annesburg architect , Thorsten Deckler ght ), who feels that you can pretty much ing with facebrick , many people over the ave felt differently about utilitarian brick rete . Including English poet , writer and Sir John Betjeman who wrote a 10-stanza d Slough which called for the destruction nglish town by the German Luftwaffe . feature Brick
ter-war years the English town of Slough was used as a dumping ground for ant war materials and quite abruptly , just before World War 11 , became the home reds of ugly new concrete and brick factories . Betjeman was so struck by the tion caused by industrialisation and what he perceived as the “ menace of things to that he was prompted to write the poem but later regretted its harshness .
w ’ trading estate appearance of Slough , however , was a foretaste of the Brutalist ovement , which flourished from the 1950s to 1970s , and which has some severe amongst them Charles , Prince of Wales . His writings and speeches have often ndemning of the movement and in 1987 at a Corporation of London Planning and ion Committee annual dinner he said : “ When they ( Luftwaffe ) knocked down our idn ’ t replace with anything more offensive than rubble ”.
veryone shares these Brutalist sentiments ! Deckler who , together with his wife er , runs a practice named 26 ’ 10 South Architects after the latitude of Johannesburg rt a commitment to this rather fraught but exciting city - is a fan of brick .
any of us who grew up in the 70 ’ s still have mixed feelings about suburban sing , Deckler has less qualms professing to a “ somewhat warm and fuzzy feeling e and facebrick ”.
ciate these materials with both the happy homes I spent time in as well as a period esty of materials was valued ,” he explains . However , he admits that the opposite ue : exposed brick deployed in an oppressive environment can lead to a strong he material .
e local and international architects that have worked with exposed brick who he kler admits to being a fan of the Swedish Brutalist architect , Sigurd Lewerentz ( 1885 cal architect , Jack Clinton . However , he wonders if , “ Lewerentz fits the Brutalism nt ”? In photographs his work might seem forbidding but Deckler , who recently a trip to Sweden where he visited a number of Lewerentz projects , comments that sit his works , they feel humane , even friendly .”
Deckler , Lewerentz used brick in a gripping manner which is witnessed in many from the Eneborg housing project which called for construction in the local dark wo world renowned Swedish churches , St Peter ’ s in Klippan and St Mark ’ s in weden . Both churches show his investment in brick as a material and his mastery of
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