Reading: Matching Features: Question 10

Four Twentieth-Century Movements That Redefined the Building

The twentieth century produced a series of architectural movements that each reacted, in different ways, to industrial change, the aftermath of war, or the perceived blandness of an increasingly uniform international style. Four such movements, though they overlapped in time, pursued strikingly different visions of what a building, and a city, should look like.

Brutalism, which flourished from the 1950s to the 1970s, took its name not from the word "brutal" but from the French phrase for raw concrete, béton brut, the material its architects left exposed and unfinished rather than concealed behind a decorative facade. Public housing blocks, university campuses and civic buildings built in this style typically favour massive, blocky forms, small irregular window openings, and a visible expression of a building's structural function on its exterior.

Streamline Moderne emerged in the 1930s, drawing its visual vocabulary directly from the aerodynamic curves being developed for aircraft, ocean liners and automobiles of the era. Buildings in this style favour smooth, rounded corners in place of sharp right angles, horizontal bands that wrap continuously around a facade to suggest forward motion, and porthole-shaped windows borrowed from ship design, giving structures as static as a cinema or a diner the visual impression of speed.

Metabolism developed in Japan from 1960 onward, proposing that buildings, and even whole cities, should be designed like living organisms, capable of growth and renewal through the replacement of individual parts rather than the demolition of the whole structure. Its signature projects consist of small, mass-produced capsule units that clip onto a permanent central core, so an individual capsule could, in theory, be unbolted and replaced every few decades without disturbing the surrounding structure.

Critical Regionalism arose in the late 1970s as a deliberate reaction against increasingly identical glass towers appearing in cities worldwide, arguing a building should respond to the specific climate, light and building traditions of its site rather than follow a single placeless formula. Its practitioners favour local materials, natural ventilation suited to the regional climate, and construction details drawn from vernacular building techniques, while still using distinctly modern forms rather than direct historical imitation.

Deconstructivism, which gained prominence in the late 1980s, took a different approach again, deliberately fragmenting a building's form into skewed, seemingly unstable-looking shapes that reject the straight lines and right angles of most preceding movements, though its early buildings were often criticised for prioritising an unconventional silhouette over practical, everyday usability.

List of Movements A Brutalism B Streamline Moderne C Metabolism D Critical Regionalism E Deconstructivism

Match each statement with the correct option, A–E. NB You may use any option more than once.

1 Took its name from a French term for unfinished, exposed concrete. 2 Borrowed curved forms and porthole windows from the design of ships and aircraft. 3 Compared a building to a living organism whose individual parts could be replaced over time. 4 Argued that a building's design should respond to the climate and traditions of its specific location. 5 Left a building's structural function visibly exposed on the outside rather than hidden behind decoration. 6 Used horizontal bands running around a facade to create an impression of forward motion. 7 Favoured local, natural ventilation methods suited to a region's climate over standardised design.