The Architecture of Andor Part I: The Brunswick and Brutalism
Own image of the A-Frame in the Brunswick.
With the second and final season of Star Wars: Andor returning this April, this 3 part series of memory logs studies the film locations used in London to show us the capital city planet of Coruscant in Andor and the architecture and history behind it.
Andor’s production design in season one stepped away from using fully integrated visual effects like The Volume for a Star Wars show and instead focused on enhancing built sets and film locations. This hybrid use of production design had become a catalyst for my thesis research during my Master studies in Architecture, and with the encouragement from many of my followers and the Star Wars community, I am now sharing brief studies from my research. This is Part I of the Architecture of Andor.
What is Brutalism?
Before jumping into hyperspace, an insight into Brutalism is key to gain a better understanding to why we find it often used as an architectural style in dystopian and science-fiction settings.
The word ‘Brutalism’ comes from the French word ‘Béton brut’ which translates to ‘raw concrete’, It is believed to be inspired by Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Marseilles, France, completed in 1952. Brutalism emphasises the style of buildings with materials used as found and a large expressive form. (1)
The movement of Brutalism, however, was not officially established until Architectural Historian Banham Reyner reviewed Alison and Peter Smithson’s school in Norfolk in 1955. Banham’s writings on Brutalism have been of great significance in influencing how we have perceived and still perceive Brutalism. In his published review ‘The New Brutalism’, Banham described: “In order to be Brutalist, a building has to meet three criteria, namely the clear exhibition of structure, the valuation of materials ‘as found’ and memorability as image.” (2)
However, Brutalism fell out of favour in the 1980’s, it’s meaning has been easily interpreted as literally ‘brutal’, creating an image of a harsh style of concrete, dissociated, and left to decay. Despite its misunderstood meanings, what is interesting is the more recent rise of fetishization for Brutalism. It appears to fall in trend with the modern fascination for ruins and post-industrial decay, which once again displaces the representation of Brutalism.
Initially, the architectural style was mobilised as an attempt to address social issues, possessing a political-ethical dimension. When looking at how Brutalism is represented in cinema, this also feeds into a fascination with fictional urban contexts and culture, specifically within dystopian science-fictions such as ‘A Clockwork in Orange (1972), ‘Brazil’ (1985), ‘1984’ (1984) and ‘Blade Runner’ (1982).
So where does it sit within futuristic films and what is it trying to tell us?
Stills from Andor Episode 4: ‘Aldhani’ (2022) featuring Coruscant city from above. Still image credit to Lucasfilm.
Brutalism in Andor: Coruscant’s Setting
The highly dense urban planet of Coruscant has been the centre to the rise of the Galactic Empire, a new fascist regime. Andor’s narrative is heavy on the spark of the rebellion, highlighting acts of espionage, coups, sacrifice, and the formation and destruction of alliances. The context is used to reveal the oppression under the Empire’s rule, stripping away an elegance and sleekness of a futuristic city originally shown in earlier Star Wars films ( EP I:The Phantom Menace (1999)– EP: III Revenge of the Sith (2005)), to evoke the anticipation and risks taking place under the masks of social hierarchy and urban living, simultaneously grounding a science-fiction into a reality we can recognise more as part of our own.
In Andor, the rise of the Imperial Fascism is asserted through closer frames of the cityscape. Wide shots are limited but produce a sense of monumentalism, desaturated to a monochromatic tone where the city looks sterilized and less lively, depicting a rawness of material across the city.
The main principles of Brutalism, such as where material is used “as found”, are combined with a verticality found in the principles of political/fascist architecture. Its scale and monumentalism seem to follow the functionality behind totalitarian regimes. In this case, Brutalism can be seen as a tool for the Empire, asserting itself in the core of its reign within public spaces. It contributes the image of an imposing regime as it represents a political reality where public spaces and constructions are manipulated by political interests.
Michael Minkenberg describes in ‘Power and Architecture’ that this approach of architecture, like art, contributing to an image, does not just represent a reality but rather creates a reality: “In this way architecture can be seen not only as providing visual and spatial means of legitimation for a political regime or elite, but also a genuine act of constituting political reality.” (3)
This proves to be successful for even in the absence of the classical silhouette of the Stormtroopers or the Galactic Empire’s symbol, the architectural style, and public spaces in Andor’s Coruscant do not discount the presence of oppression and surveillance of an Imperial fascist regime.
Stills from Andor Episode 4: ‘Aldhani’ (2022) featuring the Brunswick and recreated image of my own within the Brunswick. Still image credit to Lucasfilm.
The Brunswick: Syrils’ Home
Built between 1968 and 1972, the Brunswick is a Grade II listed concrete monument within Bloomsbury, central London. The centre was designed by Patrick Hodgkinson, which comprises a shopping district and residential build.
Such as many Brutalist buildings, the Brunswick was not excluded from being written about as another modernist disaster, in which its monumental and alienating concrete infrastructure played a role in negating an individual’s sense of reality and self-identity. Critics such as Theo Crosby in the Architectural Review described the Brunswick as an urban “megastructure, a building that is a city, rather than being merely a component in a city”.(4)
Much to Hodgkinson’s dislike, the label of ‘megastructure’ was later reinforced by Reyner Banham, referring the Brunswick to Antonio Sant ’Elia’s futurist city La Città Nuova (1914), highlighting its A-Frame structure and twinned towers at the entrances as key inspired features.
Left & Centre: Antonio Sant ‘Elia Housing with external lifts and connection systems to different street levels from La Città Nuova, 1914. Images via Wikimedia Commons
Right: Own Image of the tower at the Brunswick.
Futurism & The A-Frame
Futurism, is a continuation of utopian principles which were conceptually proposed by Antonia Sant ’Elia. Motion, contrasts, and abstraction are seen as innovative and a key aspect of characteristics for progressive architecture within Futurism.(5) Banham appears to have seen through the Brunswick earlier on as an architecture which follows these qualities in which both ideals of Modernism and Futurism can be found within the Brunswick.
Regardless of Hodgkinson’s intent behind the Brunswick, The A-frame and the twin towers does shift from traditional characteristics of the 19th century into a highly functional and minimalist design whilst abstracting the Brunswick through sheer monumentality, where both, stillness and movement can be found within the Brunswick.
It seems like the Brunswick has resembled a failed agenda of its placement within our reality, misinterpreted in multiple ways early on in its timeline. There was a constant tension of Hodgkinson’s vision of the Brunswick as a ‘social concept and ‘tight knit human scale of the village, or town room’ against critics’ response of the Brunswick as a ‘concrete monstrosity’ or ‘a spaceship landed from outer space’. This may be the very characteristic which has continued to express the Brunswick as a multi-dimensional space, where both ends meet. Allegedly, its Futurist, sculptural, and monumental forms exhibit social concepts by emphasising the human scale through communal and liminal spaces.(6)
Stills from Andor Episode 4: ‘Aldhani’ (2022) featuring the Brunswick and recreated image of my own within the Brunswick. Still image credit to Lucasfilm.
A Double Reality: Brutalism & The Brunswick
It is the silent montage of reaching the residential flats that was a recognised parallel within episode 4 of Andor. The Brunswick is used as a setting for the character Syril Karn, a deputy inspector in corporate security, returning home to his mother after being dismissed by the Empire for his failure, resulting in all corporate security for another planet to be under Imperial takeover.
Syril’s failure is not only symbolised using a ‘raw’ and oppressive concrete setting, but also by his return to what looks like a lower-class build in contrast the what Coruscant once depicted, and paralleled to the locality and reality of a resident returning to their family flat at the Brunswick. Regardless of its alienation, the social interaction of both human scale to megastructure as well as within a liminal space is paralleled in Andor, with minimal changes using visual effects. The social concept behind the Brunswick is carried through, revealing the Smithsons’ New Brutalism aesthetic of the ‘ordinary’ and ‘as found’ as a daily space grounding not only the architectural style but also the identity and memory of a social residential environment. (7)
The Brunswick’s design, approached with permeability of an open-ended urban landscape, opposed to having one large concrete block has suggested a blurring of boundaries, yet a spatial hierarchy remains. The A-Frame structure, looms over in scale, framing an isolated passer. In Andor, this A-Frame remains unchanged. Although it is not the first shot of the Brunswick within the montage, it is the most recognisable frame, where Syril is seen crossing the bridge within the atrium.
The movement of Syril across the space with the daunting presence of the A-Frame reflects the relation between the human scale and the megastructure of the Brunswick. This further suggests that the form of the Brunswick is recognised not through its characteristics but that its certain spatial relations between these elements are maintained within Andor. (8)
Additionally, the A-Frame is a recognisable structure which lends itself towards principles of Futurism. This spatial relation has remained unchanged within Andor, feeding into the monumentality of the building, whilst accommodating a stillness found within liminal spaces of modern architecture and balances the slight changes through VFX mass sampling, as an abstraction of Futurist architecture.
It is inevitable to distinguish the Brunswick’s Brutalist form as an alienation. However, the Brunswick adopted a reoccurrence of recognition, where one identifies what is seen as what has already been or could be seen in reality. (9) Just as Reyner Banham described the Brunswick’s A-Frame structures to be inspired by Sant Elia’s futuristic city of La Città Nuova (1914), the Brunswick’s A-Frame structure is now associated within a futuristic city in the Star Wars universe.
For many years and since its foundations were laid, Brutalism has been described to fail as an architecture of the future… but did it really fail? History has always rejected its placement in its own time, it’s been displaced as a style of architecture since it’s been built but now we come to recognise it more in the image of a future. Through Andor, the Brutalist Brunswick has transformed into a symbol of a double-reality, traversing time to remain within two worlds.
References:
RIBA Architecture, Brutalism, ‘Brutalism in architecture’ https://www.architecture.com/explore-architecture/Brutalism
Reyner Banham, “The New Brutalism” (Published by Architectural Press, 1 November 1996) pp.127
Michael MinkenBerg, “Introduction.: Power and Architecture: The Construction of Capitals, the Politics of Space, and the Space of Politics.” 1st ed., Berghahn Books, 2014, pp. 1–30. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qd8m7.6. Accessed 14 Dec. 2022.
Theo Crosby, ‘Brunswick Centre, Bloomsbury, London’, The Architectural Review 908 (1972): 212. 10 Clare Melhuish, “Post-war Architecture between Italy and the UK, Exchanges and transcultural influences Ch.11 From futurism to ‘town-room’: Hodgkinson, the Brunswick and the low-rise/high-density principle” (UCL Press 2021) Pp.160-163 https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1kwxfmg.15
Sidra Khokar, “Futurism or Modernism- Towards A Futurist Leap in the 21st Century”, Re-thinking The Future, (Accessed 14th January 2023) https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/architectural-community/a5614-futurism-or-modernism-towards-a-futurist-leap-in-the-21st-century/
Clare Melhuish “London’s Urban Landscape, Another Way of Telling. Ch.2 Towards a phenomenology of the concrete megastructure: Space and perception at the Brunswick Centre, London” (UCL Press) Pp.144 https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv8jp0nh.9
Liat Savin Ben Shoshan, “Architecture, cinema, and images of childhood in 1950s Britain. Architectural Research “ (Cambridge University Press 2018) Quarterly, 22(2), pp.115-126. doi:10.1017/S135913551800043X
Jaques Aumont, “The Image, Chapter 1:The Role of the Eye: III.2.4 The Perception of Form”, (Published by London: BFI, 1997) pp.45-46
Jaques Aumont,“ The Image, Chapter 2: The Role of the Spectator I.2.1 Recognition”, (Published by London: BFI, 1997) pp.57
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