ITheBrunswick

The A-Frame in Andor

When visiting the Brunswick, its spatial characteristics reveal an alienated social setting, interconnected through its own urban fabric, and detached from the rest of Bloomsbury. It is the silent montage of reaching the residential flats that was a recognised parallel within episode 4 of Andor. The Brunswick is used as a setting for the character Syril Karn, a deputy inspector in corporate security, returning home to his mother after being dismissed by the Empire for his failure, resulting in all corporate security for another planet to be under Imperial takeover. (Fig.6)

Syril’s failure is not only symbolised using a ‘raw’ and oppressive concrete setting, but also by his return to what looks like a lower-class build, paralleled to the locality and reality of a resident returning to their family flat at the Brunswick. Regardless of its alienation, the social interaction of both human scale to megastructure as well as within a liminal space is paralleled in Andor, with minimal changes using visual effects. The social concept behind the Brunswick is carried through, revealing the Smithsons’ New Brutalism aesthetic of the ‘ordinary’ and ‘as found’ as a daily space grounding not only the architectural style but also the identity and memory of a social residential environment.

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This leads me to question: why is it still so fitting in a futuristic setting?