Brutal Destruction
Chris Grimley
OverUnder
2018

“Monstrosity” appears to be a favorite word for those who wish to bully and belittle architecture into obscurity and, in the more alarming cases, onto a demolition list. We need not look hard to remind ourselves that the term has been used by previous generations to describe Victorian architecture, French Second Empire buildings, and many other styles seen as outmoded within a half-generation of their heyday. Our contempt for the destruction that followed should give us pause in today’s rush to judge the concrete buildings of the mid-twentieth century.

Suspended between life and death, these buildings remind us of the power that architecture can possess upon its inception, but also of the forces that conspire against it once it is judged to have become old, out-of-shape, obsolete, or ugly. If there is a lesson in seeing concrete masterworks disfigured and demo- lished, we do not believe it lies in exposing the hubris of the generation that created them. Rather, the current wave of destruction says more about our own pessimism, the weakness of our potential building legacy, and our lack of patience in finding ways to supersede the cycle of ugliness and make these monstrosities our own.

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