Brutalist architecture remains London’s most futuristic built environment

Evidence

I think that the defeat of modernism in architecture, as described by Owen Hatherley in his book Militant Modernism, is part of the picture I’m describing. Just consider a city like London: the most futuristic parts of the city are the brutalist ones. You go to the Barbican Centre and you spontaneously think about the future, precisely because of the modernism of the buildings. Fashion is another example: it seems to be stuck, they’re cyclically re-modernising old styles. It’s not even fashion as it used to be. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2310

Categorization

• CANDY: The point that the Barbican, a 1970s brutalist complex, still reads as the future of London is a striking conversational fact.
• XREF: connects to: London is a palimpsest city where obsolete eras remain physically present — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 341

Broader Connections

• London is a palimpsest city where obsolete eras remain physically present #complicates (0.72) — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 341