在这场危机的受害者中，没有什么思想比新生的残暴派更悲惨的死亡了。作为现代主义剧目的后期补充，它因其被认为的冷漠和不人道而在它的鼎盛时期受到评论家和公众的强烈欢迎。在一个特别残酷的转折中，它的垮台不是由它的疏忽所引发的，而是由它的实力不受欢迎所触发的。北美最伟大的暴行杰作-卡尔曼，麦金内尔

Among the casualties of this crisis, few ideas suffered a more tragic death than the nascent school of brutalism. A late addition to the modernist repertoire, it was vivisected in its prime by critics and the public alike for its perceived coldness and inhumanity. In a particularly cruel twist, its downfall was triggered not by its oversights but by the unpopularity of its strengths. The greatest masterpieces of North American brutalism—Kallmann, McKinnel & Knowles’ Boston City Hall, Murphy’s J. Edgar Hoover Building, Rudolph’s Art & Architecture Building, Pereira’s Library at UCSD—became its greatest liabilities. In the derogating full-frontal assault on brutalist teleology, it seemed as if the higher the profile a building attained, and the further it pushed against the boundaries of the familiar, the harder it fell when the chair of social disapproval was pulled out from underneath.

 © Flickr user Sebastian Mieth

Flickr用户Sebastian Mieth

在多伦多大学，华纳公司，伯恩斯，托恩

At the University of Toronto, the firm of Warner, Burns, Toan & Lunde (with local architects Mathers & Haldenby) found itself showing up late to a battle against public opinion that had already been lost. Its design for the Robarts Library was by all measures a crowning achievement of the brutalist movement. At sixteen stories and nearly a hundred thousand square meters of floor space, it was a monumental climax and a weighty bookend on the upward arc of concrete architecture. But between its groundbreaking in 1968 and its completion in 1973, the public mood toward brutalism soured, and its ribbon-cutting found critics waiting to pounce. As one architect wrote upon the library’s opening in 1974, the new building was nothing less than “a blunder on the grandest scale,” [1] while another complained that "it represented everything that was wrong with contemporary architecture." [2] Outside of architectural circles, public resentment was equally strong, and has persisted nearly unabated into the present day.

 © Flickr user The City of Toronto

Flickr用户多伦多市

罗巴特图书馆已经确立了自己作为最优秀的作品之一的后期野蛮，尽管它的永久诽谤，是其独特的修改运动的具体一致性的产物。打破了在过去半个世纪的建筑中普遍存在的指令性笛卡儿网格，取而代之的是一个从60度角度导出的等距网格。直角在计划中几乎被放弃，它是一个等边三角形的形状，其两侧凸出较小的三角形块体。图书馆的三大概况，每一个都有一百米长，对大学校园的长方形街道规划发出了刺耳的感叹声，这使得一位评论家把它的出现比作“一块巨大的棋子”摆在一块贫瘠的田野上。[3]

That the Robarts Library has established itself as one of the finest works of late brutalism despite its perpetual vilification is a product of its unique modifications to the movement's concrete uniformities. Breaking free of the prescriptive Cartesian grid that had become ubiquitous throughout the previous half century of architecture, the design was guided instead by an isometric grid derived from the sixty-degree angle. Right angles are all but abandoned in the plan, which takes the shape of an equilateral triangle with smaller, triangular masses protruding from its sides. The three main profiles of the library, each one hundred meters long, assert a jarring interjection into the rectangular street plan of the university campus that led one critic to liken its presence to “a giant chess piece” placed upon a barren field. [3]

 The library's triangular shape intersects violently with the rectantular street grid of the Toronto campus.. Image via Bing Maps

图书馆的三角形与多伦多校园的长方形街道网格强烈相交。基于Bing地图的图像

 14th Floor Plan

14楼图则

建筑物的巨大轮廓由其庞大的结构构件强有力的向上推力所主导，从它们之间出现一系列的海湾窗口，向上和向外倾斜，以打破墙壁的平面性。细心的细节，材质的纹理，实心与空隙之间的缝隙，以及混凝土膜的连续折叠，产生了一个在野蛮传统中独一无二的华丽特征。虽然外在的重要性是对其遗产的一种明确的赠予，但由于其元素成分的重叠和连锁而产生的复杂语言也许是图书馆从其祖先那里继承的最典型的野蛮特征。

The monumental profile of the building is dominated by the forcefully articulated upward thrust of its massive structural members, from between which emerge sequences of bay windows, angled upward and outward to rupture the planarity of the wall. Attentive detailing, material texturing, gaps between solid and void, and the continuous folding of the concrete membrane produces an ornate character that is unique within the brutalist tradition. And while the exterior materiality is one clear giveaway of its heritage, the complex language that results from the overlapping and interlocking of its elemental components is perhaps the most quintessentially brutalist trait that the library inherits from its progenitors.

 Striated patterns and textural variety on the concrete facade. Image © Flickr user Rabblefish

混凝土正面的条纹图案和纹理变化。图片c Flickr用户Rabblefish

 © Flickr user Trevor Patt

c Flickr用户Trevor Patt

基本上没有窗户，特别是在图书馆的较低层，简单的聚集建筑产生了一个黑暗的，未暴露的核心基本上没有日光。在这个巨大的空间里，周围环绕着令人愉悦的人形角落和供阅读的壁龛，珍稀的书籍和手稿找到了一个理想的家，不受环境暴露引起的温度和光线波动的影响。但是，暴露的混凝土和黑暗的非洲桃花心木的材料特别单调的调色板对活跃室内的阴郁气氛几乎没有什么作用。这个空间的防御工事感觉，再加上壮丽的外墙，导致了图书馆深情却不讨人喜欢的“堡书”。

Largely devoid of windows, particularly on the library's lower floors, the simple massing of the building produces a dark, unexposed core largely devoid of daylight. Within this cavernous space, which is surrounded by delightful human-sized nooks and niches for reading, rare books and manuscripts find an ideal home, safe from the fluctuations of temperature and light caused by environmental exposure. But the singularly drab material palette of exposed concrete and dark African mahogany does little to enliven the gloomy atmosphere of the interior. The bulwarked feeling of this space, coupled with the imposing exterior walls, led to the library's affectionate but unflattering monicker of "Fort Book."

 The glow of incandescent lights off the dark surfaces does little to brighten the mood.. Image © Flickr user Andrew Louis

白炽灯从黑暗表面发出的光芒对照亮情绪没有多大作用。图片c Flickr用户AndrewLouis

在一个以块状和长方形几何图形闻名的野蛮传统中工作，罗巴特当然是独树一帜，但并非没有血统。我们不可能忽视许多提及卡恩的耶鲁大学艺术画廊，该画廊在十五年前将三角形主题的纯洁性显著地嵌入到混凝土中，其著名的围护天花板被直接引用在罗巴特的华夫板地板中。但是，尽管卡恩的前野蛮人艺术画廊由于其外部轮廓和内部隔断而退回到正交，但图书馆通过将三角模块挤压成三维，并将其转换为万能网格，将这一想法推进了更远的一步。

Working within a brutalist tradition known for its blocky and rectangular geometries, Robarts is certainly original, but not without pedigree. It is impossible to ignore the many references to Kahn’s Yale University Art Gallery, which spectacularly embedded the purity of the triangular motif into concrete fifteen years earlier, and whose famous coffered ceiling finds itself directly quoted in the waffle-slab floors of Robarts. But whereas Kahn’s decidedly pre-brutalist Art Gallery retreated back to the orthogonal for its exterior profile and interior partitions, the library advances this idea a step farther through an extrusion of the triangular module into three dimensions and its conversion into an omnipotent grid.

 The triangular patterning of the waffle slab floors borrow freely from Kahn's design for the Yale University Art Gallery. Image © Flickr user Moqub

华夫板地板的三角形图案可以自由地借用卡恩为耶鲁大学艺术画廊(YaleUniversityArt)设计的图案。图像C Flickr用户Moqu

不幸的是，四十年来的不满意使用表明，建筑作为一种文化物品在建筑上的成功并不能完全保证它作为一个图书馆的服务能力。据报道，黑暗的室内环境让它成为学生不受欢迎的阅读空间，而它作为一件建筑艺术品的价值却没有被它作为一件值得尊重的建筑艺术品的价值所抵消。

Unfortunately, forty years of dissatisfied use indicates that the architectural success of the building as a cultural object does not wholly guarantee into its serviceability as a library. The dark interiors reportedly make it an unpopular reading space among students, and its popular reputation as "ugly" is insufficiently offset by its value as an architectural artifact to earn it the respect it deserves.

 © Flickr user Ken Chaplin

Flickr用户KenChaplin

2010年，该大学宣布打算翻修图书馆，并增加3500万美元，这可能会成为“罗巴特的新面孔”。[4]尽管新提议对本应被视为神圣不可侵犯的文物的评价微乎其微，但粗略掩盖现有建筑的责任在于建筑师，也在于大学管理人员。就像在罗斯科身上画一张人的脸一样，这一倡议的目的是将某些东西描绘成某种程度的超人类抽象。为了“创造一个更生动活泼的环境，一些更明亮、更开放的东西”，[5]这个加法实际上拒绝了原有结构的意图，并以对建筑应该如何进行开明的理解为前提。尽管考虑到罗巴特长期的低估历史，这一最新的羞辱是不可预料的，但它所带来的侮辱比加拿大最优秀的野蛮主义作品中的任何批评都更伤痕累累，也更持久。

In 2010, the University announced its intentions to renovate the library and tack on a $35 million addition that could serve as the “new face of Robarts.” [4] And while the new proposal shows little appreciation for what should be treated as a sacrosanct artifact, the blame for crudely masking the existing structure rests as much with the architects as with the University administrators. Every bit as misguided as painting a human face onto a Rothko, the initiative aims to animate something intended for a level of supra-human abstraction. In an attempt to “create a livelier environment, something brighter and more open,” [5] the addition actually rejects the intentions of the original structure and presupposes an enlightened understanding of how architecture should be. Though this latest humiliation cannot be unexpected given Robarts' long history of underappreciation, it promises an insult more scarring and permanent than any criticism that has yet befallen Canada's finest work of brutalism.

[1]“糟糕的建筑物：这些年之后仍然是残酷的。”多伦多人，2007年7月11日。2015年2月20日，网址：http：/torontoist.com/2007/07/仍然_ABARY_af/。

[1] "Bad Buildings: Still Brutal After All These Years." Torontoist, 11 July 2007. Accessed 20 February 2015 from http://torontoist.com/2007/07/still_brutal_af/.

[2]洛宾，玛丽·卢。“约翰·P·罗巴特图书馆”“混凝土多伦多：从五十年代到七十年代的混凝土建筑指南”，McClelland and Steward，编辑。教练书屋，多伦多：2007。

[2] Lobsinger, Mary Lou. “John P. Robarts Library.” In Concrete Toronto: A Guide to Concrete Architecture from the Fifties to the Seventies, McClelland and Steward, eds. Coach House Books, Toronto: 2007.

[4]“T大学：罗巴特图书馆的翻修和增建”。多伦多市区，2014年。2015年2月20日访问http：/bantoronto.ca/Database/Projects/u-t-Robart-图书馆-翻新-加载项。

[4] "U of T: Robarts Library Renovations and Addition." Urban Toronto, 2014. Accessed 20 February 2015 from http://urbantoronto.ca/database/projects/u-t-robarts-library-renovations-addition.

[5]休谟，克里斯托弗。“在罗巴特图书馆翻页”多伦多之星，2010年12月17日。2015年2月20日查阅：http：/www.thestar.com/Entertainment/2010/12/17/Turn_the_page_at_Robart_Library ary.html。

[5] Hume, Christopher. "Turning the Page at Robarts Library." Toronto Star, 17 Dec. 2010. Accessed 20 February 2015 from http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2010/12/17/turning_the_page_at_robarts_library.html.

建筑师华纳，伯恩斯，托恩

Architects Warner, Burns, Toan & Lunde Location 130 Saint George Street Category University Area 96200.0 sqm Project Year 1973 Photographs Wikipedia User Dr. K, Flickr user The City of Toronto, Flickr user Andrew Louis, Flickr user Moqub, Flickr user Schott Shingler Photography, Flickr user Rabblefish, Flickr user Sebastian Mieth, Flickr user Ken Chaplin