Peter Chadwick: Brutalism, graphic design, music and me

Background in Music

Middlesbrough

Ridley Scott was born in the same area, and used the industrial landscape in Middlesborough as inspiration for Blade Runner.

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If Ridley Scott can escape the English countryside and make a living making movies (as opposed to working for British Steel) so can I.

1988 Move to London

This Brutal House @brutalhouse

Screenshot of the This Brutal House websites. Cropped black and white photographs are overlaid wtih whtie text reading "This Brutal House: Brutalism, Modernism, Post War, Social Housing."

What is Brutalism?

Thamesmead, A Clockwork Orange

Questions

You mentioned Sunday night was the best time to tweet, you get different amounts of engagement for different kinds of content etc. How technical do you get about these statistics, do you use analytics software or is it all gut instinct?

I don't do the analytics myself. I have two very talented people who do that for me, and also take care of the website. They get back to me with bits of information on engagement and things. This allows me to just focus on the content.

Do you think brutalist social housing projects were built with good intentions, and seeing the state a lot of them are in today, did they fail?

I do think hey were built with the best intentions. What failed was the upkeep and maintainance of the buildings. There was often no further investment after the inital construction, and that's what led to the decay of a lot of these bulidings. Only today are we starting to preserve them pieces of architectural history, which is good but should have begun earlier.

Are there fundamental design problems in brutalist architecture?

buildings were built up without care, quickly as possible