Read Brutalism: A Complete History

Brutalism is the architecture the post-war world built when it meant what it said: council housing and capitol complexes, universities and bus stations, cast in board-marked concrete and left honestly unfinished. Named from béton brut — raw concrete — and argued over from the start as an ethic before it was a style, it produced some of the century's most serious buildings and its most hated ones, sometimes in the same facade. This book follows the whole arc: the invention in Marseille and Chandigarh, the British theory and the welfare state that built it, the world conquest from Boston to Belgrade to São Paulo, the demolitions, and the strange, passionate campaign that has made raw concrete beloved again.