the.com/brutalism
Concrete honesty: buildings that refuse to flatter you or hide how they're made.
means An architectural style, mainly from the mid-20th century, built from raw concrete and bold geometric forms left unadorned and structurally exposed.
from Despite the name's violent overtones, it traces to French 'béton brut' — raw concrete — the term Le Corbusier used for unfinished, unpainted concrete surfaces. British architects and critics picked up 'brutalism' in the 1950s to name the style, and the word's resemblance to 'brutal' stuck in the public imagination, giving the movement a reputation for harshness that the architects' own vocabulary — honesty, materiality, truth to structure — didn't originally intend.
- name origin
- from beton brut, French for raw concrete
- not about
- brutality, despite what the name implies
- peak era
- 1950s to 1970s, mostly government buildings
- recent fate
- demolished often, then mourned on Instagram