That's Brutal, What's Modern?: The Smithsons, Banham, and the Mies-Image repositions New Brutalism not as a style or an ethic but as a fifty-year imaging practice — tracing how Alison and Peter Smithson drew on the architecture of Mies van der Rohe to generate a post-photographic visual intelligence.
About This Book
Mark Linder's argument is precise and revisionary: the Smithsons' sustained engagement with Mies was not stylistic borrowing but an evolving fascination with what he calls the "Mies-Image" — a generative resource for architectural representation and cognition. Moving across six chapters and approximately forty image arrays, the book situates New Brutalism within the emerging imaging cultures of postwar Britain, reconsiders Reyner Banham's assessments of Mies and his contested role in the movement, and develops an imaging theory capable of re-evaluating Brutalism's historical and contemporary significance. For historians, theorists, and practitioners interested in architectural representation and postwar British architecture, this is a genuinely original reframing of familiar material.
Key Features
- 304 pages of historical research, theoretical argument, and approximately forty arrays of comparative architectural images
- Author: Mark Linder
- Examines the complete body of Alison and Peter Smithson's work across five decades
- Published by Park Books, ISBN 9783038604013
What You'll Discover
- How the Smithsons transformed their engagement with Mies van der Rohe's architecture into a sustained and evolving imaging practice across projects and publications over fifty years
- The way New Brutalism anticipated post-photographic modes of cognition and visual intelligence that remain central to architectural imagination today
- Reyner Banham's evaluations of Mies reconsidered — and his role in shaping, or complicating, the New Brutalism narrative re-examined
- A theoretical framework for imaging that reinterprets the historical legacy of New Brutalism and opens it to contemporary critical application
About the Author
Mark Linder is the author of this study of New Brutalism, imaging theory, and the Smithsons' fifty-year engagement with the work of Mies van der Rohe. [Details available upon request]
Specifications
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 304
- Dimensions: 17 x 24 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783038604013
- Publisher: Park Books
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architectural historians and theorists, scholars of postwar British architecture, researchers working on representation and imaging, and practitioners with a serious interest in Brutalism, the Smithsons, or the legacy of Mies van der Rohe.