Owen Hopkins’s The Brutalists is an A-to-Z encyclopedia of blocky concrete and utopian ideals.
Brutalist Architecture
Posted inArt
In Search of More Brutalism
The disavowal of blighted Brutalist structures is a rejection of the unconditional love of imperfection.
Posted inBooks
A New Guide Maps the Overlooked Brutalism of Paris
The Brutalist Paris Map plots 40 sites of postwar architecture in Paris that are far off the well-trod tourist path.
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Build a Miniature Brutalist London Out of Paper
By crafting tiny paper replicas of brutalist London buildings, the design studio Zupagrafika encourages a better appreciation for concrete architecture.
Posted inBooks
A Visual Homage to Brutalist Behemoths
Even while major Brutalist structures face preservation issues — like Marcel Breuer’s Central Library in Atlanta, whose fate is being decided now — the aesthetic of these concrete-based buildings continues to gain in popularity.
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Reviving the Fight to Save a British Brutalist Masterpiece
At the 11th hour, a British heritage organization has renewed a bid to save a major Brutalist building from destruction.
Posted inArt
The Challenges of Preserving Modernist Landscapes
Portland Open Space Sequence (photograph by Radcliffe Dacanay/Flickr user) While even the most coldly Brutalist buildings have found their proponents, the modernist landscapes that were built in plazas and public space in the mid-century have been slower to be embraced for preservation. Yet there’s an increasing dialogue of how, and why, modernist landscape architecture should […]
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Destroy the Brutalism, Leave the Picasso: A Debate Over What’s Worth Saving in Oslo
After being damaged by a 2011 car bomb, some Brutalist architecture in Oslo is up for demolition. While the debate between the protection of Brutalist architecture and those who see its heavy concrete designs as ugly and bleak is not infrequent in preservation, these buildings include five murals by Pablo Picasso.
Posted inNews
Japanese Modernist Landmark Preserved in Manhattan
At only 40 years old, Japan Society’s low-slung modernist headquarters at 333 East 47th Street has just been named New York’s youngest landmark building by the state’s Landmark Preservation Commission. The structure, designed by Junzo Yoshimura and George G. Shimamoto and first completed in 1971, translates traditional Japanese architectural forms into a modernist idiom, bowing to neither but combining the two languages in an innovative and complex way. I spoke with Japan Society vice president Joe Earle about the landmark designation and his experience of the building itself.
