Abstract
We are arriving at an impasse in architectural style. Future opinion is being paved inconcrete and we are returning to a brutalist way of thinking. Our thesis creates a memorial “graveyard” commemorating these buildings before they are demolished and their presence is lost to us forever. What better context for this than a town which time has forgotten, Cumbernauld.

The brutalist style is currently under attack all over the world and we want to change public opinion and argue that destroying these buildings won’t resolve deeper lying social and environmental issues. The buildings in our collection are all either currently under threat or demolished entirely and are a representation of the entire brutalist movement. Through our collection we argue that, environmentally speaking, it is illogical to destroy these buildings and we should maintain what we have. As well as, arguing these building have a very important cultural place in time and history and we can’t allow them to be torn down and forgotten. A rebellious action needs to be taken, a protest, a wakeup call. We do this through a combination of large and small interventions throughout Cumbernauld; the small intervention engaging in the local community of Cumbernauld, and the large engaging in a global discussion about Brutalism.

Small Intervention

The smaller of the two interventions takes the form of a route which guides people from the heart of the town centre, through the larger intervention and ending in a vantage point overlooking both. Along this route we have inserted informative plinths on aspects regarding our collection of brutalist architecture, in addition to some information about the importance of the town and brutalism in general. The intention behind these plinths is to help visitors and residents of Cumbernauld find beauty and meaning behind the town they are in. Each plinth corresponds to a piece in the collection and would offer information on the buildings origins and why it is significant as shown below. Further illustrated below, we have visualised how the architectural fragments would be transported from all over the world.

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Large Intervention
The larger intervention is the Brutalist Graveyard, where each architectural fragment would be displayed (buried) in their own individual vessel. The process of collecting the fragment, transporting it and finally displaying it, is a ceremony to the building’s life, through this process we reimagine burial.

Due to the architectural nature of this program, we have located our building in the Cumbernauld park. The Brutalist Graveyard then becomes an extension of the existing Cumbernauld cemetery. The buildings scales and forms are influenced by the plan of a cemetery but have been adapted to accommodate the collected fragments of these soon to be demolished buildings, we are essentially creating larger architectural coffins.