What of the movement
behind the concrete?
""New brutalism" was a term coined by two British architects,
Alison and Peter Smithson, and a British critic, Peter Reyner Banham. They set
out to provoke, and they succeeded. Like futuristic fortresses, they had their
raw concrete left exposed, to be weathered by the wind and rain, like a cliff
face or a castle wall. Sheffield's Park Hill and Hyde Park estates, the Smithsons'
Robin Hood Gardens in the East End, even Hugh Casson's Elephant House at London
Zoo - these were the brave new landmarks of the socialist Sixties and Seventies.
But by the time the Barbican opened in 1982, the political and aesthetic tide
had turned."
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There's a missing
Smithson from the dynamic of this lost future: Robert Smithson, the archaeologist
of non-place. Digger, mirrorman, potential candidate for Ballards' terminal beach,
stumbling exhausted beneath the wash of a helicopters' blades to the very end
of his Spiral Jetty. I like to imagine him among the lost monuments of the New
Town, skirting the air vents and ramps of the late summer rooftops and car parks.
In a sense, Cumbernauld is the lost Land Art project, its Oppenheim Holt or deMaria
forever anonymous.
This receding
future has left surprisingly few traces in architectural discourse and in
the major archives.With
the demise of the local development corporation, a few idealised sketches and
an architectural award landed up in the Royal Incorporation of Architects
in
Scotland archive. This in turn is administered by the Royal Commission on Ancient
and Historical Monuments of Scotland. Reeking of acronyms, stripped of contemporary
context, the remaining images of this parallel future lie peacefully among
the surveys of Pictish carving and vanished Georgian mansions. Additional
photography
for RCAHMS has taken place sporadically, coinciding with another partial removal
of a decaying structure; the appearance of some feature or other in a photograph
almost guarantees its erasure in the real world.
I wanted to find out more about the motivations ideals and constraints which
produced the building we see today, as well as the town it could have been.Discussions
with senior planners, architects, the town artist and others reveal a human
story of ambition, economic stringency, teamwork and discovery.