Impressive concrete structures from around the world are collected in a new book, This Brutal World. Jonathan Glancey chooses his favourites.
Basel College of Art and Design Basel, Switzerland, 1961 by Baur, Baur, Bräuning, Dürig
Brutalism has become something of a catch-all term for highly expressive concrete architecture dating from the mid-1950s. Quite how brutal this Swiss art and design college is, is open to question. Its architect, Hermann Baur [1894-1980], called it “poetically utilitarian”. Comprising a cluster of four buildings around a courtyard centred on a Hans Arp sculpture, the highlight is undoubtedly the college gym. Its folded roof and walls - concrete origami - form an elegant hall, used today as a lecture room and art students’ studio. One wall is a floor-to-ceiling window: the play of light on concrete is quite beautiful. (Credit: Roberto Conte)
Tower House, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Japan, 1966
Rugged and idiosyncratic, this six-storey house rises from a tiny plot of land measuring just 20 sq m (215 sq ft). Built as a family home by the architect Takamitsu Azuma, today it is dwarfed by later buildings. Despite a floor area of just 65 sq m (700 sq ft), it boasts a roof terrace and car port as well as a generous sense of space in a sequence of open and well-lit raw concrete rooms unfolding from an exposed concrete stair. Azuma describes the Tower House as a “continual vertical room”. This is Brutalism realised with the economy of a Japanese haiku. (Credit: Azuma Architect)
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Orange County Offices and Court House, Goshen, New York, US, 1967
In 2015, this critically acclaimed complex was demolished in an act of civic vandalism. Comprising three concrete pavilions, with projecting bays, around a courtyard, it offered a rich variety of imaginatively lit and free-flowing spaces. Designed by Paul Rudolph, former chair of Yale University’s Department of Architecture, whose alumni included Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, it needed remedial work even before, in 2011, it was damaged by Hurricane Irene. Despite an offer by the New York architect Gene Kaufman to buy and restore it as an art space, Orange County had more brutal designs on this memorable public building. (Credit: Photo Nicolás Saieh)
Trellick Tower, London, England, UK, 1972 by Ernö Goldfnger
This defiant and distinctive 31-storey local authority tower block was the defining work of Ernö Goldfinger, a Hungarian émigré who lent his name, and daunting character, to a famous James Bond villain. The building’s 217 generously planned flats are detached from a striking lift and service tower, connected to it on every third floor by vertiginous sky bridges. Sinking early on into social decline, from the late 1980s Trellick Tower became fashionable among young architects, designers and writers who saw in it a sublime grandeur rather than concrete horror. In 1998, with Brutalism fashionable again, Trellick Tower was listed. (Credit: Riba Collections)
Centro de Exposições, Salvador, Bahía, Brazil, 1974
This astonishing exhibition hall is suspended five metres above ground, its rough surfaced concrete body supported by steel struts held in tension by a pair of slim masts housing a lift and stairs. An amphitheatre in the guise of an inverted pyramid below one end of the suspended hall is balanced ̵ visually and physically ˗̵̵ by a sky-lit, pyramid gallery above the opposite end. While it seems odd to find such a Brutal design in a tropical climate, its concrete shell protects exhibits and visitors from heat and glare. It was designed by the inventive Brazilian architect João Filgueiras Lima. (Credit: Courtesy Fran Parente)
Ministry of Highway Construction, Tbilisi, Georgia, 1975
More Constructivist than Brutalist, this tour-de-force is by George Chakhava who, as deputy minister of the Georgia Ministry of Road Construction, was both client and architect. Although influenced by Russian Revolutionary architects of the 1920s, Chakhava says that the building’s monumental interlocking structural grid is rooted in nature. His aim was to occupy as little ground space as possible with the various floors of the building opening out like branches from the central root of a tree. Whatever his reasoning, this is a truly spectacular design. Restored, from 2007 it has been the headquarters of The Bank of Georgia. (Credit: Courtesy Phaidon Press)
Jenaro Valverde Marín Building, CCSS, San José, Costa Rica, 1976 by Alberto Linner Díaz
Set between the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean, Costa Rica might seem like the last country anyone would expect to find Brutalist architecture. Pre-fabricated concrete construction, however, allowed Central and South American architects to launch into the Modern world at low cost and on a grand scale. From the 1940s, Oscar Niemeyer, had paved the way in Brazil. Although simple in plan and section, this social security administration building by the Nicaraguan born architect Alberto Linner Díaz has the look of a bold and complex concrete sculpture, its powerful character offset by colourful plants and swaying palms. (Credit: Magda Biernat/OT TO)
Embassy of Russia, Havana, Cuba 1985 by Aleksandr Rochegov
Once a symbol of Soviet domination, the high and mighty Russian Embassy soars above the treeline of Havana’s Fifth Avenue like some vast concrete sword plunged firmly into the Cuban soil. The Soviet Union collapsed soon after the completion of this towering concrete complex. Its architect was Aleksandr Rochegov, also known for the design of the Leningradskaya Hotel, Moscow. Housed in one of Stalin’s operatic Seven Sister skyscrapers and dating from 1954, it is owned today by the US Hilton chain. Determinedly Russian, the Havana embassy lurks, as best it can, behind a severe wall of barbed wire and jagged glass. (Credit: Courtesy Phaidon Press)
