BRUTAL TRANSFORMATIONS 2021
BRUTAL TRANSFORMATIONs PASTE UP project - 2021
‘Brutal Transformations’ are artworks created by Lymesmith, they feature three Canberra Brutalist buildings transformed with boldly applied colour and decoration. The work aims to stimulate discussion around how we treat our Brutalist buildings now and into the future. What kinds of futures are possible beyond preservation or demolition?
Largely devoid of colour and decoration, Brutalism is aesthetically masculine and unyielding. Worse, these buildings are often experienced as dehumanising and oppressive. Although their demolition can be politically popular, their embodied energy alone should stay the executioners’ hand in favour of adaptive reuse solutions which, are almost always the most sustainable option.
Will Canberra be forever more a city of raw concrete?
The BRUTAL TRANSFORMATION artworks reimagine the possibilities for Canberra’s Brutalist architecture into the future. Canberra’s monolithic structures with their imposing authoritarian presence and blank facades, quiver under the power of Lymesmith’s deliberately provocative transformative colour palettes.
Campbell Park Office 1
Colour Transformation by Lymesmith
Campbell Park Offices by Theo Hirsch
Photograph by Jakub Beseda
BRUTAL ACTS OF COLOUR
Painting brutalist buildings is a purely hypothetical exercise, a playful imagining of an act I would in reality find hard to support. Applying paint to off-form concrete (an ephemeral coating over an extremely durable surface) goes against my thinking about materials in architecture.
And yet. The temptation of these monolithic structures, with their impervious facades and bold geometry was impossible to resist. Now middle aged, not of heritage status, and no longer novel, Brutalist buildings across the country are ripe for transformation.
Deakin Office
Colour Transformation by Lymesmith
“The relationship between colour and form is a puzzle with many solutions."
Hella Jongerius
Deakin Office
Photograph by Jakub Beseda
The Brutal Transformation poster series are available to purchase as archival prints, you can see all of them on our shop page.
Churchill Building by Robin Boyd
Colour Transformation by Lymesmith
Churchill Building by Robin Boyd
Photography Jakub Beseda
Churchill Building by Robin Boyd
Colour Transformation by Lymesmith
Poster locations in Civic and Braddon
50-52 Mort St Braddon - Telstra Building
27 Lonsdale St, Braddon - Palko Building
Cafe Essen corner, Garema Place
Rear Lane behind CMAG, 176 London Circuit, Civic
This project was a collaboration with Canberra architect and photographer Jakub Beseda. You can check out Jakub’s work at @jakub_beseda
We plan to exhibit the original photos and the colour transformations together at some point, sign up for Lymesmith’s newsletter if you’d like to be notified.
Artist
Sonia van de Haar – Lymesmith
Photographer
Jakub Beseda
Graphic Design
Christie Fearns Studio
Paste Up Ninjas
Sonia van de Haar, Madison Du, Jess Semler, Bronte Bell, Samantha Corbett, Tony Burke
Partners
Craft ACT, Design Canberra Festival, City Renewal Authority, Department of Defence, Telstra
