Brutalist architecture

The Royal National Theatre in London

Brutalist architecture is a way of designing buildings. It uses bare building materials, and large block-like shapes, without much decoration. Some features are lots of uncovered concrete, rough surfaces, angular geometric shapes, heavy-looking walls, small windows, and mostly gray and brown colors.

An important idea is that "form follows function". In other words, when people look at the design, they should see the purpose. This is like other modernist architecture. However, structural and functional parts, such as columns, beams, and even pipes, are also important in Brutalism. These functional parts should be easy to see and stand out. Another idea is that each material should naturally look like itself. Brick should look like brick, glass should look like glass, and so on.

Brutalism was popular from the 1950s to the 1980s. The name comes from the French term "béton brut", which means "raw concrete". The French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier was one of the most important Brutalists.

Brutalist Architecture Media

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  Villa Göth (1950) in Kåbo, Uppsala, Sweden. "New Brutalism" was used for the first time to describe this house.

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  Student dormitory (1971) by Georgi Konstantinovski in Skopje, North Macedonia

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  "TV buildings" named for the con­crete window frames that resemble TV screens (Belgrade, Serbia)

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  The Milwaukee County War Memorial (1957) is an example of the brutalist architecture of Eero Saarinen.

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  The Banco de Londres y América del Sur Headquarters by Clorindo Testa, in Buenos Aires, Argentina

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  James Stirling's History Faculty Building (1968), University of Cambridge

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  Denys Lasdun's 'ziggurats' (1968), University of East Anglia

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  Kingsgate Bridge (1963) and Dunelm House (1966), Durham University

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  William Pereira's Geisel Library (1970), University of California, San Diego

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  The Robarts Library (1974), University of Toronto