The critic Reyner Banham named and defined Brutalism, and later wrote the first history of architecture told through its services (heating, lighting, ventilation), which prepared the ground for High-Tech.
Banham’s essay in the Architectural Review of December 1955 gave three marks of the “New Brutalism” of Alison and Peter Smithson and their circle: the building should be memorable as an image; its structure should be clearly shown; and its materials should be valued for their own qualities, “as found”. His book of 1966 traced how the ethic became an international style of exposed concrete.
The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment (1969) argued that the history of architecture had ignored the machines that make buildings habitable. Banham showed how ducts, pipes and plant had been hidden in the walls and ceilings of modern buildings, and admired those designers who gave services an architectural presence, a line of thought that High-Tech architects carried to its conclusion.
The book, part by part
I The New Brutalism
Image, exhibited structure, materials as found.
II The Well-Tempered Environment
Architecture as the management of heat, light and air; services given form.
Rules: Put the services outside, and show them · Column-free floors for any use