Book reviews: Modernist Scotland by Bruce Peter | Brutal Scotland by Simon Phipps
Two new books celebrate and critique some of Scotland’s most important post-war architecture, writes Stuart Kelly
You might think that these are two books about a much-maligned and misunderstood architectural movement, one more an art book and the other more academic, but you would be wrong. These are ghost stories. Given the ructions, shenanigans and conniptions at Historical Environment Scotland it is just as well that there are private photographers and writers – as well as The Modernist Society, a necessary counterbalance to institutions like the Cockburn Society – who can catalogue, critique and commemorate some of the most important features of post-war architecture in this country.
“Brutalism” as a word conjures synonyms such as barbaric, remorseless, monstrous, uncivilised, pitiless, harsh and grim. It derives from the term “béton brut” – “raw concrete”, a term associated primarily with Le Corbusier and analogous to “art brut” – the raw or naïve art produced by the untrained and incarcerated, promoted by Dubuffet in the same period. In both cases, the more aesthetic term “unpolished” is perhaps more neutral. But the inadvertent association of brutalist architecture with something primarily inhumane would prove unfortunately indelible.
Bruce Peter’s book, the more academic of the two, subtitles the period of Modernism or Brutalism as 1950-1980. I feel the intellectual and cultural climate of the period might better be expressed as 1945 to 1979, that is, from the end of the Second World War to the election of Margaret Thatcher. The Zeitgeist of the age was the creation of the NHS and the Welfare State, and the rise in comprehensive education, as well as the foundation of new colleges, universities and the Open University. In addition to the “new towns” – Cumbernauld, East Kilbride, Glenrothes, Livingston and Irvine – there were new estates grafted on to old towns: in the Scottish Borders, where I grew up and indeed lived in one of them, there was Langlee in Galashiels, Bannerfield in Selkirk, and Burnfoot in Hawick. In 1962-5 we saw both the Beeching cuts to the rail network and the radical overhaul that was the Second Vatican Council, both of which had a direct bearing on architecture. It was, above all and this cannot be stressed enough, a time of optimism. The Space Race! Nuclear Power (the horror of Hiroshima tamed for your toaster)! Television! Brutalism was the stage set for revolutions from Dundee and Dagenham to Detroit and Donetsk. As Alan Reiach, one of the foundational figures in these books wrote, “Here is a new Scotland to be built”.
The scale of building was transformational and unprecedented. It is not, however, a uniform story. An architect like Basil Spence, for example, created “tempered” Brutalist works such as Fishermen’s Cottages in Victoria Place, Dunbar, and 67-71 Canongate, which used vernacular and traditional elements alongside the stark geometries. His Mortonhall crematorium probably has earned the love of those who have used it over the years. By contrast, there was an almost distasteful glee when his more uncompromising Queen Elizabeth Square flats in Glasgow were dynamited in 1993. It is why I call these books “ghost stories”. Time and again, the images relate to places that are now completely vanished. St Peter’s Seminary, that Mecca for urban exploration, at least still exists, albeit in dereliction and ruin. These books are elegies to an aborted future.
St Peter’s is only one of the works here by Isi Metzstein, whose work on places of worship shows the strengths of Brutalism. These buildings combine a certain cyclopean grandeur with very effective use of light and suspension to invoke a form of contemporary sublime. That said, it was one of Reiach’s churches – St Mungo’s, Cumbernauld – with its floating pyramidal spire that moved me most: partly for itself, partly because I was baptised there, and partly because I delayed revisiting and it was burnt down this year.
Phipp’s images, in black and white, tend to foreground the building, especially effectively for buildings like the Dollan Aqua Centre in East Kilbride, looking for all the world like the tentacular HQ of the Lex Luthor’s Legion of Doom. The photographs are in colour in Peter’s volume, which gives more of a sense of the buildings in their environments and in use (“machines for living” as Le Corbusier said). It also allows for more attention to things like interior decoration, carpeting, artworks (John Shanks Angus and James Davidson & Son’s Airdrie Working Men’s Club has an astonishingly vibrant mural). There are fascinating nuggets of social history, such as Crathie Court, Glasgow, the first public housing in Glasgow higher than a tenement (so a precursor of the notorious high-rises). The flats had “bed alcoves” rather than separate bedrooms, and would only accommodate employed women without children. It’s a detail that reveals much about new freedoms wrapped in old prejudices.
I know I shall pore over these books a great deal more, and seek out the buildings where they have been spared. They are an intrinsic, and even noble, part of Scotland’s 20th century history, and the combination of philistinism, the wrecking ball, and insensitive tweaks are a disservice. Peter writes “Architecture of all kinds, including that of the Modern Movement, tends to reveal its beauty when it is loved”. Perhaps. But stand under Gala Fairydean Football Stadium or Western General Nuffield Unit and tell me you don’t feel at least awe. If you need more convincing there is one modern or brutal design we all love: the QE2, now floating off Dubai rather than Leith.
Modernist Scotland, by Bruce Peter, The Modernist Society, £48; Brutal Scotland, by Simon Phipps, Duckworth, £30
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