Brutalism
Post-war architecture of massive, raw concrete forms, and the heavy, sculptural furniture and objects that share its weight and texture.
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No open-access works for Brutalism are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
The name comes from béton brut, the raw concrete Le Corbusier left unfinished on his Unité d'Habitation in Marseille (1947–52). In Britain the critic Reyner Banham's 1955 essay on the New Brutalism championed Alison and Peter Smithson, whose Hunstanton school (1954) left its steel frame, pipes and brickwork on view. The approach suited post-war programmes of housing, universities and civic buildings.
A Brutalist building shows how it is made. Concrete keeps the grain of the timber boards it was cast against, structure shows in chunky piers and deep window reveals. Paul Rudolph's Yale Art and Architecture Building (1963), Denys Lasdun's National Theatre in London (1976) and Lina Bo Bardi's SESC Pompéia in São Paulo test its range. Many were later neglected or demolished, though they have won new admirers since the 2000s. Designers borrow the vocabulary for slab-like furniture in cast metal, stone and concrete.
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