As with Hawaiian shirts and Lionel Richie, it’s always a testament to the fickle whims of fashion and fancy when something way out of style becomes so beloved again. Culture is a vulture.
In the architecture world, it’s all about the re-appreciation of brutalism. The revival has been relatively swift—the verdict swinging from condemnation and demolition to idolatry and reverence over the course of a few decades. Even Kanye’s new Yeezy office is heavily influenced by the movement.
Despite what you might assume, brutalism doesn’t get its name from its aggressively confrontational toughness or unapologetic lack of concern for comfort. It’s not so named because of its savagery or vicious brutishness. The term is simply taken from béton brut, French for “raw concrete.” It’s not about the adjective, man, but the noun.
The brutalist movement was popular from the 1950s to the mid-’70s and most often institutionally commissioned—many brutalist structures are schools, churches, public housing, and government buildings. When architectural trends were turning all touchy-feely and old-world-revivalist around the 1980s, the brutalist look was too harsh and abstract, and the style fell out of favor fast. The movement was vilified, and the buildings it yielded became synonymous with crime-ridden, trash-strewn, fluorescently lit, graffitied menaces. (Recall, if you will, the droogs in A Clockwork Orange parading in slow motion alongside Southmere Lake, its banks lined with the grim tower blocks of Thameshead.) Fast-forward a few decades, however, and it’s back as a desired stylistic pose—or perhaps a concrete bunker in which we can all take shelter.
Brutalism is the techno music of architecture, stark and menacing. Brutalist buildings are expensive to maintain and difficult to destroy. They can’t be easily remodeled or changed, so they tend to stay the way the architect intended. Maybe the movement has come roaring back into style because permanence is particularly attractive in our chaotic and crumbling world.
Like the original noble intentions of left-leaning midcentury-modern structures, which were meant for the Everyman but have now often ended up serving as luxury status symbols, brutalist architecture—especially the few homes and converted commercial buildings that people can actually live in today—is pounced on by aesthetically focused elites. And, as is the case when any style is on the cusp of populist rediscovery, it is also simultaneously on the edge of obliteration by those who have not yet caught on to its value. (Just do some reading online about the battle for Paul Rudolph’s Orange County Government Center in New York.)
Not surprisingly, there are feverish arguments over which designers and architects, exactly, qualify as brutalists. The category is broad and ill-defined. I can see why Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn could be included, but I find them too humane. So you won’t find their work in these pages. I like my brutalism, well, really brutal—raw, blocky, cold, and cubistically minimal. It should be kinda scary.
It was a daring and exciting architectural movement, and there are few places on the map without a decent brutalist example or two. Let’s treasure and help preserve them from those who are determined to reduce them all to rubble—starting with the icons here.
Richard Allen / Alamy Stock Photo
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Barbican Centre and Estate
Location: London
Year built: 1982
Architects: Chamberlin, Powell & Bon
