eco-Brut | Nowhere Grotesk 

Earlier this week I was thinking, "gee, that Grotesk channel was really cool! Shame they ain't posted anything in a while" - this was a lovely Sunday morning surprise.

This channel is quickly becoming one of my favorite places on the internet for Social Ecology ideas and looks at anarchist principles found basically all over the place! The execution is great too, one can really tell how much effort goes in to these works in terms of research, writing, and visual styles!

The anti-brutalist doctrine always seems to be "if we deliberately do it wrong, it doesn't work, therefore it's bad." Not that they're ever willing to let the same standards be applied to their own preferred styles of building, of course. Unfortunately, Peter Smithson seems (based on a few interviews) to have bought into the "our great vision failed because poor people are bad" line.

Oh neat! I was actually thinking about your channel like yesterday and you posted today! Sweet!

Its a shame Brutal just has solely negative connotations. A college in my city has imposing brutalist architecture that was built primarily in the 60s when student riots were a common fear, brutalism was directly used to suppress students by preventing natural spaces for congregation. But I've always had a strange relationship with brutalism. My dad worked as a civil servant in a giant, riveted concrete cube and my mum worked in a school built in the 80s, with weird half-floors and "gardens" that were primarily made to be viewed through a window, surrounded by walls. As a child visiting those places they were so bizarre but captivating. I don't know if I'll ever unpack what's so alluring about the aesthetic. It sort of feels "above us"? Maybe its no wonder the Tesseract cube building is brutalist, the style has this feeling that its something bigger than we can understand but its graciously let us experience what little we could know. Its otherworldly but humbling. Also are you enjoying the new Animal Crossing update?

i always thought brutalism as it's known in the wider world was beautiful architecture. it's a shame that concrete is so terrible for the environment. that said, it's always been a fact that we should be looking to the original caretakers of our land for how to proceed, as they are the people who have been building for their climates and environments with local materials for thousands of years. it's astonishing to me that more people don't realize that. it seems so obvious.

i am currently an environmental science student and this really renewed my interest in both urban planning as well as indigenous architecture!! Thank you for making me want to learn

turns out i love new brutalism, Actually thank you for bringing us this topic, I'd heard the very basics of what brutalism originally was and gained an appreciation for it, but didn't research it I've only watched your animal crossing series and this vid, but I both love your vibes and the topics you cover (that feel to be in the same vein but I can't really describe why currently. maybe a more gentle, humble hope?) edit: also streets in the sky... my gods, I love these architects and their philosophy. I like worldbuilding for fun and creative projects, so 👀👀👀

Fascinating as always! I love how you re-incorporated the Smithson quote, and now I finally know why all the solarpunk pictures I see never have pedestrians in them. Thanks for another video ❤

Tumblr is still a thing but shhhhh, don't tell anyone. It's actually kinda pleasant with the kind of people that moved to twitter no longer there. Only social media site that shows you all of the posts from everyone you follow in chronological order and doesn't mine your information to advertise to you (instead you get bizarre, completely unrelated ads like in the internet days of old) - it's so nice to not be subject to an ALGORITHM.

I've worked on a couple of apartment buildings that are very, if not quite brutalist, use very industrial features like bare concrete walls, lots of metal, exposed beans. It was quite depressing actually, seemed like a very lazy and cheap way of building apartments that were going to sell for $800,000 apiece. Hearing you talk about how this sort of style was ridiculed when used in public housing projects, then seeing it in these "flash" new buildings is just... it really sucks.

Here's my tribute to the algorithm + as someone who lives near it, I enjoyed your pronunciation of Norfolk.

i adore this channel

You're channel is awesome, please keep going!

this perfectly explains my love hate relationship with brutalism ha. im definitely hit by awe whenever i find myself in front of this architecture, but the issues are countless. at this point eco brutalism is more a meme than an applicable concept, but i really like what you propose as an alternative. i've been reading a lot about regenerative agriculture lately so this hits the spot! if i can add a piece of context, brutalist projects like les étoiles in france have also been instrumental in further segregating poor populations of colour from the rest of society. the post war housing boom was partly caused by the influx of immigrant populations (coming from the colonial empire) being brought in to work in subpar and sometimes unsanitary conditions. there is a definite element of race and racism and xenophobia that affects our perception of brutalism. to this day the ways we talk about brutalist housing are laden with racist dogwhistles. A former french president actually complained about "the noise and smell" in those types of housings... not to mention the over policing of those areas. a lot of these issues culminated in explosive riots in the 2005 after two teenagers died while trying to escape the police. all of these questions still structure french public life unfortunately, it's pretty fascinating!

I recently learned about eco-brutalism (turns out it’s just brutalism though) an am now making an art project largely inspired by it. I found your video very useful and educational, right what I need to start my research from. Thank you very much, I understand that you’ve done a lot of work to make this essay and it definitely paid off! Amazing!

fascinating video, but (in my complete ignorance) my hot take is that the Smithsons and any other architects thinking about how they could centre the community in a disunited social class whose visibility and mobility they wanted to promote and improve, did not think very hard about how completely horrible it is living on top of and directly next to people you don't get given the time under capitalism to get to know or depend on, and in many cases very quickly grow to resent. Perhaps this speaks more to my personality but I can't understand why urban planners need us to live on top of one another (I mean I know why - it's cost saving, doubles as stressor to stop political organising, and allows a centralised pool of labour for industry centres) and I think it was supremely naive for architects who had the ability to go to college to learn these skills to not only not think or care what it was like living on top of one another, but also why, if they were so socially inclined, they thought they should decide how workers should live rather than workers themselves... yes I know the workers wouldn't have the option to build their own houses or own land... I appreciate all your criticisms in the video and I think you were bound to have conservatives and neoliberal governments look at these tower blocks and very quickly decide they could be lumped into broken window theory, so halted investment and social support. In the US the highways building programme allowed those with the finances to exodus the city and move into white-picket fence detached housing whilst the innercity residents remained unable to relocate and their housing became tarred with the label as urban crime hotspots. Now that the 'poors' have been moved out of course private develops advertise the properties as coworking spaces and expensive flats and offices. And my god in the cold weather concrete and beams and so on must be so incredibly cold for the people there to have to endure. I know the Barbican well, and my impression, given its colocation with Moorgate, is that many rich people live there, or older ones who have stayed there from when they moved in originally, and although the walkways and gardens are attractive and useful, because of capitalism's tyranny of the clock, residents and those on the skywalk thoroughfare do not seem to gather and mingle, and, perhaps I'm being extremely harsh here, I feel like if the architects had been a little more aware of how capitalism and exploitation pervade society and demand that we atomise ourselves to serve their interests, they would have realised that not many people - if any - would be using their creation as intended. Definitely feel like the #eco-brutalism is a very surface-level take on the reclamation of concrete spaces with greenery without any real depth to it. Like for me it buys into a post-apocalypse, slightly eco-fascist/fatalist aesthetic where nothing can be done about the calamity of collapse, only for survivors to look at how spaces have been automatically reclaimed by nature, where the human does not live, work, or function, but merely observes like an alien or an animal... and that's just not how it's going to be - people will have to rebuild and use their environment to do so..., and I think trying to look at the aesthetic is if it will be this kind of post-apocalypse green utopia, is kind of horrifying... but I might be reading too much into it. Thanks for a great video!

The content of the essay was really interesting, and I appreciated how many subtle, intentional production decisions helped make it even more effective. We're not just panning across exemplary images, but across those images artfully and intentionally arranged and juxtaposed. We're not just benefitting from an accessible, straightforward talking-head presentation from Ilya, but from expressive and subtle acting that gives the text appropriate editorial heft when, say, talking about Thatcher's racist/classist nonsense. I'm really enjoying this channel, and appreciate the time you're taking between posts to make these videos something conceptually and visually special.

love this video

coming back to say I think about this video a lot and this topic in general, now. i sincerely look forward to anything else you plan on releasing in the future (if anything!)

French does what's called a liaison between an s at the end of a leading word and a vowel at the start of the next. So it would actually the pronunciation of les étoiles would be "lay zaytwahl". Excellent video and even better hair! Also, I see that Gantz anthology. Nice!

wish you'd upload more, love what i've seen of ya so far. was happy to find you from thoughtslime

yay theyre back

Great video! It helped a lot to put in focus some ideas/ feelings that floated in my head about sketchy aspects of the brutalist aesthetic that people kind of forget (the absence of people, monumentality for the sake of it) and that are not unique to it, seeing the monstrosities that some ~starchitects~ put out ;3; Also love that the potted plants kind of fused with your head at some moments because of the green contrasting with the gray colour scheme (my myopia says hi!), haha. (Harold and the mutfruit bonsai came to mind) Also, thanks for: • having subtitles; as a non-native english reader/listener, they help a lot! • mentioning the pueblans/Çatahüyük, they both are super fascinating as means to rethink how we organize and move about cities and how we think about moving inside them, with straight roads not being a given and all!

This was such a rollercoaster. I just found out about brutalism (seen the buildings but never heard about the architectural style/idea behind it) and tried to find out more about. This video took me on a journey from the beginnings, the ideas to the existing architecture, problems and lastly to the potential. This was way better than what I hoped the video would be

you are doing great work here! greetings from chile :)

Interesting concepts, great video

I found this video looking for a style known as "Organic Brutalism", which sounds like what you were describing in the last chapter. It uses organic materials like wood in its construction, and it leaves it exposed. It tends to keep to the modern/contemporary aesthetics that both traditional and eco-brutalism have.

I'm generally approving of social media phenomenon like this when they have an eye towards a more utopian society, imperfect as these phenomenon may be. I approve, mainly, because it opens conversation that leads to a better society. Realistically the people who share eco-brut stuff online aren't truly attached to the concrete itself, but the merging of urban and ecological spaces. So the line from eco-brutalism to something better is a short one. This essay definitely starts to draw that line. Short asides, stuff like this makes me so optimistic man. I love having conversations that are actually about how to make good happen rather than just, you know, stopping bad from happening.

I love the fact that you explain that Brutalism was never meant to be brutal but Utopian. Next time I try to explain this I 'll show your video. Thank you.

The Videos that you two produced so far have been great. I came back multiple times to rewatch all of them already and just gotta ask, are there perhaps more in The works or plannend? Much love

This was so fascinating! Thanks for doing all this research and making a video about this!

Love this channel so much! I hope you are still at it!

love your channel so much! extremely cozy vibes

i was thinking abt ur videos just the other day! fantastic as always, this was super informative and interesting! thank u for all your hard work

another banger. my current fav video essayist on YT

Hope to continue to see more videos! Returning to this one because it's such a fascinating topic

Excellent video! Thanks so much for putting this out :)

Thank goodness this channel is still alive! Thank you for all the great work!

Love this channel and everything about it!

thank you. please do keep making videos on topics related to social ecology

I always love coming back to these videos

In my own informal study of architecture as a hobbyist, for me, the solution points not toward a utopian urbanism, but a deliberate and concerted move toward de-urbanization, and creating diversely engineered micro-cities, based on and inspired by some of the most functional examples that I can think of - the villages of my native New England, the communes and colonies of the Shakers (United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing), and New Urbanist developments such as Seaside, in Florida, Tornagrain, near Inverness, or Poundbury in Dorset.

this was the ultimate gem of a video to find thank you so much

I really cant wait untill this blows up as much as it should. Great work as always

this is really great content, thanks so much and keep at it!

Nice video. Worked at the embarcadero center in sf a nice example of brutalist architecture.

I finally got the time to devote to watching this video it’s really good. I enjoy everything you’ve put out I can’t wait for the next video.

this lighting setuf works 1000times better than videos from before. nice content.

haha watching this on lunch break from university, whilst currently sat in my student flat in parkhill. Nice to see it pop up

I didn't know I needed this video. Thank you very much, this was very well written.

Fascinating stuff! Have a sub, I'm look forward to more of your videos!

This video is so much better than the video about eco-brutalism with 400k views I watched lately

Very interesting and thoughtful. The RU-vid algorithm in all its wisdom suggested this video to me and I clicked on it at a whim, and it has very much been worth it since the topic and discussion strongly resonate with me. Although once I was finished I was hoping to be able to dive into a rich back catalog of equally thoughtful videos - only to discover that there are only a tiny handful of them and this has been the most recent contribution to your channel. I'm sure you have your reasons for not having produced further works and that is to be respected. But I would like you to know that should you consider putting out additional discussions of social ecological aspects I for one would very much be looking forward to them. :)

Great video, I learned a lot!

Another banger video, I'm really happy you talked about Habitat 67 because it's one of my favorite pieces of architecture aesthetically and in concept. The attempt of solving the urban housing population problem while giving the residents quality apartments is a beautiful idea ruined by the capitalist commodification of housing. I didn't consider the material aspect of it though! Really informative and important that the materials used aren't cheap and should be built to last. But again another banger, good shit!

Really fascinating!

This is very interesting! Thanks for making this video!

great video!

Great video!

Thank you. I really enjoyed this doc. Especially the criticism of the superficial misappropriation of the Smithson's conceptual intentions. inspiring

eco-brutalism is often popular because younger generations that have gone through waves of sickness and social isolation. we often gravitate towards it because it resembles apocalypse, and some gen-z can see the interest in it. we don't like it because of the greenery (although, that's nice), we like it because it shows that the world will keep on moving after humans die out. i like the look of eco-brutalism, even though i am aware of the costs on nature. i really hope that we can revamp the look in order to make it kinder on the environment! thank you for the video!

This is fascinating!

Great video, extremely well researched and put together as always. Another thing to add about concrete being awful; it’s nowhere as durable as we thought. When reinforced concrete took over as a structural material, it was assumed that it was effectively permanent. We now know that reinforced concrete actually needs a lot of maintenance, otherwise it fails quickly. So aside from being incredibly bad for the environment, it doesn’t last as long as we’d hoped.

No way, Park Hill Flats Sheffield getting a shout out!

Thank you for every thing

Thank you for leading the video with the utopian section. It helps my emotional energy. To start positive, see the morals and goals, then get into the critique

would you consider doing podcasts on spotify? Id love to hear more about this

Let's go new vid

Cities could be so so so much nicer...

I really like your videos, hoping you have the time/ability to make more comrade.

I think it's appealing as an Instagram picture because it's like a reclaiming of the urban buildings by nature. It's like the plants have taken over again!

Wohnpark Alterlaa is old but I just love all the planters.

I like eco-brutalism in the sense that I have a fascination with nature reclaiming what once belonged to man. Urban, unnatural structures encompassed in moss and jungle vegetation. A parabolic radio antenna lined with greenery and removed from its original purpose. While many might jump to a post apocalyptic view when imagining this, I do imagine a more solarpunk reclamation of what was once a danger to the environment. Taking what already exists and filling it with new life, new purpose. But the idea that many have in reference to eco-brutalism, the idea that buildings are to be constructed and furnished with trees is idiotic at best harmful at worst. I think I first discovered the sensation I feel when viewing eco-brutalist architecture twice in my life. Once, while watching the show Lost. Second, when exploring a rusty, overgrown parabolic antenna in the Hayward hills in California.

Really enjoyed the video. The Smithson's don't get the credit they're due. The book "Urban Structuring, studies of Alison and Peter Smithson" outlines more of the Smithson's social ideologies of urban planning. Well worth a read. Some of their ideas for Haupstadt Berlin were very interesting.

i love this video!! the graphic design sense of it all....... im a huge fan of brutalism uwu

Thank you*

Hell yeah.

SUPER MEGA GOOD ⭐☀️🍀

can you please give me insight on where you extracted your photos from for this video please

Do you have any email that people can reach out to for cooperation? I would absolutely love to translate your subtitles!

Babe wake up new Grotesk video dropped 💚

Bangladesh has a few examples of brutalism done right. Look at parliament building of Bangladesh or Nagar bhaban Dhaka south. Both beautiful buildings.

Thoroughly off-topic, but is there some significance to displaying your copy of Dune in a couple of your videos? I read it once, and I found it as brazenly imperialist as the world in A Song of Ice and Fire. You ever thought about making a video explaining why you like it?

Early brutalist stuff look like the inside of a Chipotle.

I love you..

You want a liaison between the s in "Les" and the following vowel, so it sounds more like "layzayTWALL""

"When Tumblr was still a thing", they said _meanwhile, on tumblr:_

If people were educated enough to take architecture into their own hands they wouldn't need central planning.

💛💚👍🏼👍🏼💚💛

18:54 "[Habitat 67] meant to be an example of affordable housing for the future, great length were taken to reduce costs" - Habitat 67 never had a chance of being affordable. It was a technology demonstrator. Inherently expensive. More than that, it is exactly the kind if Brutalism that's oversized and uses beams 3 times of what's necessary, as they say. The structure is the typical architect wet dream but engineering and construction nightmare. Drives up design and logistics costs, uses more labor and materials than necessary. Add to this that it was a prototype for a completely new type of building for the builders, who had to figure out how to levitate each part to its place. If they've asked the Eastern Europeans at the time they could have told them that while pre-fabricated housing projects were faster to build than in-situ ones, they were not cheaper even at scale. And Habitat 67 never had a chance of taking advantage of the economics of scale. I don't know what the Canadian Gov. did or didn't "mangle" with the finances, but contractors charge extra for unforeseen expenses. Or, if they have to make a lump sum deal on such a difficult project then they add 50-100% to the calculated costs and terminate the contract if it still goes over budget. If that's all that happened then nobody mangled anything with the finances. This happens everywhere, all the time when architects are left without supervision to design stupid shit. 19:54 "Habitat 67 also had a vast number of issues as a result of its concrete construction" ... Oh come on... Concrete doesn't cause these problems, shitty design do. Otherwise every building in the world would have these issues. 20:13 "Raw concrete is terrible ecologically" ... The construction industry in general is. We just happen to mostly use concrete atm... I'm not sure if replacing cement would be a net CO2 win. Building things that last would be best for the environment and no building material is more durable than reinforced concrete. 20:25 "Concrete causes surface run-offs"... Yeah, concrete roads/sidewalks/parking lots do. That's where the water picks up stuff like gasoline too. Not in concrete buildings. 20:50 "Concrete dust [...] is a major air pollutant" ... It's literally just dust. 20:59 "Structures built out of concrete can be mildly radioactive" ... Not only can be, most definitely are. Just like bricks, tiles, drywall, and anything else that comes from Earth's crust. 27:00 "concrete isn't great and raw concrete is particularly bad" ... Concrete and raw concrete are the same thing. Raw just means it's not covered, plastered, painted etc.

Is this channel dead?

"when Tumblr was a thing" Quit telling everyone we're dead! :P

how about "eco-rootalism"? XD

Im the 666 likers

Ilya: they/them Jesus Christ 🙄🙄🙄

Great show. (The pronoun announcement is unnecessary/pretentious) But I enjoyed the show nevertheless. D.A., J.D., NYC