This season, Aeyde contemplates the ‘red thread’ between the Fall/Winter 2024 collection and the elements–concrete, stone, rust, and asphalt–that grace Berlin’s fragmented cityscape, including its litany of brutalist edifices. In this conversation, Aeyde speaks to architect Jolene Lee about brutalism in Berlin, its quest for material honesty, and its inherent aesthetic misconceptions.
This season, Aeyde contemplates the ‘red thread’ between the Fall/Winter 2024 collection and the elements–concrete, stone, rust, and asphalt–that grace Berlin’s fragmented cityscape, including its litany of brutalist edifices. In this conversation, Aeyde speaks to architect Jolene Lee about brutalism in Berlin, its quest for material honesty, and its inherent aesthetic misconceptions.
Meghan Costelloe:
Can you outline your professional background?
Jolene Lee:
I did my [architecture] bachelor’s in Kuala Lumpur. It’s common to get a master’s degree in this profession, and most of the time, you take this opportunity to leave the country, so I did. I ended up in Dessau, a small city outside Berlin famous for the original Bauhaus. It wasn’t perfectly planned, but I ended up in Berlin, the next biggest city. And from there on, it was like no looking back.
Meghan Costelloe:
When did you realize you wanted to be an architect?
Jolene Lee:
I don’t think I had a full concept of what it is. But based on what I liked, it was the best path ‘slash’ opportunity forward. Since I started at 18, over a decade now, I still enjoy it, and it still fascinates me. The most interesting part is this–I learned along the way that with architecture, you can translate your imagination into reality.
“This is one of the buildings that looks heavy, but it’s actually made from a facade where you spray concrete onto a mesh to get this look. One of the challenges posed to the architects at the time was that you could build something, but it cannot be permanent, or it has to be reversible. This was the rule because there are many rules to heritage conservation, such as how much you can edit or touch the building structure.”
—Jolene on the König Gallery, formerly St. Agnes Church, 10969 Berlin
Meghan Costelloe:
Can you tell me about your recent exciting career move? Congratulations, by the way, on starting your firm. Within that, can you talk about your experience working with b+ or Brandlhuber+ as the firm was previously known?
Jolene Lee:
When I first moved to Berlin, I got an amazing offer from one of my teachers for an internship at their office, FAKT Office for Architecture. They were my formative years in that sense. So I studied alongside working with them, with each informing the other. After I graduated from Dessau, I worked for Muck Petzet Architekten. Within this, Muck Petzet and Arno Brandlhuber both built the Lobe Block. [They] collaborated a lot when I was working there, and later, [my] move over to Brandlhuber+ happened when they were reorienting their practice into b+ as we know it today, which is a shared ownership and sort of collective. They invited me to join the partnership two years ago. A couple of months ago, I decided to start my own–I mean, I don’t know what to call it yet. It’s not a firm. It is not a studio. I’m still trying to figure out what fits best for me. I think this is trending in the architecture field, that a lot of types of ways to be an architect, as well as to collaborate with others, are changing. It’s becoming more collective. It’s also changing in scale in a way that is not so strictly like an architect with 100 employees, drawing by hand for this one lonely genius. And I’m just trying to find my place, what I want to contribute to the built environment, and how I can do it best.
“It’s cast concrete, but the mold or the formwork of this building is made of horizontal strips—this is what defines it. When they removed the formwork and exposed the cast of concrete, you see these strips, and even if you stand further away,
you would see the imprints of what materials they used as the formwork.”
—Jolene on Ex-Rotaprint, 13357 Berlin
Meghan Costelloe:
In anticipation of our conversation, I read an interview with architect Bernard Dubois where he discussed his architectural point of view, saying, “I consider space, perspective, assembly and hierarchy of forms. I gravitate toward raw and natural materials, but they’re there to serve the principles of architecture.” Do you know or feel intrinsically what your architectural principles are?
Jolene Lee:
There are many schools of thought within architecture. For your question, I would call it my interest within the field because it’s rather large. I would highlight two things: culture and the other one is aesthetics. The quote touches a bit on aesthetics, beauty, and appreciation of something. For me, it’s very interesting to see how we inhabit space. So, how do people inhabit space? What kind of space does society need? And as it is changing, how can we also change along with it? Or how can we anticipate to a certain degree? I think the meta-theme is to provide the built environment for society. Why culture? I think this comes with my background, growing up in a melting pot of what Kuala Lumpur is and moving across the world, influenced by many cultures. I find that very interesting, and they always translate into space in a different way. And I think this is what makes Berlin so interesting to a lot of people, even though maybe some don’t see why it is like this. Or, in my perspective, then it’s because the history is so visible, right? Where the East or the West, or which kind of different layers of time that Berlin has gone through, and it kind of kept its marks here and there.
“[It’s] a tomb of that time and the most brutalist, as it goes. It’s cast in concrete, and it has Le Corbusier principles. He had five, one being this ribbon of windows where you have horizontal lines of windows. The architects also took a bit of a personal taste towards it, which I enjoy looking at. When I look at it, I know the architects who designed it had fun.”
—Jolene on the Hygiene Institute, 12203 Berlin
Meghan Costelloe:
Considering this visible history throughout Berlin, how would you describe brutalism?
Jolene Lee:
I would describe brutalism as a new way of thinking. It’s somehow a radical shift of perspective of what we know. We’re speaking about a time that already happened, but I feel like it’s not necessarily something that is stuck. You could take it with you and re-edit it as you go because, sure, we think brutalism is concrete. It is mostly that, because it was such a big thing at that period of time [Editor’s note: ‘50s–’70s] that they just found this new material and they can do all these things that you’ve never seen before, therefore looking futuristic or something. I can imagine that one can have a brutalist take, concept, or act about something even today.
Meghan Costelloe:
For you, what are the defining factors and or elements of brutalist buildings?
Jolene Lee:
I think that it’s more about the aesthetic of brutalism. So, it’s not necessarily stuck to a material, but how a material can look, for example. A lot of it tries to be pure. Pure, if it’s concrete, it should show concrete. If it is granite, it should show granite. This is material honesty–which later became a term. Maybe it started already a bit before when people rejected building ornaments and this cladding and disguise that used to be a part of architecture.
Meghan Costelloe:
What, if any, are the common misconceptions about brutalism as a movement? For example, the popular thinking that brutalism’s “béton brut” moniker refers to its seemingly harsh edifices instead of its raw concreteness.
Jolene Lee:
I think this is the misconception that it is solid, heavy, hard concrete because even though that ‘material honesty’ was kind of the way to go, not every building that people categorize as a brutalist building is built like this. Many of them are prefabricated, many of them are hollow, and many of them are sprayed on.
“One might think that brutalist buildings are usually not colorful. This is what maybe puts people off, that it’s not really brutalist, but it is. Again, I fall back to the perspective that brutalism is about radicality. The ceiling heights are rather low, 2.7 meters or so. [Corbusierhaus] is really about challenging how much space you need to live with.”
—Jolene on Corbusierhaus, 14055 Berlin
Meghan Costelloe:
Bauhaus is so fundamental to Aeyde, and you’ve mentioned that you were educated at the home of Bauhaus. Both movements use much of the same materials, but what do you think differentiates the resulting buildings?
Jolene Lee:
I think [Bauhaus] experimented a lot and went, not say against, but experimented against the status quo of what architecture or building, like, how you would build something at that time. For example, that you would hide all your technical services of a building, but Bauhaus would put it where it is best for the services to locate itself… it’s not something you want to hide. This was already one step forward, and the similarity is in terms of radically moving this perspective from what architecture was before, in both brutalism and Bauhaus, but I feel like the Bauhaus movement is never so large. It’s challenging everything about our living environment, but not really urban planning, which can happen with brutalism ‘slash’ monumentalism. This is where maybe the post-war and trying to show power and how to design a city, and this Bauhaus doesn’t do.
Meghan Costelloe:
Do you think there’s more of an ideological slant to Bauhaus in comparison to brutalism?
Jolene Lee:
If you want to compare brutalism in the US or Russia, I think they’re quite different. Even though they’re built at the same time, it’s just a version of each architect in that way. But I do feel like brutalist buildings are striving more for this beauty in an artistic way, and Bauhaus maybe less. So in that way, perhaps Bauhaus is more ideological.
Meghan Costelloe:
Is it too simplistic a statement to say that Berlin is a brutalist city?
Jolene Lee:
I think it’s too simplistic. The fun part about Berlin is that it can accommodate many cultures and people. And to say that it is very brutalistic is just not true. There are many different parts of the city, and they all have different characteristics. I think a lot in the West near the Spree where it is kind of populated with these large institutional, cultural buildings. For example, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Reichstag are quite large and important city buildings. Walking through Museum Island will also give you a different perspective on time. And then you go to Rixdorf, and you have no idea where you are. Or if you go to Schillerkiez and you have the old Tempelhof airport. It’s a bit different everywhere in Berlin.
Meghan Costelloe:
It’s fragmented.
Jolene Lee:
In a cohesive way.
“This is a good example of what brutalism could also be, because it is not made from concrete. This is more how brutalism can take shape and have natural colors of the materials and having like ’70s gold-filmed windows where the sunset hits it, and it’s like a gold shining object.”
—Jolene on the Czech Embassy, 10117 Berlin
