Care of Brutalism: Repair as an architectural practice

Abstract

Beyond its unexcused nature, the brutalist movement is fascinating. Despite their assertive force and radically intimidating, these buildings seem to embody a certain social optimism. For many of us, Brutalism remains associated with a corrupt political vision, its social failures, and a prideful idealism. Even before this architecture anchors themselves in a collective consciousness, several generations saw it neglected, misinterpreted, and often demolished. Today the construction sector tends to replace rather than repair and unwanted buildings often slip into disuse and decay, weakening an already fragile cultural heritage. In a system where the pressure to dismiss the issue of revaluation is intensifying, it is generating missed opportunities and losses of building. It is our duty to improve our ability to perceive the potential of existing elements, to listen to them, to decipher them and to adapt to the architectural constraints of the site. This research explores the architectural ethics of Hornsbruksgatan 4, a 1960s reinforced concrete building located in Stockholm. While its future is currently being questioned, with a consideration for demolition the project attempts to discern the expressive capacities of reinforced concrete, its tensions and the pathologies that affect it through a diagnosis of its existing state. The aim is to understand how historical layers can continue to generate curiosity and interest for its potential users. The approach seeks to repair and restore a spatial potential that has been untapped for almost ten years, by reinforcing, redefining, and ennobling its brutalist identity. The result proposes a subtle rehabilitation of the building: careful surface treatment, a redefinition of a public and cultural program and minimal interventions that strengths its pre-existing link within its urban context. By making visible the tensions between the existing, the transformed and the repaired, this approach demonstrates how minimal interventions can offer a credible alternative to demolition. It argues how attentive and materially grounded interventions can make legible a continuous evolution of Hornsbruksgatan 4 and recognizes a potential living into 1960s existing structures.