his subsequent crit
Banham first used the term une architecture autre in an article about 'The New
Brutalism' which appeared in The Architectural Review in December I955.1 The term
was supposed to be analogous to the concept of un art autre, the subject and title of a
book written by the French art critic Michel Tapie and published in Paris in I952.2
What Tapie had had in mind in employing the term were the post-war anti-formal an
anti-classical tendencies that could be observed in both America and Europe. A
significant number of painters in the aftermath of the war felt unable or unwilling t
return to the confident and often elegant formal coherence that characterized the wor
of Modernist 'masters' such as Matisse and Mondrian. The supposedly 'timeles
qualities of great art - the relational and hierarchic ordering of colours, shapes and
spaces, the disinterested and 'objective' control of the artist, the heroic content
seemed entirely inappropriate to a society which, at least in Europe, had been
physically and psychologically devastated by war. In America, some artists reacted
against the post-war materialism, complacency, and the enthusiasm for the 'atomic
age' which, they felt, would inevitably lead to the holocaust. The attitude amongst th
tendency of artists was one of urgency and an almost brutal directness that rejecte
previous hopes and solutions.
There were three main tributaries which made up art autre. The first - the one
pre-war legacy - was the process-orientated Surrealism that made use of automatic
and semi-automatic techniques which, its proponents believed, extracted the uninhibi
ted and primordial subconscious. One of the chief characteristics of this so-calle
'absolute' Surrealism was the primacy of process over form and formalist control, o
unfinishedness over the resolvedness associated with 'great' art. For Arshile Gorky,
Surrealist-influenced artist working in America and greatly influential on the post-wa
generation of American painters, the value of process and unfinishedness was i
vitality:
When something is finished, that means it's dead doesn't it? I believe in everlastingness. I never
finish a painting - I just stop working on it for a while. I like painting because it's something I
never come to the end of... The thing to do is always to keep starting to paint, never finishing
painting.3
This almost metaphysical attitude to unfinishedness was eagerly imbibed by the 'New
American Painters' of the post-war years and can be clearly detected in the work and
statements of a major artist such as de Kooning whose energetic and gutsy work of the
late I940S and early I950s was a rebuke to the sure-footed control of European painters:
'... French artists have some "touch" in making an object. They have a particular
something that makes them look like a "finished" painting. They have a touch which I
am glad not to have'.4 The European Modernists' desire to impose order was also
foreign to de Kooning: 'The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order
into it is a very absurd point of view'.5 Flux was an acceptable - even desirable - state
of being.
13

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I90o ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 33: I990
^ - _ - 'I L " r. *? . v . -.
Fig. I Jackson Pollock, Europe, 1950 duco on canvas
Pollock's contribution to art autre was his non-relational, non-hierarchic
eschewed conventions offigure against ground and ordered points offocus
The second art autre tributary was also to be found in

convincingly in the work ofJackson Pollock (Fig. i). Pollock
the process of orientation of Absolute Surrealism and the n
flux. Echoing Gorky, Pollock was attracted to the notion th
and no end'.6 Yet what makes Pollock a more radical painte
Kooning is not his 'splash and dribble' technique but his re
relationship in favour of an all-over, non-hierarchic c
contrasts or contrived points of focus. This stage of devel
1940S in works like Full Fathom Five (1947), and came to its
as Autumn Rhythm and One, both of 1950. To a Modern art
canons of formal order, balance and qualitative judgeme
bewildering and even subversive. Indeed, even for a wo
(aged 28 in Ig50), Pollock's work was
... almost incomprehensible to European eyes. Yet it left an inde
and when it seemed to be time to try and overthrow the classic
dominance of France in European intellectual life) then Pollock
and became a sort of patron saint of anti-art even before his se
death (which occurred in I956).7
Pollock's major contribution to art autre was his non-relatio

longer employed a hierarchic ordering of discrete parts. T
have a profound influence on Banham's nascent architecture

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BANHAM AND OTHERNESS I9I
The third major component of art autre was the art brut championed by
a 'raw art' untainted by polite conventions of civilized refinement.
was nothing to do with taste, classical harmony or skill, but a
primordial impulse that existed in everyone and which should b
directly and spontaneously. Dubuffet looked towards the work of psy
the 'mad and the criminal' for this true art uncontaminated by artists an
He described graffiti as '. . . our state of civilisation, our primitive a
wall gives its voice to that part of man which, without it would
silence'. The wall was a '. . . reminder of a primitive existence' and '
the most faithful mirrors'.8 Dubuffet opened his collection of art bru
Only 63 of the 200 works in the first exhibition of art brut in 1949 were b
was justified by Dubuffet on the grounds that 'Art is not the exclusiv
initiates. It is a common asset, barred to no one. You enter without
without even knowing it, led by instinct'.9
Dubuffet's own work exemplified the art brut anti-aesthetic (Fig.

various materials including mud, sand, glue and asphalt revealed appa
scratches and blemishes:
I've found myself suggesting certain materials, not so much those with a 'noble' reputation, like
marble or exotic woods, but instead very ordinary ones with no value at all like coal, asphalt or
even mud ... in the name of what ... does man bedeck himself with necklasses of shells, and not
spiders webs, with foxs' furs and not their guts, in the name of what I'd like to know? Mud,
rubbish and dirt are man's companions all his life; shouldn't they be precious to him, and isn't
one doing man a service to remind him of their beauty?10
Dubuffet's reference to 'beauty' was significant, because it underlines that he was

certainly not antithetical to art itself - as unsympathetic critics claimed - but was
instead seeking a new beauty which owed nothing to classical aesthetics and accepted
taste. This was a state of affairs which Banham's architecture autre aesthetic was to
parallel.
Three aspects of Dubuffet's work helped to shape the emerging art autre. First was
Dubuffet's insistence that creation is not individualistic, but universal: '... there is only
a single man in the universe, whose name is Man -and if all painters signed their works
with this name: "Picture painted by Man" see how pointless any questioning would
appear'.11 But here was a universality that, although timeless, was of an entirely
different order from the aesthetically timeless and permanent works upheld by Modern-
ist artists and critics. Dubuffet's universality referred to the primordial urge to make a
mark as an assertion of existence in a hostile and unforgiving world. The resulting form
- the second important aspect of art brut- was, by traditional artistic standards, brutal
and ugly in its uncompromising anti-formalism. Third - and in some ways the most
important aspect for later architectural thought, especially the New Brutalism - was
Dubuffet's attitude to materials which was inclusive and non-hierarchical. No material
was rejected out-of-hand because of a lowly status. Each and every material was as
good as any other: each had its own characteristics, however conventionally unappeal-
ing, and must be used 'as found'.

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I92 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 33: I990
Fig. 2 Jean Dubuffet, Gymnosophy, 1950, oil on canvas

Dubuffet's primitive and crude paintings outraged critics and public alike in the early 195os.
Spontaneity, directness, rawness and 'authenticity' mattered more to Dubuffet than sophistication,
craftsmanship and refinement
An art autre then, at its most dynamic and radical, brought together flux a
unfinishedness as a state of being; non-hierarchic and non-relational anti-formalism
primordial universality; and a direct, anti-elegant, even ugly use of forms, mater
and colours. Art autre was not a new formalism, and certainly not a new style, but a new
and tough attitude to creating that eschewed high-minded and classical notions of A
Banham's understanding of art autre and its implications, as we shall see, was sou
For any misinterpretations that may have arisen were dispelled by direct contact w
the one British artist whose work during the I95os could most convincingly
described as art autre: Eduardo Paolozzi. On graduating from the Slade in 19
Paolozzi had moved to Paris for more than two years. During his stay there he me
many artists including Brancusi, Giacometti, Arp, Tristan Tzara and Dubuffet. Ac
to Mary Reynolds' large collection of Dada and Surrealist documents, and visits to
Musee de l'Homme and Dubuffet's collection of art brut helped to immerse Paolozz
modes of anti-art and art autre (Fig. 3).
Banham met Paolozzi when the latter gave his celebrated 'Bunk' slideshow (m
accurately, epidiascope-show) at the first meeting of the newly-formed Independe
Group in 1952.12 Although the subject matter of the slideshow - advertiseme
science fiction illustrations, robots, food, consumer goods and technological hardwa
most of it from American popular magazines - was proto-Pop, the manner in whi

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Fig. 3 Eduardo Paolozzi, Head, 1953,
regard for logic, development, continuity, scale or meaning. The anti-art brut
character is certainly consistent with Paolozzi's sculpture of the 195os m
changed from the Giacometti- and Picasso-influenced work of Surrealism a
rough-hewn and primitive Dubuffet-inspired heads and figures ofuened
The Independent Group was a source of great stimulation for Banham. Its
the images were projected - one image speedily after the other
commentary or explanation - had a marked anti-art character. P
rough-hewn and primitive Dubuffet-inspired heads and figures

history is assured by its cont, coributinuity, scale or ensuing interest in A
over-emphasize the Pop elements of his graphic work at the expense
culture and mass media which led on to British Pop art. But 'o' culture
changed from the usiacometti- and Picassinterestsfluenced work of the group. Equally importa
history is assured by its contribution to the ensuing interest in American popular

with technology and art autre outlookwhich, in Banham's case, provedmmon errorqually influassessmential.s of Paolozzi's work.
culture and mass media which led on to British Pop art. But 'pop' culture was only one
Indeed, the first season of Independent Group seminars ource of great stimulation for2, devised by Banham. Its place in art
of the enthusiasms and interests of the group. Equally important were the concerns
with technology and art autre which, in Banham's case, proved equally influential.
Indeed, the first season of Independent Group seminars in I952, devised by Banham,
centred on science and technology: Banham's contribution was a talk on the machine
aesthetic of the Modern Movement. It was not until the second (and final) series of
seminars in 1954-55 that popular culture became one of the dominant themes. In that
series Banham talked about the symbolism of Detroit car styling; Alison and Peter
Smithson discussed American advertisements and architecture; and Richard Hamilton
analyzed the styling of consumer goods. However, of equal importance in the series,
convened by Lawrence Alloway andJohn McHale, were the themes of recent fine art,

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and communication theories. Art autre remained an undercurrent, sometimes surfac

in a talk such as 'Were the Dadaists Non-Aristotelean?', posed by Alloway and Edwa
Wright.
To the extent that a single Independent Group mentality existed, it could be argued
that it was broadly pro-art autre and, as far as high culture was concerned, anti-art. The
term 'anti-art' and its two different usages must, however, be clearly understood.
'Anti-art' can be used to describe the type of Dada work which subverted nothing less
than the whole institution and activity of art - Duchamp's moustache painted on a
reproduction of the Mona Lisa exemplifies this approach; or it can refer to work which
subverts not art itself, but a particular aesthetic and set of values - in mid century that
aesthetic was classical with its connotations of timelessness, sophistication and cultural
prestige.
The choice of the name Independent Group13 was itself significant because those
associated with the group sought to distance themselves and be independent from the
concept of 'High Art' as it was expressed by Herbert Read, then president of the
Institute of Contemporary Art (where the Independent Group met). For Banham and
the others, Read personified a serious and high-minded approach which, like the young
post-war artists and intellectuals in revolt in Europe and America, they believed to be
outdated and elitist. Read represented both a 'High Art' attitude and the British art
establishment which was seen as increasingly powerful and complacent. Hamilton
recalls that the '. . . one binding spirit amongst the people at the Independent Group . ..
was a distaste for Herbert Read's attitudes'.14 In Banham's opinion, his generation had
grown up under the 'marble shadow' of Read's classical aesthetics and were vehem-
ently beginning to reject it in the early I950s:
We were against direct carving, pure form, truth, beauty and all that ... what we favoured was
motion studies. We also favoured rough surfaces, human images, space, machinery, ignoble
materials and what we termed non-art (there was a project to bury Sir Herbert under a book
entitled Non-Art Not Now). 15
This was an anti-art antidote to Read's Art Now (1933) which had been revised in 1948.
Banham was rejecting the High Modernist values of universality, permanence and
disinterestedness and seeking instead a dynamic and genuine alternative: an 'anti-art'
that was other.
As we will see, there were four areas in which Banham linked art autre and
architecture: a revision of architectural Modernism; technology; popular culture; and
the New Brutalism. At the time of the Independent Group meetings, the most
promising seemed the New Brutalism because its chief practitioners, Alison and Peter
Smithson, were both members of the group and seemed highly sympathetic to the
notion of an art autre. In 1953, the year between the two Independent Group series, the
Smithsons had been co-organizers with Paolozzi and the experimental photographer
Nigel Henderson of the exhibition Parallel ofLife and Art, held at the ICA. Parallel of Life
and Art contained 122 large, grainy-textured photographs of machines, slow motion
studies, X-rays, materials under stress, primitive architecture, children's art, vegetable
anatomy and other miscellaneous images - the only 'high art' image permitted was a
photograph of Pollock working on painting - which flouted conventional standards

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BANHAM AND OTHERNESS 195
Fig. 4 Parallel of Life and Art exhibition, ICA, London, 1953

The criteria of'imagability' and emotional impact were emphasized by the aformal, env
layout which undermined the spectator's supposedly disinterested and detached contempl
of formal order, beauty and meaning. The criterion of selection was 'im
emotional impact. The photographs - many large in size and ignorin
hung environmentally from walls, ceiling and floor (Fig. 4). Organiz
duously non-hierarchic and, akin to art autre, anti-formal. Banham adj
exhibition undermined '. .. humanistic conventions of beauty in order
violence, distortion, obscurity and a certain amount of"humeur noir" .
subversive innovation whose importance was not missed'.16 While most v
have agreed with Banham's description of the exhibition, they would h
negative, not positive terms. Indeed, many critics and architects, Banh
complained of the deliberate flouting of the traditional concepts of
beauty, of a cult of ugliness, and "denying the spiritual in Man"'.17
Parallel of Life and Art revealed that the Smithsons shared Paolo
sympathies. They were well-versed in art autre tendencies - they
Pollock's work in I950 at the Venice Biennale - and Banham's hope
would develop a genuine architecture autre. For a while it seemed that it mig
the guise of the New Brutalism.
In some ways there were strong parallels in the reaction to the curre
scene between the New Brutalism and art autre - the most obvious is th
transcendent classical aesthetic- but there were also striking dissimilar
art autre turned its back on Modernism as a whole, the New Brutalism sig

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to the attitudes of the Modernism of its early period. 'It is necessary to create
architecture of reality', wrote the Smithsons,
an architecture which takes as its starting point the period 19 I - of de Stijl, Dada and Cubis
... An art concerned with the natural order [original authors' italics], the poetic relationship betw
living things and environment. We wish to see towns and buildings which do not make us f
ashamed, ashamed that we cannot realise the potential of the twentieth century, ashamed th
philosophers and physicists must think us fools, and painters think us irrelevant. We live
moron-made cities. Our generation must try and produce evidence that men are at work.1
The tone of the passage recalls Dubuffet and, although the New Brutalists and art au
artists were scrutinising different sources, they were both seeking a rekindling of
primitive and direct attitudes to creation in their disciplines which, for all th
differences in chronological location, both parties believed to be essentially a-historic
The most immediate source of hostility to the New Brutalists (who, to all extent
and purposes in the early 1950s, were Alison and Peter Smithson) was the 'Ne
Empiricism' or 'New Humanist' architecture, characterized by pitched roofs, brick
rendered walls, window boxes and balconies, paintwork, and picturesque grouping.
The sources for the style were the British 'Ideal Home', Picturesque plannin
'townscape' studies (popularized by the Architectural Review after the War), recen
Swedish architecture and, at least in the case of the London County Council architec
a firm Marxist belief in social realism with its unintentionally condescending 'peopl
detailing'. The origins of the term 'The New Brutalism' - both the straightforward
and esoteric - have been examined elsewhere19 and we need here only note tha
combined, as the Smithsons pointed out, a '. .. response to the growing literary style
the Architectural Review which, at the start of the fifties, was running articles on ... the
New Empiricism, the New Sentimentality, and so on';20 reference to beton brut (r
concrete) which had been one of the most controversial features of Le Corbusie
recently finished Unite block in Marseilles, and, not least, the art brut of Dubuffet.
The term was first used in public by Peter Smithson to describe a small house proj
of 1952 for a site in Soho, London. The statement which accompanied the des
indicates an art brut aesthetic of materials asfound:
It was decided to have no finishes at all internally, the building being a combination of shelter an
environment. Bare bricks, concrete and wood ... It is our intention in this building to have t
structure exposed entirely .. 21
The belief in 'truth to materials' is part of the legacy of the aesthetico-moral tradition of
the nineteenth century that continued into the present century. Its manifestation
percolated through Modernist art and architecture, whether Henry Moore or Mies v
der Rohe, but where the New Brutalists parted company with the Modernists was
the end to which the means were put. Modernists ultimately believed that each mater
had intrinsic qualities that could be brought out by the artist so as to create beauty. T
New Brutalist attitude to materials was to present them as fact, the effect of whi
might be inelegance and even ugliness.
The occupant of such a building would certainly need to be in tune with art bru
aesthetics: inelegance and conventional ugliness would appeal to the majority o
residents as much as the Purist machine aesthetic architecture of Le Corbusier or Mi

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:....: ...
Fig. 5 Alison and Peter Smithson, School, Hunstanton, Norfolk, 1954
The Science Room, on completion of the building, demonstrates the starkness and di
design
van der Rohe. However, to the sort of aficionado who wrote in praise of their work, the
Smithson's buildings radiated
... a feeling quite unlike the undefined, accidental quality of the romantic school, which
incorporates imitation nature effects. On the contrary, the Smithsons' houses emphasize the
intimate feeling of shelter. One is in a space that represents all space, oneself orientated to the
matter within which the house stands and out of which it is built. Every part of the house seems
in balance with the essential brutality of man.22
The commentator went on to praise the Soho house in particular as

... one of the artists' highest poetic achievements ... Everything in the interior that meets the
eye is co-ordinated - air, light, glass, the dynamic, tense horizontal planes in ceiling and floor,
create a sense of space at once definitive and infinite. Within everything contributes to the balance
of space, equilibrium embodied in greater and lesser volumes, re-establishing a sense of intimate
brutality at the very moment of participation in surrounding nature.23
The use of materials and the aesthetic ends to which they were put was the cause of
much confusion and controversy in the Smithsons' early buildings and projects.
Nowhere was this more apparent than in their best-known early works - the school at
Hunstanton in Norfolk (Fig. 5). Although the design of the building (1950) predates the
term, the school is accepted (especially by the Smithsons) as one of the key buildings of
the New Brutalism. In its use of undisguised steel and glass the building appeared to
resemble the work of Mies but, in an assessment of the school written on its completion

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in 1954, Banham argued that it was free of the '. . .formalism [present author's italics
Mies van der Rohe. This may seem a hard saying, since Mies is the obvio
comparison, but at Hunstanton every element is truly what it appears to be ..
Banham developed the point to discuss the resultant
... new aesthetic of materials, which must be valued for the surfaces they have on delivery to
site - since paint is only used where structurally or functionally unavoidable - a valuation li
that of the Dadaists, who accepted their materials 'as found', a valuation built into the Mode
Movement by Moholy-Nagy at the Bauhaus. It is this valuation of materials which has led to
appellation 'New Brutalist', but it should now be clear that this is not merely a surface aesthe
of untrimmed edges and exposed services, but a radical philosophy reaching back to the fi
conception of the building. In this sense this is probably the most truly modern building
England, fully accepting the moral code which the Modern Movement lays upon the architec
shoulders. It does not ingratiate itself with cosmetic detailing, but, like it or dislike it, dema
that we should make up our minds about it, and examine our consciences in the light of t
decision. 25
Setting aside the inconsistencies of Moholy-Nagy's use of materials - he is presum

ably referring to Moholy's kinetic sculpture rather than his more formalistic produ
design - Banham is emphasizing the 'new' or art autre attitude, not only to material
but to the building's total conception and execution. This shifts the term of referen
away from aesthetic issues to a moral one. It is not, however, to be confused with t
aesthetico-moral approach beloved by nineteenth- and twentieth-century rationali
who were convinced that their true style or aesthetic had moral authority. T
Smithsons and Banham both adopted James Stirling's dictum of'a style for the job
which implied a pragmatic and inclusive attitude to visual matters, not a preconceiv
or ideal one.26
The same was true for the plan of the building. Hunstanton's plan was essentially
symmetrical and many critics thought this showed the influence of Rudolf Wittkower
recently published Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, and Colin Rowe'
researches into mathematics and proportion in architecture. 27 Certainly the Smithson
were aware of this recent scholarship and, equally certainly, they were influenced by i
But the influence they absorbed and applied was filtered through the anti-idealist
outlook of the New Brutalism. Classical planning - or even classical proportions
could be used in a New Brutalist building because New Brutalism was inclusive. The
quintessential change, however, was that the transcendent and idealist associations o
classicism - the metaphysical dimension in which the particular always referred to th
general - were dropped so that any classical aspect was merely another option, anothe
tool at the architect's disposal, and on a par with all others.
These distinctions between classical aesthetics and pragmatics - crucial if one is to
understand the influence of art autre on architecture in this period - seemed to hav
eluded most commentators whosejudgements were based on superficial visual charac-
teristics. They were of the same order of misunderstanding as occurred in art a decad
later when formalist aesthetics were applied to Minimal sculptures by Robert Morri
and Donald Judd. In the case of the Hunstanton school, this confused thinking led
Philip Johnson in 1954 to applaud the 'inherent elegance' of the Smithsons' desig
influenced, so Johnson thought, by Mies. He regretted that, in their succeeding work

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* E""
^..^^ ^ a^sa^.:.:.l .... : _.... .....
Fig. : .6 Alio and Peer Smithson, Golden Lane project, 192
Fig. 6 Alison and Peter Smithson, Golden Lane project, 1952

This drawing by the Smithsons illustrates the anti-formalism of the project. Layout is determined
by the topography of the site rather than by any formal ordering or picturesque aesthetic. The
architects hoped this would lead to a 'rough poetry' absent from contemporary architecture
the Smithsons had '... turned against such formalistic and "composed" designs
towards an Adolf Loos type of Anti-Design which they call the New Brutalism
phrase which is already being picked up by the Smithsons' contemporaries to defend
atrocities) .. .'.28 By then the New Brutalism was synonymous in most critics' minds
with raw concrete and was being discussed in primarily stylistic terms. The Smithson
themselves tried to make the point that '... Brutalism has been discussed stylistically
whereas its essence is ethical'.29 The aesthetics of art brut and the concept of art autr
were passed over by all but a tiny number of informed practitioners and critics.
Whether such an uncompromising ethico-aesthetic high ground should be foisted on
the sensitive and delicate minds that daily populated the school was a moot point. Whi
the purchasers of one of the Smithsons' private houses probably knew what they wer
taking on - at least they had the alternative to buy somewhere else - this wa
obviously not so for the users or inhabitants of an architecture brut public building. Th
Smithsons' attitude was redolent of the-architect-as-moral-crusader and artistic trail-
blazer that had characterized early Modernism: the public was expected to come
terms with what could be a stark and unforgiving architecture.
The anti-formalism of the Smithsons in the I950s can best be observed in the
unsuccessful entry for the City of London's Golden Lane public housing competition o

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200 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 33: 1990
I952 (Fig. 6). The New Brutalists were, according to the Smithsons, committed
being
... 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.30
The first sentence sounds distinctly like an anti-idealist, almost amoral stance; the
second recalls Dubuffet's pronouncements about art brut. 'Reality' related to the way
that the Smithsons believed that working-class people actually lived, rather than the
way that middle-class architects thought they should live, and it formed the basis of
these two projects. Their Golden Lane project incorporated the idea of the street deck
(subsequently taken up by Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith at Sheffield) which they hoped
would facilitate a community-orientated life akin to the traditional terraced street. New
Brutalism was, its proponents believed, essentially humane and 'user friendly' albeit
based on a rather heroic and unrealistic view of working-class lifestyles which were
becoming considerably lessprimeval than the Smithsons supposed (or hoped). The deck
was also a means of circulation - albeit for pedestrians - in much the same way that a
road normally was, and it linked clusters of buildings. The anti-formalism of the
project was most clearly in evidence in the layout of the blocks which were not
arranged in any aesthetically ordered or systematic way but were sited according to the
topography of the site. Nor was this in the Picturesque tradition of 'consulting the
genius of the place' and enhancing it: the Smithsons' attitude to layout was, like their
attitude to materials, 'as found'.
The Smithsons developed their topographical approach in their Sheffield University
extension (1953) and 'Cluster City' (1957) projects which continued the rejection of the
'geometry of crushing banality' that, in their view, characterized Modernist planning
schemes.31 Cluster City's emphasis on the '... realities of the situation, with all their
contradictions and confusions'32 brings to mind Robert Venturi's influential Complex-
ity and Contradiction in Architecture which it predates by nine years. The similarity
between the two serves to remind onejust how much the anti-formalism of the 1950s
was taken up in the next decade.
Banham's first major article on the New Brutalism appeared in the Architectural
Review in December 1955. In it he discusses the Smithsons' Soho house, Hunstanton
school, Sheffield University extension and several other projects including their
competition entry for Coventry Cathedral (195I). All were illustrated. Banham is
unambiguously partisan about the New Brutalism and not only praises the Smithsons'
work, but attempts to locate the New Brutalism in the contexts of post-war,
anti-classical aesthetics, and architectural history. Non-architectural illustrations
accompanying the article include an 'all-over' painting by Pollock ('Number Seven-
teen', 1949 - a work also illustrated in Un Art Autre - but misdated by Banham as
1953); an art brut burlap piece (undated) by Albert Burri described as '... typically
Brutalist in his attitude to materials ...',33 a Paolozzi head of 1953 exhibiting
'sophisticated primitivism',34 a Magda Cordell 'anti-aesthetic human image figure',35 a
photograph of window graffiti by Nigel Henderson; and an installation shot of Parallel
of Life and Art.

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BANHAM AND OTHERNESS 20I
The chief characteristics of the New Brutalism were summarized b

formal legibility of plan; 2, clear exhibition of structure, and 3, valu
for their inherent qualities "as found"'.36 However, Banham acknow
description could also apply to non-Brutalist buildings, such as
apartments. He therefore suggested a further key ingredient: 'In the
characterises the New Brutalism in architecture as in painting is preci
itsje-'en-foutisme, its bloody-mindedness'.37 In exactly paralleling the
architecture and painting, Banham significantly disregards the soci
dimension of architecture over painting. He goes on to question wh
Yale Art Centre could be accepted into the Brutalist canon, but ultima
negative:
... the Smithsons' work [at Hunstanton] is characterised by an abstemious
the details, and much of the impact of the building comes from the inelo
consistency of such components as the stairs and handrails. By comparison,
arty ...38
Banham (unlike the users of the building) appreciated the artlessness/anti-art quality of
the Hunstanton school where 'water and electricity do not come out of unexplained
holes in the wall, but are delivered to the point of use by visible pipes and manifest
conduits'.39 Such a comment anticipates Banham's enthusiasm for 'High Tech'
architecture in the I970s and I980s.
It is clear that what Banham likes about the New Brutalism is its generally art autre
character. Of the Sheffield University project Banham wrote that its '. .. aformalism
becomes as positive a force in its composition as it does in a painting by Burri or Pollock
. ..'40 and he applauds the aformal siting of the blocks which '... stand about the site
with the same graceless memorability as martello towers or pit-head gear'.41 It is at this
juncture that Banham introduces the idea of une architecture autre:
... Sheffield remains the most consistent and extreme point reached by any Brutalists in their
search for Une Architecture Autre. It is not likely to displace Hunstanton in architectural
discussions as the prime exemplar of The New Brutalism, but it is the only building-design
which fully matches up to the threat and promise of Parallel of Life and Art.42
Banham regarded Parallel of Life and Art as the 'locus classicus'43 of the New Brutalism: a
visual and conceptual manifesto of the art autre aesthetic.
So, by late 1955, Banham had nailed his colours to the mast of une architecture autre.
He was later to detail the required qualities more systematically:
... an architecture whose vehemence transcended the norms of architectural expression as
violently as the paintings of Dubuffet transcended the norms of pictorial art; an architecture
whose concepts of order were as far removed from those of'architectural composition' as those
of Pollock were removed from the routines of painterly composition (ie balance, congruence or
contrast of forms within a dominant rectangular format . .); an architecture as uninhibited in its
response to the nature of materials 'as found', as were the composers of 'musique concrete' in
their responses to natural sounds 'as recorded'.44
The abandonment by musique concrete of the traditional structures of western music '. ..
gave a measure of the extent to which "une architecture autre" could be expected to
abandon the concepts of composition, symmetry, order, module, proportion,
"literacy in plan, construction and appearance"'45 as it had been understood from

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Fig. 7 Alison and Peter

_ times to Smithson, Eduardo Paolozzi and
_. an_ aesthetic _ matte.......... __ Nigel Henderson, 'Patio an
Pavilion' at This is Tomorrow
exhibition, Whitechapel Art
Gallery, London, 1956
projects of the lae15s-Cuse it frxmThe group aimed at a primeval
to conform to his de_tion, butin1956Banexpression of architecture
comprising an enclosed space (the
the:i~"~ Thi iToooe btin pavilion) in the world (the
symbolic1~~~~~~. patio). Fragments of humble
Du~ believed_'~ that the moexistence were scattered around
classical times to the Modern Movement. Clearly, for Banham architecture autre was
essentially an aesthetic matter and questions about function and the daily demands of the
architecture's occupants were secondary if not minor.
The Smithsons' New Brutalist work may have satisfied Banham's definition up to
the time of his December I955 article, and there were occasions when their Brutalist-
derived projects of the later I95os - 'Cluster City' for example - continued
to conform to his definition, but in I956 Banham began to doubt the architecture
autre integrity of the Smithsons' New Brutalist work, and turn towards a new
source of anti-art alternatives. Ironically, this new source also directly involved the
Smithsons.
The project which Banham had doubts about was the Patio and Pavilion environment
which the Smithsons, Eduardo Paolozzi and Nigel Henderson worked on together for
the This is Tomorrow exhibition of I956. Inspired by the way that East Enders used their
backyards and sheds for a diversity of activities and pursuits, Patio and Pavilion was a
symbolic semi-recreation of Henderson's own backyard in Bethnal Green. Just as
Dubuffet believed that the more individual a mark, the more it signified all humankind,
so Patio and Pavilion represented (according to the artists' statement in the exhibition
catalogue) '. .. the fundamental necessities of the human habitat in a series of symbols.
The first necessity is for a piece of the world - the patio. The second necessity is for an
enclosed space - the pavilion. These two spaces are furnished with symbols for all
human needs'. 46 The debris of daily life scattered around the exhibit - a bicycle tyre,
rocks, tools, a pin-up - symbolized desires and aspirations that were basic and
unheroic in the art brut sense (Fig. 7).
Banham disliked two interrelated aspects of the exhibit: its traditionalism and its
artiness. Commenting on the group's statement, he wrote,
Such an appeal to fundamentals in architecture nearly always contains an appeal to tradition and
the past - and in this case the historicising tendency was underlined by the way in which the
innumerable symbolic objects ... were laid out in beds of sand in a manner reminiscent of
photographs of archaeological sites with the finds laid out for display. One or two discerning
critics ... described the exhibit as 'the garden-shed' aesthetic but one could not help feeling that
this particular garden shed ... had been excavated after the atomic holocaust, and discovered to
be part of European tradition of site planning that went back to archaic Greece and beyond.47

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...*~ . .:: : Fig. 8 Alison and Peter

Smithson, 'Sugden House',
Watford, 1956
they had frequently.emphasiedtheIn its attempt to combine
arhtcue(nldnheeryMdr oeet. architecture brute with
be le y d d as a t n in s h of suburbia, 'Sugden House' was,
that, for Banham, a tradtomutbaiaording to Banham, a 'subtl
and appearance'.48 To Banm t was the Smi ' lt ' y subversive' building
wa.: ' --,-.-'---- ~j
Banham could not fairly accuse the Smithsons of inconsistency about 'the past' because
they had frequently emphasized their desire for continuity with the earlier periods of
architecture (including the early Modern Movement). Furthermore art autre itself could
be legitimately described a a tradition in search of fundamentals. The key difference was
that, for Banham, a tradition must be attitude-led: notform-led; the Smithsons were
becoming seduced by the appearance of the primitive, t the aesthetic ofart brut. Patio and
Pavilion was too self-conscious and 'arty' - inelegance and bloody-mindedness had
given away to elegance and formal ordering.
Banham did not completely change his mind in I956 about the Smithsons' New
Brutalst-influenceedwork. Their 'Sugden House' in Watford (completed in t957;
Fig. 8), a mixture of suburbia and architecture brute, was described by one offended
commentator as a '. . . shocking piece of architectural illiteracy in plan, construction
and appearance'.4 To Banham it was athe Smithsons' last 'subtly subversive' build-
ing.49 Later work such as their next important building, t the Economist Cluster in St
James's, London (I959 to I964), demonstrated more conventional architectural solu-
tions in which the Smithsons turned their backs on the notion of une architecture autre.
The same was true of the New Brutalism as a movement. Wmhere once for Banham it
had promised to be an alternative to conventional architecture, it rapidly became just
another stylistic option characterized by rough-cast concrete: 'In the last resort they
[both the Smithsons and other Brutalists] are dedicated to the traditions of architecture
as the world has come to know them: their aim is not 'une architecture autre' but, as
ever, 'vers une architecture'.50 Few Brutalists would have disagreed- nor, by the
I960s, would they have believed it should be otherwise.
If Brutalism had seemed to hold the greatest potential for une architecture autre in the
early to mid I95OS, it was another- popular culture- that seemed most hopeful in
956. The Independent Group's foray into popular culture topics in the I 954/55 season
- which included Banham's own musings about the symbolism of contemporary
Detroit cars- led directly to two historically important manifestations of early Pop

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204 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 33: I990
source of aesthetic otherness
U'?: , , I' '_.,, ,'(: k-,
exhibition, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 19.6
culture in 1956: the exhibit by Richard Ham

the This is Tomorrow exhibition, and the Sm
shared a common concern with the 'reality
logically necessitated a downplaying of gran
of the artist-architect. Like Paolozzi and th
exhibit, Hamilton et alia rejected any abstr
logy and form. But, whereas the Smithsons
version of the primitive, Hamilton et alia ar
of meaningful imagery but the developmen
and utilise the continual enrichment of v
notorious for its inclusion of a life-size pho
high robot with flashing lights from The F
food, optical effects and 'rotorelief discs, an
- was not a programme, but a sample of the
of modern urban life. (To accompany it, Ham
of Pop art: Just what is it that makes today's h
were dismissive but Banham applauded t
barriers, prise open all watertight compart
on the move ... I find it the most exciting t
'.52 Banham valued the exhibit for its atti
anti-formalism.

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Fig. Io Alison and Peter

ii.'irii9!s891The~~~~ Smithson, 'House of the Future',
::.:di;'?~ i t N-1956
March, 956 (Fig. ). nWith the 'House of the Future',
the Smithsons were coming to
terms with popular culture and
reality in whih ' potentially radvical i mplications
tI~Q`N jfor architecture
ii;"??
The Smithsons' House of t

March, acter956 (Fig zedo)
given a lecture on the gul
solutions Their thinking f
Mass production advertising
aspirations and standard ofbl
are t o match its powerful and e
Here
Herewe can seewe
the Smithsons
can purporting
see tothe
accept the 'reality o
Smit
namely 'the cultural obje
reality in which, whenmass
art brut primitivism of th
that characterized the th
illustrated than in a statement
i954 has been a key year. It
imagery; that automobile ma
elevations) classic box-on-whe
of the work of Gropi us t th
The Smithsonso anti-tradi
'popular' culture which, w
explosive cocktail.
Brutalism usually implie
came to terms with popular culture would have to be mass producible. This, the
Smithsons pointed out, was already underway:
... the mass production industries had already revolutionised half the house - kitchen,
bathroom, laundry, garage g without the intervention of the architect, and the curtain wall and
14

111.187.76.22 on Tue, 09 May 2023 15:13:49 +00:00
the modular pre-fabricated building were causing us to revise our attitude to the rela
between architect and industrial production.56
The House of the Future took this development to a further stage. It was an in
mixture of building industrialization and Detroit-influenced car styling. The
nents that comprised the House were to be mass produced but, as with car prod
each component was used only once in each unit (house). This solved the probl
industrialization leading to repetition and standardization with the resultant v
dullness. With the Smithsons' approach there was the possibility for an annua
change and even customization from a kit of parts. The crucial difference fro
other experimental all-plastics houses of the I950s - such as Coulon and S
Maison Plastique, also of 1956 - was the House's shameless styling and con
appeal. The other plastics houses were essentially in the tradition of mass-pro
pre-fabricated housing which stretched back in its current form to early Mode
The House of the Future looked not towards architecture for guidance, but tow
apogee of advanced consumer product design: the American automobile.57
The House of the Future represented a radical break with conventional archit
practice and thinking. Traditionally, styles of and trends in product desi
followed in the wake of the 'mother' art, architecture. The Smithsons were turn
structure on its head and proposing an architecture that took its lead from ind
design, so offering the public (as Banham wrote in a review) 'new aesthet
planning trends and new equipment, as inextricably tangled together as the styl
engineering novelties on a new car'.58 Could this be an even more authentic arch
autre than the New Brutalism? Banham realized that to draw a parallel between
and a car in particular, or consumer products in general, was misleading - at l
one respect. In a letter to the author in 1980 he explained:
Appliances are made in one place, shipped to another to be sold, and then consumed som
else. The bulk of housing ... is made, sold, and consumed in one and the same place, an
place is a crucial aspect of the product.59
Houses are, therefore, not like consumer products because they are not po
consumers attitudes to them are not the same. On the other hand a house could b
consumer product if it was thought of as a piece of industrial design. This, Banha
was a bigger mental leap than might be imagined for it required the architect to
immersed in technology. This type of architect would have to ditch all of the
cultural attitudes that he had imbibed as a student, and most of the architectura
he had picked up. It was no good having a superficial smattering of techno
information because it would be misunderstood or outdated. What was needed
thorough understanding of the nature of technology itself, and a wholeh
commitment to it.
The architect's attitude to technology and technology's relationship to archit
were the two issues that Banham was finding increasingly central to his d
research into the Modern Movement of the 'first machine age' in architecture
caused major difficulties with his supervisor, Nikolaus Pevsner, whose commitm
a sachlichkeit Modernism based on classical aesthetics had been expounded in his s
Pioneers of the Modern Movement, published in 1936, and subsequent articles. By the

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I95os these issues had crystallized and Banham raised them in an art
acknowledged as a landmark in the revised history of Modernism
Aesthetic', which appeared in the Architectural Review in April 1955,
that
The 'Machine Aesthetic' of the Pioneering Masters of the Modern Movement was ... selective
and classicizing, one limb of their reaction against the excesses of Art Nouveau, and it came
nowhere near an acceptance of machines on their own terms or for their own sakes.60
This was because '. . . theorists and designers of the waning Twenties cut themselves
off not only from their own historical beginnings, but also from their foothold in the
world of technology'.61 Ultimately, the 'pioneering masters' - Le Corbusier, Gro-
pius, Mies et alia - accepted the machine and technology only on a superficial,
symbolic and stylistic level. The lack of depth in their understanding led them to
misinterpret temporal effects for timeless aesthetic conditions: they thought the 'boxy'
look of post World War One cars was the result of the attainment of mechanical
sophistication and the 'type-form' which corresponded to the pure phileban solids
beloved by architects. Evolution of technology and art had apparently culminated in an
all-powerful aesthetic universalism.
Those visual characteristics may have coincided at a particular historicaljuncture but
the experimental studies into the performance of shapes in motion presaged '. . the
rapid revolution of an anti-Purist but eye-catching vocabulary of design . .62 for cars
and other forms of transport. Streamlining had come into being. Architects, however,
paid little attention to these developments and held on to forms which, technologically,
were becoming increasingly dated. In the conclusion to Theory and Design in the First
Machine Age, published in I960, Banham continued the theme of his I955 article:
As soon as performance made it necessary to pack the components of a vehicle into a compact
streamlined shell, the visual link between the International Style and technology was broken ...
though there was no particular reason why architecture should take note of these developments
in another field or necessarily transform itself in step with vehicle technology, one might have
expected an art that appeared so emotionally entangled with technology to show some signs of
this upheaval.63
None was evident amongst the pioneering masters and Banham concluded that their
way of thinking owed little to live technology but much to classical aesthetics.
Had Modernists really considered the fundamental condition of technology they
would have realized that the only constant was change. In I955 this was, in Banham's
opinion, still one of the most pressing issues:
... we are still making do with Plato because in aesthetics, as in most other things, we still have
no formulated intellectual attitudes for living in a throwaway economy. We eagerly consume
noisy ephemeridae, here with a bang today, gone without a whimper tomorrow - movies,
beachwear, pulp magazines, this morning's headlines and tomorrow's TV programmes - yet
we insist on aesthetic and moral standards hitched to permanency, durability and perenniality'.64
The acceptance of the 'new' conditions would require a new aesthetic and this could
lead to the architecture autre Banham so desired. Although an acceptance of expenda-
bility lay behind the styling of the American design - such as Detroit cars -
worshipped by Banham and other Independent Group members, it was only in an
isolated case like the House of the Future where it was manifested in architecture.
14*

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Another - and more significant - exception Banham found to this general rule w
the Futurists whom Banham rediscovered during his researches into the Mode
Movement during the g950s. They emerge as central to the revised version o
Modernism in Banham's doctorate which eventually was published as Theory a
Design in the First Machine Age. It appeared to Banham that Modernist architects an
historians in the I93os and '40s - such as Walter Gropius, Sigfried Giedion and, indee
Pevsner - had tidied up the history of their movement to the extent that certain ke
aspects of it - in particular Futurism and Expressionism - had been excluded as if th
had been madmen in the family who needed to be kept away from the gaze of the
public. What particularly appealed to Banham is that they represented an architectur
autre within Modernism: an alternative to an architecture of classical aesthetics that, in
the case of Futurism, went some considerable way to running with live technology.
The nub of the matter was that sachlichkeit Modernists made technology conform to
classical aesthetics; the Futurists sought a new aesthetic based on the condition of
technology.
Futurism dates back to I909 when F. T. Marinetti, the founder and chief protagonist
of the movement, delivered a series of outspoken and uncompromising manifestos to
provoke a reaction in the Italian art world and free, as Marinetti described it, '. . . this
land from its smelly gangrene of professors, archeologists, ciceroni and antiquarians'.65
Like many other artists at the time, the Futurists believed they were witnessing the
dawning of a millennium. Like the 'pioneering masters' they looked at the machines
around them but saw no lessons inherent in the precision of machinery, no mathemat-
ical order nor classical harmony, but power, dynamism and excitement of the new
technology which should not be observed with the detached air of the academic, but
experienced for all its compulsive sensations. Jettisoning the aesthetic and cultural
conventions of the past, the Futurists embraced the radically new beauty of the
twentieth century, '... the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with
great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath - a roaring car that seems to ride on
grapeshot is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace'.66
A celebratory and romantic spirit infused all the Futurists' outpourings, including
the 'Manifesto of Futurist Architecture', published in 1914 and written by Marinetti
and Antonio Sant'Elia.67 The 'New City' was urgently needed, the authors declared,
because the current city belonged to the past:
As though we - the accumulators and generators of movement, with our mechanical
extensions, with the noise and speed of our life - could live in the same streets built for their
own needs, by the men of four, five, six centuries ago.68
The Futurist city represented a vision that ran counter to the static and controlled
classicism of the 'pioneering masters'. Dynamism, energy and movement were
paramount:
We must invent and rebuild the Futurist city: it must be like an immense, tumultuous, lively,
noble work site, dynamic in all its parts; and the Futurist house must be like an enormous
machine ... the lifts must climb like serpents of iron and glass up the housefronts. The house of
concrete, glass and iron . . ., extremely 'ugly' in its mechanical simplicity ... must rise on the
edge of a tumultuous abyss: the street . . . will descend into the earth on several levels ...69

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It is not hard to appreciate the sense of identification the sympathizers with

autre must have felt with the Futurist sensibility. Here was an aesthet
unfinishedness and of 'ugly' vitality. Furthermore, the Futurists had
with the condition of technology in the twentieth century: '... th
characteristics of Futurist architecture will be obsolescence and transien
last less long than we. Each generation will have to build its own city'.
and transience had never before been elevated to the position of essential
The Futurists had squarely come to terms with the idea that technology
continual change.
In the light of his interest in technology and quest for an architecture aut
seemed tailor-made for Banham in the 1950s. His first major articl
deals with Sant'Elia and was published in the Architectural Review
the time when the whole issue of architecture autre was taking sh
the article is concerned with establishing the facts about the auth
Manifesto, and informing an as yet uninformed readership about Sant
Banham conclusively reasons that Sant'Elia needs to be acknowledge
of the International Style' because he was able to '. .. combine a comple
of the machine-world with an ability to realize and symbolize th
in terms of powerful ... form'.7 Banham also argues that Sant'Elia
porary relevance and so is even more appropriate as a guide to an archit
'... basing his whole design on a recognition of the fact that in the me
one must circulate or perish ... [he] seems to have foreseen the techno
the Fifties .. ..72
Banham continued his rehabilitation of Futurism with a lecture to the Royal Institute
of British Architects in 1957,73 an article in Arts magazine in I960,74 and, of course, the
publication of Theory and Design in the First Machine Age in 1960. In the Arts article and,
to a lesser extent, in Theory and Design, Banham presents Futurism not as a dead
art-historical movement, but as a relevant and urgent attitude to living in mid
twentieth-century society. In Arts, he recalls the rediscovery of Futurism in about 1954,
at a time when his generation were in full revolt against the Herbert Read version of
Modernism. Banham draws a number of parallels between Futurism and contempo-
rary experimentation and innovation - Russolo's 'Art of Noises' and musique concrete;
and Marinetti's 'Words in Liberty' and Beat poetry for example. Machine-age para-
phenalia listed by Boccioni in one of the manifestos and quoted by Banham -'...
gramophone, cinema, electric advertising, mechanistic architecture, skyscrapers ...
nightlife ... speed, automobiles, aeroplanes ...' - are found to accord with con-
temporary life: '... hi-fi, stereo, cinemascope and (in Richard Hamilton's succinct
phrase) "Polaroid Land and all that jazz" .75 He continues:
As Richard and I and the rest of us came down the stairs from the Institute of Contemporary Arts
those combative evenings in the early fifties, we stepped into a London that Boccioni had
described, clairvoyantly. We were at home in the promised land that the Futurists had been
denied, condemned instead to wander in the wilderness for the statutory forty years ... No
wonder we found in the Futurists long lost ancestors, even if we were soon conscious of having
overpassed them. Overpassed or not, they seemed to speak to us on occasions in precisely the
detail that the ghost spoke to Hamlet.76

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Having made out the case for its prophetic aspect, Banham offered its lesson:
While life remains as Futurist as it has been, indeed becomes increasingly so, concepts of art and
aesthetics based on eternal values will probably continue to prove perishable, like Roger Fry's,
while Futurism, founded on change and 'the constant renewal of our environment', looks to be
the one constant and permanent line of inspiration in twentieth-century art.77
This is Banham's argument for Futurism as anti-art, as art autre with implications for
architecture autre.
Banham allots a whole one of the five sections in Theory and Design in the First Machine
Age to an examination of Futurism, but it is in the book's conclusion where he develops
its full architecture autre status and brings it into the debate about contemporary
architectural thinking. Having praised Futurism's positive attitude to technology and
chastised Modern Movement architects for cutting themselves off from the 'philo-
sophical aspects of Futurism',78 Banham links Futurism with the then contemporary
work of Buckminster Fuller:
There is something strikingly, but coincidentally, Futurist about the Dymaxion House. It was to
be light, expendable, made of those substitutes for wood, stone and brick of which Sant'Elia had
spoken, just as Fuller also shared his aim of harmonising environment with man, and of
exploiting every benefit of science and technology. Furthermore, in the idea of a central core
distributing services through surrounding space there is a concept that strikingly echoes
Boccioni's field-theory of space, with objects distributing lines of force through their
surroundings.
Many of Fuller's ideas, derived from a first-hand knowledge of building techniques and the
investigation of other technologies, reveal a similarly quasi-Futurist bent . ..79
Whether Fuller would have been happy to have been likened to the Futurists is highly
doubtful for he thought of all European Modernists as artists (and therefore primarily
concerned with aesthetics) rather than technologists/problem-solvers. Banham quotes
at length in the conclusion Fuller's vitriol about European designers which, interest-
ingly - for it establishes a formal link between Fuller and Independent Group
members - comes from an at-the-time unpublished letter of I955 from Fuller to
Independent Group member and Fuller-enthusiast John McHale.80 In part it reads:
The 'International Style' brought to America by the Bauhaus innovators, demonstrated
fashion-inoculation without necessity of knowledge of the scientific fundamentals of structural
mechanics and chemistry. The International Style 'simplification' then was but superficial. It
peeled off yesterday's exterior embellishment and put on instead formalised novelties of
quasi-simplicity, permitted by the same hidden structural elements of modern alloys that had
permitted the discarded Beaux-Arts garmentation.
... the Bauhaus and International used standard plumbing fixtures and only ventured so far as
to persuade manufacturers to modify the surface of the valve handles and spigots, and the colour,
size, and arrangements of the tiles. The International Bauhaus never went back of the
wall-surface to look at the plumbing... they never enquired into the overall problem of sanitary
fittings themselves ... In short they only looked at problems of modifications of the surface of
end-products, which end-products were inherently sub-functions of a technically obsolete
world.81
Banham uses Fuller to place the Modern Movement in conceptual and cultural
perspective. By featuring Fuller's criticisms of 'International Style' architecture,
Banham exposes the artistic bias of Modernism and the fact that it was in search of, first
and foremost, a machine aesthetic rather than a profound or radical application of

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Fig. ii Buckminster Fuller, the Dymaxion Deployment Unit, 1944

A later version of the 1927 prototype, this building was exhibited in the sculpture g
Museum of Modern Art in New York. Hundreds were manufacturedfor military u
war
technology to architectural problems. It rejected a radical, other

traditional, architectural one.
Fuller's closest point of contact with Futurism was his touchs
characteristic of technology was the 'unhaltable trend to co
change'.82 An 'architectural' solution was only one possible soluti
technological problem as far as Fuller was concerned, and
'architecture' as it was generally recognized. His 'Dymaxion H
was not equivalent to a Modernist object-type 'machine fo
connotations of aesthetic formalism, but part of Fuller's
... concept of air-deliverable, mass-produceable, world-around, hum
nurturing scientific dwelling service industry as means of transforming
from a weaponry to livingry focus, thereby to render successful all
only a few, on the premise that a comprehensible anticipatory design
increased technical efficiency and upping of overall performance per po
bring about physical success for humanity - never to be obtained on p
eliminating fundamental causes of war.83

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Other 'architectural' solutions by Fuller - such as the 'Wichita House' of 1946 (an
updating of the 'Dymaxion House', and his famous geodesic domes, which are highly
unconventional in visual terms - are well known although Fuller described himself as
an 'inventor' rather than an architect. Banham emphasized this distinction:
... the architectural profession started by mistaking him for a man preoccupied with creating
structures to envelop spaces. The fact is that, though his domes may enclose some very
seductive-seeming spaces, the structure is simply a means towards, the space merely a
by-product of, the creation of an environment, and that given other technical means, Fuller
might have satisfied his quest for ever-higher environmental performance in some more 'other'
way. 84
Architects were generally extremely hostile to Fuller's work, arguing that it ignored
one of the most vital ingredients of architecture in the traditional sense: the aesthetico-
symbolic. Philip Johnson spoke for many: 'Let Bucky Fuller put together the
dymaxion dwellings of the people so long as we architects can design their tombs
and monuments'.85 By his commitment to problem solving, his attitude to technol-
ogy, and his lack of interest in aesthetics, Fuller really did seem to offer an architecture
autre.
Fuller may seem to provide the obvious model for Banham for an architecture autre
but, around the time of Theory and Design, Banham can justifiably be accused of
inconsistency. The problem revolves around the issue ofjust how autre Banham wants
his architecture to be. Theory and Design, Banham acknowledged, was a revisionist text
which sought to counter the discrimination which had taken place since the late I920s
towards sachlichkeit or Pevsnerian Modernism. Therefore, Theory and Design empha-
sizes the Expressionist and, especially, Futurist aspects and legacy of Modernism.
Banham did not argue his case on formalistic or stylistic grounds which he saw as
relatively unimportant - hence his lack of interest in the architectural Neo-
Expressionism of the 1950s. While Pevsner interpreted Le Corbusier's Ronchamp,
Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum, or Eero Saarinen's TWA terminal
as significant (although not beneficial) architectural developments, to Banham
they represented little more that the continuation of the work of the heroic, form-
giving Modernist artist-architect: 'New shapes notwithstanding, it is still the
same old architecture, in the sense that the architects involved have relied on their
inherited sense of primacy in the building team, and have insisted that they alone shall
determine the forms to be employed'.86 His interest in Expressionism in Theory and
Design is not to do with form so much as content - the significations and 'meanings'
of Expressionist work and the implications for the value system of Modernism.
His main argument for Futurism, as we have seen, was in terms of its attitude to
technological society: that cultural activity responded positively and directly to
technological progress.
Yet Banham also praises Futurism on more than one occasion for its image of
modernity. Of one of Sant'Elia's most fully worked out perspectives of 'The New
City', Banham wrote in Theory and Design that it brought '. . . together skyscraper
towers and multi-level circulation in an image that has dominated modern ideas of
town-planning right down to the present time',87 And in his Architectural Review article
of 1955, Banham favourably compares Sant'Elia with Adolf Loos remarking that,

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whereas the latter often produced a '. . collection of rather

created
... forms which are exciting in virtue of their mechanistic inspiration. I

corpus of drawings against the text of his manifesto, we see that he was
combine a complete acceptance of the machine-world with an ability
that acceptance in terms of powerful and simple geometric form.88
The importance attached by Banham to the image of modernity

radical problem-solving attitude of Fuller. In fact, the idea of ima
Banham's criticism in the I95os and it feeds directly into his idea of a
He discussed what 'image' meant to him in his 1955 'New Brutal
A great many things have been called 'an image' - S. M. della Consolazi
byJackson Pollock, the Lever Building, the 1954 Cadillac convertible, th
at Marseilles, any of the hundred photographs in Parallel of Life and
Aquinas supposed beauty to be quod visum.placet (that which seen, please
as quod visum perturbat- that which seen, affects the emotions, a situat
the pleasure caused by beauty, but it is not normally taken to do so,
interests in image are commonly regarded ... as being anti-art, or at any
classical aesthetic sense of the word. But what is equally as important
response, is the nature of its cause. What pleased St Thomas was an ab
what moves a New Brutalist is the thing itself, in its totality, with all
association. These ideas of course lie close to the general body of a
currently in circulation ... 89
Banham argued that New Brutalist architecture - especially

stanton school - was strong in imagability and he might well ha
visions in the list of 'images' for they, too, had the kind of direc
that was the reverse of disinterested. Indeed, it might be argued
had little else because the corpus of his work included no plans, t
or formal elevations: only what might with justification be called
of the Futurist city. With his penchant for science fiction it is e
Banham was attracted to Sant'Elia's work, but one feels that
subjective response had got the better of his disinterested critica
Science fiction was a shared interest amongst Banham, A
Hamilton, and had been a key element during the second season
Group deliberations in I954/55. Powerful and emotive imager
aspect of the sort of science fiction consumed by Banham and fr
convinced it had a purpose and role beyond the merely entertai
Alloway, the currency of the symbols used in science-fiction ma
of the acceptance of technological change by the public in the U
fiction alone does not orientate its readers in a technological an
but it is important among the attitude-forming channels'.90 Sci
Independent Group members believed, provide the sort of images
The assumption underlying Banham's praise for Sant'Elia's image
do the same.
Banham was applying very different standards to Sant'Elia than he was to Fuller.
One of the chief reasons Sant'Elia was a potential source of architecture autre was becau
of the power of his machine-age imagery. In this sense Sant'Elia was aform-giver but,

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unlike the commonly-acclaimed Modernist form-givers, he was an anti-classicist,

anti-formalist form-giver. Fuller, on the other hand, was a source (and practitioner) of
architecture autre because of his radical, problem-solving approach. As Banham acknow-
ledged: 'Bucky isn't a form-giver and the only significant form he has given us is the
geodesic dome, and what's significant about that is not the architectural shape but the
radical thinking behind it'.91 Had Banham applied the architecture autre standards he
applied to Fuller to Sant'Elia or even the Smithsons, he might have dismissed them, in
the final analysis, as too involved with aesthetics and architecture.
Several key aspects of his architecture autre were raised by Banham in a series of five
articles and discussions he wrote or edited for the Architectural Review in I960. They
appeared under the general heading 'Stocktaking', reflecting, no doubt, the dawning of
the new decade and the feeling that the time was ripe for assessment of the current state
of architectural thought. The topics included the relationship between conventional
architectural habits of thought and technological ones; recent scientific and technologi-
cal methodologies and their implications for architecture; the role of the traditional
architect - 'universal man' - in the age of science; and a reassessment of the Modern
Movement. The final piece was a set of responses92 - mostly unsympathetic - to the
main premise underlying the series which Banham defined thus: '... technology will
impinge increasingly on architecture in the next ten years, and that technological habits
of thought are hostile to architectural habits of thought'.93
The series was less a comprehensive stating of Banham's theory of architecture autre
than a snapshot of his views at a particular juncture. The dominant influence on
Banham in the series was undoubtedly Buckminster Fuller. In the first piece, 'Tradition
and Technology', Banham countered the apparently radical
... Functionalist slogan that 'a house is a machine for living in' ... because it begins by
presupposing a house. Far more seditious to the established attitude of architects is the
proposition that, far from caravans being sub-standard housing, housing is, for many functions,
sub-standard caravans'.94
He continued, in the same vein, that'. .. it becomes possible to define "home" without
reference to hearth or roof, but simply as the integration of a complex of intrapersonal
relationships and mains-services'.95 Here was Banham at his most Fulleresque. A
genuinely radical scientific and technological attitude, he argued in 'The Science Side',
... could sweep away architecture as we know it now and leave in its place, precisely, that other
architecture produced by the team-work of specialists in colour, heating, lighting, acoustics,
market-research, group psychology - an architecture comparable to other aspects of creative
technology - such as aircraft design or television - that are neither encumbered nor ennobled
by a great tradition such as architects carry with them everywhere they go .. .96
This led Banham to the conclusion in 'The Future of Universal Man' that the architect
must either become a member of an integrated team - contributing, perhaps,
organizational skills, or talents akin to the product design stylist - or receive a
comprehensive and scientific education. The latter was very close to Fuller's stated
belief that an architect's education should comprise '. . . chemistry, physics, maths,
bio-chemistry, psychology, economics, and industrial technology'.97 But it was even
closer to Hannes Meyer's pronouncement of 1928 that a house '.. . is an industrial
product and the work of a variety of specialists: economists, statisticians, hygienists,

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BANHAM AND OTHERNESS 2IS
climatologists, industrial engineers, standardisation experts ... and t

he was an artist and now becomes a specialist in organisation!'98
The attitude to architecture expounded by Bauhausler Meyer w
made to fit in with Banham's theory of architecture autre but Banham pa
to Meyer in either his Modernist revisionist articles in the Architectu
more surprisingly, in Theory and Design. In the whole of the book he
three or four times, and then just in passing or in a brief, rather d
which relates Meyer to the 'neo-Rationalist movement' which, influen
viewed architecture as the '. . product of the materials and techniqu
Yet, had Banham wished to do so, he could have cited Meyer's
'Building' which was published in one of the Bauhaus books100 -as a
architecture autre, for it contains many sentiments with which Banham s
'anti-architectural' spirit pervaded the essay: 'architecture as "a cont
traditions of building" means being carried along by the history of ar
rejection of conventions and traditions may remind one of Futur
difference between Meyer and Sant'Elia/Marinetti was the tone of t
attitudes. Banham was not attracted to the 'neo-Rationalist' tone
hard-edged functionalism and orthodox Marxism coloured his prono
an air of moral superiority and earnestness. This contrasted gre
all-embracing (if overwhelming and often eccentric) outlook, an
romantic and celebratory spirit.
Banham enjoyed his science fiction and could never be accused of ear
extent to which he embraced the Futurists' tone of enthusiasm and commitment
constantly surprised - and frequently horrified - those who believed he should
more dispassionate and conventionally academic in his writing. This came throu
most forcibly in Banham's concluding section to the 'Stocktaking' series: a short essa
which Banham entitled 'Science For Kicks?'. Banham himself had no doubt that the
architect should engage in science for kicks although he was also quite aware that
Such a proposal will shock and repel a large number of persons inside the sciences, and quite a
number of persons outside the sciences whose theoretical position is based on the idea of scienc
as a tough and noble discipline that they themselves do not follow, but would if their callings
permitted them ... 102
What he meant by playing something for kicks was

... a way of using the mind for pleasure, orjust the hell of it, in such a way that it flourishes, not
vegetates ... the more trout you fish, the more rock'n'roll you consume, the better it gets. I
addition, the company of fellow-addicts also brings its rewards . . . sharpening one another's
appreciation of the art.103
as had been the case with the shared interests between members of the Independent
Group. In the case of most 'finite, simple kick-seeking', a point could be reached where
first, expertize and then, comprehensive knowledge and understanding could produc
boredom with the activity being studied, but science
... is neither finite, nor simple. Its primary fascination will always be that no man can embrac
the whole of it, and even in one particular field, the limit of research is apt to be advancing faster
than even the talented amateur can pursue. In Science-fiction, which is science-for-kicks in

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2I6 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 33: I990
almost its purest form, not only do new fields of subject-matter constantly open up
exploitation, but old ones are equally constantly being revived because they have been exten
by new research or theoretical revision. 104
Science was so crucial to existence as we know it that
The man who doesn't get any kick out of science will, by definition, get no kick either from th
Twentieth Century which ... knows no other God ... The man who plays science for kicks is,
in our present situation, a life-enhancer, and if he functions in the visual field he will be the bette
able to produce the kind of symbols by which we identify ourselves as members of the scientif
adventure to which we are all committed in our smallest acts .. .105
The architect, therefore, has a responsibility to play science for kicks, otherwise he'. .. is
clearly unfitted to put up monuments symbolizing or otherwise expressing its
values'.106 The advanced state of knowledge means that for the practitioners of
architecture '... to pretend to take science "seriously" is an act of monstrous
arrogance'.107 Banham did acknowledge that
... the kind of expertise needed to enjoy the productions and achievements of technology and
science, and to go on enjoying them, is not necessarily the same kind of expertise as that required
to create or control them, but - in practice - the overlaps are considerable, and the connoisseur
of space-fiction, for instance, must get to know a lot about ballistics, rocket dynamics, gravity,
radiation, planetary atmospheres, galactic structures and cosmic dust if he is to get anything like
the full value for his addiction. 108
So, the architect playing science fiction for kicks is a combination of Fuller (whom
Banham mentions in his essay) and Marinetti/Sant'Elia, but certainly not Hannes
Meyer. 'Science for kicks' is nothing less than an attitude for life: 'The man who plays
science for kicks is committed to a growing enjoyment of a growing body of ideas and
experience. He is in it for life - unless his nerve fails'. 109
The last sentence of the piece is pure Banham:
The lesson ... seems to be clear - to go on with our scientific surf-ride on which we are newly
launched, to play it for all the kicks it can produce, and stay with it till it is exhausted, instead of
trying to jump off while we think the going is good and finding ourselves at the mercy of the
next breaker behind.110
Nothing could better illustrate Banham's ability in writing to infuriate and seduce!
Nothing could, moreover, as perfectly encapsulate the attitude that underpinned his
theory of architecture autre than his 'Science for Kicks' piece, especially when read with
the knowledge of his work over the previous half decade: the dislike and distrust
of academic values and classical aesthetics; the partisan commitment to a cause,
demonstrated in the New Brutalism; the often cavalier attitude to considerations of
use and function; the enthusiasm for the latest facet of glamorous science or desirable
industrial design, celebrated at Independent Group meetings; and the wholehearted
acceptance of technological experimentation and change, epitomized by Futurism
and Fuller.
By the end of 1960, with the publication of Theory and Design in the First Machine Age
and the 'Stocktaking' series, Banham had established both his reputation and his
notoriety. In his quest for an architecture autre he had also worked out the main
parameters around which he was to judge architecture and design during the rest of his
career. Looking back on his writing from 1981, he acknowledged that '... my

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consuming interest, through thick and thin, hardback and limp, is w

the shifting frontier between technology and art'. 1
In the early I96os most of his architecture autre preoccupations of t
undiluted. In a lecture he gave to the Royal Institute of British Arch
1961 he again called for architects to look beyond architecture to the
case the human sciences and the 'new biology'.112 The audience respon
- which generally ranged from bewilderment to hostility - was not
architectural profession's reaction to Banham's provocations. The th
congress of the International Union of Architects in 1961 was th
architecture and technology and a few months later in the Architectu
castigated the architectural profession for their 'heroically naive' st
technology. 113 Architects still had a superficial understanding of tec
no heed to what Banham argued were its fundamental conditions.
Banham continued to promote the architecture autre attitude
epitomized by Fuller but by the end of 1963 was admitting:
What I can't be sure about is whether Bucky's rules and the rules which gover
know it are mutually exclusive. When I wrote Theory and Design, I was co
either/or situation. But where Mrs Moholy [Sibyl Moholy-Nagy], for insta
what I wrote then is that she cannot conceive of anyone coming dow
engineer-technologist in preference to the architect. As for myself, I
half-and-half position: radical technology like Fuller's will displace architectu
replace it. 114
This seemed to indicate a significant softening of Banham's point of view because she
had certainly consistently presented the attitudes and values as mutually exclusive
throughout the I950s. What Banham probably realized was that the chance of
architects changing their attitudes was so remote that continuing to maintain an
uncompromising position would be as fruitful as banging one's head against the
proverbial - and architecturally traditional - brick wall.
Not that Banham's commitment to an architecture autre arising out of technology
diminished. In 1965 he proposed the 'Unhouse':
... when it contains so many services that the hardware could stand up by itself without any
assistance from the house, why have a house to hold it up? When the cost of all this tackle is half
the total outlay what is the house doing except concealing your mechanical pudenda from the
stares of folks on the sidewalks. 115
Banham's interest in the radical use of technology and technological habits of thought
culminated in his The Architecture of the Well- Tempered Environment, published in 1969.
It was the first book to study seriously the history of mechanical services and their
relation to architectural form, and was intended to counterbalance the conventional
view of architectural history. Fuller remained a hero: he was hailed as one of the major
figures of this other tradition and praised for his '. . . willingness to abandon the
reassurances and psychological supports of monumental structure'.116
One of Banham's best-known areas of criticism in the I96os and I970S was popular
culture. From I958 to 1965 in the New Statesman, and from 1965 until his death in New
Society Banham had a regular column dealing not only with current architecture, but
also design, technology, the mass media and popular - then Pop - culture. Banham's

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contribution to an understanding of Pop culture was on two levels: that of

development of a theoretical basis for Pop in terms of its technological and cultur
relevance to the conditions of the day; and second, the informal yet critical exam
nations of the ephemeras of Pop culture and design. Regarding the latter, between 1
and I970, for example, topics included paperback book covers, sunglasses, chair
art, the cult film Barbarella and the cult television programme Thunderbirds, househ
gadgets, the intimacy of recorded vocals on record, Argentinian buses, Ameri
drag-racing, customized Minis, and the design thinking behind the Austin Maxi an
Ford Capri. Underlying all of this criticism was a belief that Pop culture had to b
judged by germane standards. As he wrote in 1962: 'The addition of the wor
expendable [original italics] to the vocabulary of criticism was essential before Pop
could be faced honestly .. .'.117
Yet when it came to a possible Pop architecture, Banham had reservations in the
early I960s. In Motifin 1962 he categorically stated:'. .. there is no Pop architecture
speak of, and never will be in any ultimate sense, because buildings are too da
permanent'. 118 It seemed as if, because of his argument that architecture and indust
design were significantly different, the Smithsons' House of the Future had been a f
promise of an architecture autre. But by 1965 Archigram had burst onto the scen
Archigram's achievement, according to Banham in 1965, was in creating '. . . the fir
effective image of the architecture of technology since Buckminster Fuller's Geodes
domes first captivated the world fifteen years ago'. 119 The imagery Fuller created m
have been the by-product of his solutions but Archigram's combination of technolo
and imagery appealed to Banham in the same way as had Detroit cars in the I95
Playing 'science for kicks' the Archigram way implied the sort of open-mindednes
Banham adjudged was necessary in a fast-moving and ever-changing age. Banh
expanded on this point in I967 when discussing Archigram's design method:
The essence, and the value ... is in its running dialogue with current images immediately the
appear. It is the instant assignment of values, however temporary, to each new image, howe
puerile and improbable, the moment it swims into the architectural viewscreen, thatjustifies
fuss we all make over Archigram .. 120
Archigram provided the ideal vehicle for an architecture autre comprising 'science f
kicks', Pop culture, and full-blooded commitment.
Banham remained to his death partisan in his criticism. Any architect who seemed
be seeking an 'architecture of technology' - such as Archigram and, later, Norman
Foster or Richard Rogers - would receive enthusiastic support. Architecture th
captured the spirit of Futurism - such as 'Spaghetti junction' or War of the World
influenced hotel interiors - would be almost guaranteed a positive review. On
other hand, architecture redolent of academicism, classicism, conservatism or trad
tionalism would receive short shrift: hence Banham's dismissive reaction to Post-
Modernism (and especially Post-Modern Classicism) and neo-vernacular design. Pop
culture that expressed the spirit of the technological/expendable age - customized
Bedford vans or decorated ice-cream vans - would invariably be praised. It came as no
surprise that Banham was attracted to America and eventually settled there. He closely
identified with the Americans' positive attitude to technology and their dumping of the
European 'cultural baggage' of taste and classical aesthetics. As well as numerous

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articles - such as 'The Great Gizmo' (1965)121 - extolling the vir

attitude to design, he wrote two books which directly deal with a
'dream': Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971);
Deserta (1982). His last book, A Concrete Atlantis (1986), reassess
between American industrial building and European Modern arc
There is little doubt that Banham could justifiably be accused of
but he was neither troubled by the need for academic respectabi
concerned to hedge his bets lest he was proved wrong or mis
courage to acknowledge that '.. . I have changed my mind - the o
have a mind is to change it, otherwise you might as well be a rob
.. 122 This attitude enabled Banham to
... address current problems currently, and leave posterity to wait for the hardbacks and Ph.D
dissertations to appear later ... The misery (and splendour) of such writing, when it is exactly
target, is to be incomprehensible by the time the next issue comes out- the splendour comes,
at all, years and years later, when some flip, throw-away, smarty-pants, look-at-me paragrap
will prove to distill the essence of an epoch far better than subsequent scholarly studies ev
can. 123
Underlying all Banham's criticism was a commitment not to form nor even a system of
aesthetics, but to an attitude. And it was this attitude - derived from post-war art autre
with its undercurrent of anti-traditionalism and anti-convention- which was manifest
throughout Banham's quest for an architecture autre.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Fig. 4 Nigel Henderson

Fig. 5 John Maltby
Figs 7 and 9 Sam Lambert
Fig. 8 WilliamJ. Toomey
NOTES
I R. Banham, 'The New Brutalism', Architectural Review, December 1955, pp. 355-6
2 Michel Tapie, Un art autre (Paris, 1952).
3 Arshile Gorky quoted in Edward Lucie-Smith's Movements in Art Since 1945 (London
4 Willem de Kooning, 'Artists' Session, New York' (I951) in Herschel B. Chipp, T
(California, 1968), p. 565.
5 Willem de Kooning, 'The Renaissance and Order' (I950) in Chipp, op. cit., p. 556.
6 Jackson Pollock, 'Statement' (I95I) in Chipp, op. cit., p. 548.
7 Banham, The New Brutalism (London, 1966), p. 6i.
8 Dubuffet quoted in Germain Viatte, 'Primitivism and Art Brut' in Aftermath: Franc
Man, Barbican Art Gallery exhibition catalogue (1982), p. 74.
9 Ibid., p. 74.
io Jean Dubuffet, 'Rehabilitation de la boue' (1946), translated in Aftermath, op. cit., pp. 99-Ioo.
I Jean Dubuffet (I944), quoted in Viatte in Aftermath, p. 75.
I2 For the origins of the Independent Group see Whiteley, Pop Design - Modernism to Mod: Pop Theory and Design
in Britain, 1952-1972 (London, 1987), ch. 3.
13 See Fathers of Pop video by Miranda Films (London, I979).
14 Ibid.
I5 Banham, 'Futurism for Keeps', Arts (December 1960), p. 33.
i6 Banham, The New Brutalism, p. 62.
17 Banham, The New Brutalism, p. 356.
I8 Alison and Peter Smithson, 'Statement', Architectural Review (April 1954), pp. 274-75.

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19 See Banham, The New Brutalism, p. Io.

20 Alison and Peter Smithson, Without Rhetoric - An Architectural Aesthetic (London, 1973), p. 2.
2I Alison and Peter Smithson, 'Statement' (1954), p. 274.
22 Letter from Kenneth Scott to the Editor of Architectural Design reprinted in anon, 'The New Brutal
Architectural Review (April 1954), p. 274.
23 Ibid., p. 274.
24 Banham, 'School at Hunstanton, Norfolk', Architectural Review (September 1954), p. 152.
25 Ibid., p. I53.
26 See Banham 'The Style for theJob', New Statesman (14 February 1964), p. 26I, and his introduction toJam
Stirling, RIBA drawings collection (London, I974).
27 Colin Rowe, 'The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa: Palladio and Le Corbusier Compared', Architectural Re
(March 1947), pp. IOI-o4; Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (London, 1949).
28 Philip Johnson introductory statement in Banham, 'School at Hunstanton, Norfolk', p. 151.
29 Alison and Peter Smithson, 'Thoughts in Progress', Architectural Design (April 1957), p. I3.
30 Ibid., p. 113.
31 Alison and Peter Smithson, 'Cluster City: A New Shape for the Community', Architectural Review (Novem
I957), p. 334.
32 Ibid., p. 333.
34 Ibid., p. 359.
35 Ibid., p. 359.
36 Ibid., p. 357.
37 Ibid., p. 357.
38 Ibid., p. 357.
39 Ibid., p. 357.
40 Ibid., p. 361.
41 Ibid., p. 361.
42 Ibid., p. 361.
43 Ibid., p. 356.
45 Ibid., p. 68.
46 This is Tomorrow exhibition catalogue, Whitechapel Art Gallery (1956), n.p.
48 Ibid., p. 67.
49 Ibid., p. 67.
50 Ibid., p. 69.
51 This is Tomorrow.
52 Banham, 'Not Quite Painting or Sculpture Either', Architects'Journal (I6 August 1956), p. 219.
53 Alison and Peter Smithson, 'But Today We Collect Ads' Ark (November I956), p. 50.
54 Peter and Alison Smithson, 'Thoughts in Progress', p. I 3.
55 Alison and Peter Smithson, 'Statement' (1955), reprinted in Without Rhetoric - An Architectural Aesthetic
(London, 1973), p. 2.
56 Alison and Peter Smithson, 'But Today We Collect Ads', p. 50.
57 Two more projects by the Smithsons, both published in 1958, continued this theme - see Alison and Peter
Smithson, 'The Appliance House', Design (May I958), pp. 43-47; and 'The Future of Furniture', Architectural
Design (April 1958), pp. I75-8o. In the brief for these projects, the Smithsons set themselves the task that the
houses be mass-producible by advanced technological means; be capable of dense grouping; and 'contain a
glamour factor' (p. 117) so they would appeal to sophisticated taste.
58 Banham, 'Things to Come?', Design (June 1956), p. 25.
59 Banham in a letter to the author dated 12 August I980.
60 Banham, 'Machine Aesthetic', Architectural Review (April I955), p. 255.
6i Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (London, I960), p. 327.
62 Banham, 'Machine Aesthetic', p. 255.
63 Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, p. 328.
64 Banham, 'Vehicles of Desire', Art (September 1955), p. 3.
65 F. T. Marinetti, 'The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism' (1909), in Umbro Apollonio (ed.), Futurist
Manifestos (London, I973), p. 22.
66 Ibid., p. 2I.
67 For details on the relative contributions of Sant'Elia and Marinetti, see Ulrich Conrads (ed.), Programs and
Manifestos on 20th century Architecture (London, 1970), pp. 34-38.

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BANHAM AND OTHERNESS 22I
68 Sant'Elia, 'Manifesto on Futurist Architecture' (1914), in Futurist Manifestos, p. 34.

69 Ibid., p. 36.
70 Ibid., p. 38.
7I Banham, 'Sant'Elia', Architectural Review (May I955), p. 301.
72 Ibid., p. 30I.
73 Banham, 'Futurism and Modern Architecture', RIBA Journal (February 1957), pp. I29-39.
74 Banham, 'Futurism for Keeps', Arts (December 1960), pp. 33-39.
75 Ibid., p. 37.
76 Ibid., pp. 37-39.
77 Ibid., p. 39.
79 Ibid., p. 327.
80 Buckminster Fuller, 'Influences on my Work' (1955), in James Meller (ed.), The Buckminster Fuller Reader
(London, 1972), pp. 44-68.
81 Ibid., pp. 64-66.
82 Ibid., p. 64.
83 Marshall McLuhan, 'Buckminster Fuller Chronofile' (I967), in Meller, p. 30.
85 Philip Johnson, 'Where We Are At', Architectural Review (September 1960), p. I75.
86 Banham, 'Stocktaking', Architectural Review (February I960), p. 96.
87 Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, p. I 19.
88 Banham, 'Sant'Elia', p. 301.
go Lawrence Alloway, 'Technology and Sex in Science Fiction' Ark, no. 17 (I956), p. 20.
9I Banham, 'Home Thoughts from Abroad', Industrial Design (August 1963), p. 78.
92 Banham, J. M. Richards, Nikolaus Pevsner, Hugh Casson and H. de C. Hastings, 'Propositions', Architectural
Review (June I960), pp. 381-89.
93 Ibid., p. 382.
94 Banham, 'Stocktaking', p. 94.
95 Ibid., p. 94.
96 Banham (with A. C. Brothers, M. E. Drummond, R. Llewelyn-Davies), 'The Science Side', Architectural
Review (March 1960), p. 190.
97 Buckminster Fuller, 'The Architect as World Planner' (I96I), in Conrads, p. I80.
98 Hannes Meyer, 'Building' (1928), in Conrads, p. I20.
Ioo See Conrads, pp. 117-20.
IoI Ibid., p. 19.
102 Banham, 'Propositions', p. 388.
103 Ibid., p. 388.
104 Ibid., p. 388.
o05 Ibid., p. 388.
Io6 Ibid., p. 388.
107 Ibid., p. 388.
Io8 Ibid., p. 388.
o09 Ibid., p. 388.
IIo Ibid., p. 388.
i I Banham, Design By Choice (London, 1981), p. 7.
I 12 Banham, 'The History of the Immediate Future' RIBAJournal (May I96I), pp. 252-69.
113 Banham, 'What Architecture of Technology?', Architectural Review (February 1962), p. 97.
I 14 Banham quoted in Ann Ferebee, 'Home Thoughts From Abroad', Industrial Design (August 1963), p. 78.
15 Banham, 'A Home is not a House' (1965), reprinted in Architectural Design (January 1969), p. 45.
II6 Banham, The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment (London, 1969), p. 265.
II7 Banham, 'Who is this Pop?', Motif, no. io (1962/3), p. 12.
II8 Ibid., p. 52.
119 Banham, 'A Clip-on Architecture', Design Quarterly, no. 63 (1965), p. 30.
I20 Banham, review of Peter Cook's Architecture, Action and Plan, Architectural Design (August I967), p. 352.
121 Banham, 'The Great Gizmo', Industrial Design (September I965), pp. 49-59.
122 Banham, Design by Choice, p. 7.
123 Ibid., p. 7.

111.187.76.22 on Tue, 09 May 2023 15:13:49 +00:00

Banham and 'Otherness': Reyner Banham (1922-1988) and His Quest For An Architecture Autre

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Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1568555

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alternative to the conventional thinking and operational lores that, in

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The second art autre tributary was also to be found in

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Dubuffet's own work exemplified the art brut anti-aesthetic (Fig.

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Fig. 2 Jean Dubuffet, Gymnosophy, 1950, oil on canvas

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Fig. 3 Eduardo Paolozzi, Head, 1953,

rough-hewn and primitive Dubuffet-inspired heads and figures

history is assured by its contribution to the ensuing interest in American popular

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and communication theories. Art autre remained an undercurrent, sometimes surfac

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Fig. 4 Parallel of Life and Art exhibition, ICA, London, 1953

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Setting aside the inconsistencies of Moholy-Nagy's use of materials - he is presum

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The chief characteristics of the New Brutalism were summarized b

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source of aesthetic otherness

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culture in 1956: the exhibit by Richard Ham

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It is not hard to appreciate the sense of identification the sympathizers with

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Fig. ii Buckminster Fuller, the Dymaxion Deployment Unit, 1944

technology to architectural problems. It rejected a radical, other

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whereas the latter often produced a '. . collection of rather

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The importance attached by Banham to the image of modernity

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