That's Brutal, What's Modern

In That's Brutal, What's Modern: The Smithsons, Banham, and the Mies-Image, Mark Linder offers a new understanding of New Brutalism as a consequential, generative, and still pertinent episode in the history of imaging practices in architecture. His core thesis is that the most distinct identity and enduring influence of New Brutalism resides in Alison and Peter Smithson’s fitful and evolving fifty-year fascination with the imaging potential they found in the work of Mies van der Rohe.

In four chapters and around 50 image arrays, the book progresses from historical research to theoretical speculations on the legacy and potential of the Smithsons’ New Brutalism and their pursuit of the “Mies-Image.” The chapters situate New Brutalism in the context of emerging theories, practices, and cultures of imaging in postwar Britain, trace the Smithsons’ imaging practices and the appearances of the Mies-Image as it evolves in their projects and publications over five decades, reconsider Reyner Banham's evaluations of Mies and his role in New Brutalism, and explore imaging theory and its potential to re-evaluate the significance of New Brutalism.

This book will appeal to a broad audience among architects, students of architecture, and those with a serious interest in modernist and contemporary architecture, but also among scholars in multiple academic fields including architectural and art history, visual studies, media studies, and photography.