atelier 5's flamatt I

We stopped in the wee town of Flamatt to gawk a couple adorable mini-brutes by Atelier 5. Five architects founded Atelier 5 in 1955 in Bern with four fo the five having met in the studio of Hans Brechbühler, a student of Le Corbusier. They are still in business, albeit with different primaries.

Flamatt I was the first notable realized project for the firm and a place to experiment on their masterpiece, the Halen housing estate. Flamatt I include five terraced apartments and a studio all topped with a roof garden. The public spaces are on the second floor with the bedrooms on the third floor. The first floors provide entrances and storage rooms. Design-wise, the structure is clearly influenced by Le Corbusier, including the interior colors in each south-facing patio. Flamatt II and III are also on-site at the confluence of a creek and river.

We learned about this brut-eauty via heartbrut.

 

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the brutalist Saint Klemenz Church in Bettlack, Switzerland

The primary reason for venturing to Switzerland was to gape and gawk at these hyper-cubic Brutalist churches. They are sights and sites to beyond! Massive, concrete, and crenulated out the wazoo, the attention to detail in every odd corner of the spaces is remarkable. We also find great pleasure is the fusion of the ultra-modern with the dusty echoes of biblical imagery. There's something of a Dune vibe in these spaces as well (thinking of the spectacular future-Brutes of the recent movies).

This was the first one we visited, and it was amazing. Everywhere you looked was fascinating composition and details. Designed by Walter Maria Förderer (1928-2006) and built between 1964 and 1969. As we venture through the mountains, we'll see several other of Förderer's designs. Förderer was Swiss, so he was a local architectural hero. He's considered a post-functionalist, which were the beginnings of deconstructivism but not out of hand like Post-Modern. He earned that moniker because not everything you see is purely functional. On the other hand, this is a church, which has expectations of ornamentation, creating the opportunity for Förderer to have some (actually, a great deal of!) fun. Not surprisingly, he eventually gave up architecture in 1978 to become a sculptor.

All the churches we visited were open except one, even if there was nobody there. For the most part, we had the churches to ourselves except for the occasional Brute-head. 

Location

 

habitat 67 in montreal, canada

 

Habitat 67 is perhaps the most-remarkable of many remarkable Brutalist buildings. Looking like the outcome of a drunken game of 3-D Tetris, Habitat 67 was designed by Moshe Safdie at the ripe old age of 23 while a student at McGill University in Montreal. After graduation, Safdie worked with Louis Khan in Philadelphia before being called back by his thesis advisor to Montreal to realize his student thesis for Expo 67, the World's Fair in 1967. 

Habitat 67 reaches a height of 12 stories with a collection of connected concrete cubes, jutting and cantilevering out all sides, taking in views of the water on both sides. The realized project originally had 167 living units, originally apartments but now condos with each unit having at least one terrace ranging in size from 225 to 1,000 square-feet.

There's a bus line that took us from the Biosphere (also built for Expo 67) to one side of the habitat. We disembarked and ran gobsmacked to the property line to snap a photo (the one above) before a loudspeaker squawked a reprimand (we were long gone before the guard arrived). We strolled along the habitat via the public sidewalk along, private security squashing our dreams of walking through the development. Regardless, plenty can be seen and admired from the street, and there's another bus stop conveniently at the other end of the development. We also saw that there are tours of the habitat, but not during the winter. We may have to come back, because this place is simply breathtaking.

Safdie ultimately leveraged this major project, so early in his career, into an international career in architecture. Notable buildings in his sketchbook include Exploration Place in Kansas, Marina Bay Sands and ArtScience Museum in Singapore, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville Arkansas, the Jewel Changi Airport in Singapore, Raffles City Chongqing in China, and the Altair in Sri Lanka.