Television Review | Would you cry over a concrete cube, the documentary asks

Culture|Television review

Public ones concrete structures are often thought of as soulless gray boxes that do not create any kind of emotional connection. There’s a reason for that.

“Minimalist concrete architecture does not have an immediate visual pleasure-producing effect, as, for example, some Art Nouveau decorative motifs have”, Arkitehtuurimuseo’s Petteri Kummala states by Mikaela Weurlander Honestly ugly concrete in the documentary (2022).

As a term, concrete brutalism does not mean the brutality of the building, but its absoluteness and honesty. The construction method does not cover anything but leaves its load-bearing structures exposed.

It is also a demanding construction method, because mistakes are easily made in cast concrete. If the casting is successful, however, the walls are ready at once, and they remain visible as they are, because in brutalism the content is more important than the facade.

in Finland The 1960s was a time of public construction. At that time, libraries, theaters, educational institutions and parish facilities were built in our country. The everyday palaces of the republic were built on concrete, and especially the church buildings of that time can be considered a special feature of Finnish concrete construction.

Focusing on his work Honestly ugly concrete -documentary focuses on Åbo Akademi’s old physics and chemistry building Gadolinia. The building is entered at the very beginning of the documentary, and as the story progresses, the building is dismantled piece by piece.

by Woldemar Baeckman and Helmer Löfström designed building complex was completed in 1969, and is said to have reached the end of its useful life. The building has indoor air problems, its room height is low by today’s standards and it no longer meets the needs of its users. Building a new building to replace the old one has been seen as more profitable than completely repairing the old one.

Weurlander’s the futuristic music of the documentary emphasizes the belief in the future of the construction period and creates an intoxicating dreaminess in the solid and empty interiors of the buildings. However, there is a reason for the emptiness. The forward-thinking builders didn’t yet know much about how concrete would behave as it aged.

The Pallivaha church seen in the documentary is a good example of this. 91 percent of the building complex, suffering from severe damage and indoor air problems, would have to be renovated if it was to be preserved. So, like Gadolinia, the church has ended up on the demolition list.

Nonfiction writer Mikko Laaksonen gives an example in the documentary of how brutalism emphasized the interior more than the exterior. Sitting in Gadolinia’s dining room, the windows offered a view of Turku Cathedral and Åbo Akademi’s library. I myself have sat by the same windows many times. For the student lunch, the warm food had to be eaten immediately and the salad had to be left for last, because the draft from the landscape windows cooled the food immediately.

So will I miss that disappearing, absolute and honest concrete cube? Hard to say.

Honestly ugly concrete, Fem at 18:30 and Yle Areena.

Correction 11.4. 6:30 a.m.: The caption incorrectly read that Gadolinia is a building of the University of Turku. Gadolinia is a building of Åbo Akademi University.