BRUTALISM—IS IT THE OUTSIDE OR THE INSIDE THAT MATTERS MOST? Ian Mackintosh, who spent over 40 years working on the design of theater spaces, wrote to the London Review of Books (December 15). Mackintosh began his letter by quoting John Betjeman’s comment on a Brutalist building, the National Theatre: “It is a lovely work, and so good outside, which is what matters most.”
Mackintosh says that the National Theatre buildings are “for spectators rather than hearers”. The sightlines are perfect, and the acoustics are terrible. The buildings are are also inflexible. Mackintosh says: “Only in the Brutalist decades did an architect cocoon in concrete his own entirely new theatre forms. Old theatre spaces constructed of brick, of lath and plaster…. can be successively remoulded. At the National directors have had to abandon any hope of shifting that most monumental of building materials, concrete, to make these spaces serve the arts of the theatre.”
Macintosh concludes:”It is the inside, not the outside, that matters most.”