Brutalism is a style of architecture you either love or hate. It either symbolizes the collapse of ornament and detail, or the rise of a simple, plain aesthetic. To some, it is evidence of architects losing their way, and to others, a kind of casting-off of the past, the discovery of new materials like concrete, and the awe-inspiring nature of public buildings.
In popular culture, we associate it with either progress or dystopia. Brutalist buildings appear in everything from Star Wars to Severance, The Island to Orwell’s 1984, promising either a utopian future, or a dark future of oppression. The same simple shapes can suggest efficiency or surveillance and control.
So today, let’s look back at the origins of the movement.
This is the architecture of Brutalism.
The term brutalism originates from the Swedish architect Hans Asplund, who came up with the word nybrutalism to describe Villa Göth, a modern brick home in Uppsala created in January 1950 by architects Bengt Edman and Lennart Holm. The house was designed to showcase the materials it used as if they were simply found in the environment. Structural elements were not hidden behind plaster or wood. There was, for instance, a steel beam above the windows, and poured concrete in several rooms where the tongue-and-groove pattern of the floor boards could still be seen.
In 1953 Alison Smithson used the term “new brutalism” to describe a proposed house in Soho, London. She said at the time, “It is our intention in this building to have the structure exposed entirely, without interior finishes wherever practicable.” She would go on to build the Hunstanton School in 1954 and the Sugden House in 1955, which are often considered the earliest brutalist buildings in England. These projects established an approach that would become typical of the movement. Pipes, beams, brick, and concrete were left visible to the viewer.
The architecture historian Reyner Banham popularised the term brutalism in 1955 in his essay The New Brutalism. He associated the word with béton brut, meaning raw concrete in French, and art brut, art that rejects refinement. Banham define the movement as follows: a brutalist building, he argued, should have a clear and legible plan, an obvious exhibition of structure, and a respect for materials as they are found. He also insisted on the importance of the overall image, the sense that the building should read as a single coherent object.
This helps explain why brutalist buildings often use repeating modular elements, usually in concrete, to represent different functional zones that are grouped together into one unified whole (you get the impression of a monolithic building, as a whole, yet with distinct parts). Materials can include brick, glass, steel, timber, stone, and even gabions, but concrete became the most common because it was cheap, strong, and easy to pour on site.
So why all the concrete?
Cement, which is one of the key components of concrete, has existed since biblical times. The Romans used it in harbours, domes, and aqueducts. Modern reinforced concrete, however, only appeared in the late nineteenth century. In 1892 the French engineer François Hennebique patented a reinforced concrete system that became widely successful. His idea was to place steel rods inside the concrete. Concrete is strong under compression but weak under tension, while steel has the opposite property. When the two are combined, the result is a material that can withstand very large stresses without breaking. This allowed architects and engineers to build on a much larger scale than before. Bridges, bunkers, factories, government buildings, and eventually skyscrapers could all be made using the same basic technique.
World War II
World War II is an essential part of the story of brutalism. During the war, many major cities in Western Europe were reduced to rubble. Government buildings, housing, and classical architecture were destroyed in bombing raids, with the Blitz in London and the firebombing of Dresden being the famous examples.
When the war ended, entire districts had to be rebuilt. Traditional materials such as stone and brick were expensive and often in short supply, partly because warehouses and factories had been destroyed.
Concrete, by contrast, could be produced cheaply and in large quantities, and it did not require the same level of skilled labour. For governments facing housing shortages and damaged infrastructure, it was the obvious choice. The look that we now call brutalism grew out of these conditions of shortages and need, reinforced by the artistic design choice to build mass public housing and utilitarian government projects.
A Wave of Construction
One of the earliest and most influential brutalist buildings was the Unité d’Habitation in France, completed in 1952 and designed by Le Corbusier. The building was conceived as a vertical city containing apartments, shops, corridors, and communal spaces inside a single structure. Its rough concrete, repeating modules, and enormous scale became a model for postwar social housing. The project shows how architecture could respond to the urgent need for new living spaces while also presenting a bold modern vision.
In the UK, brutalism became associated with postwar reconstruction. A major example is the Barbican Estate, built during the 1960s and 1970s by the firm Chamberlin, Powell and Bon. The complex stands on land that had been heavily damaged during the war. Instead of rebuilding the old structures, planners designed an entirely new environment of towers, walkways, and cultural buildings raised above ground. Its fortress-like appearance and complicated layout reflect the ambition of the time. The belief that a completely new kind of city could be designed from scratch rather than simply restoring what had been lost.
In the United States, brutalism was used for civic buildings and universities, as public infrastructure boomed. Boston City Hall, completed in 1968 by Kallmann McKinnell and Knowles, is one of the best examples. Its exposed structure, deep shadows, and heavy concrete were meant to symbolize strength, transparency, and permanence in democratic government. The design has always been controversial however, with some objecting to its austere appearance. Another influential project is the Salk Institute, designed by Louis Kahn in 1965. While it still uses concrete, the result is more restrained, showing that brutalism can also produce buildings that feel less aggressive.
Decline of Brutalism
The popularity of the brutalist movement began to decline in the late 1970s. Some started to associate the style with urban decay, failed housing projects, and totalitarianism. Part of this change in attitude may have come from the Cold War, when similar concrete apartment blocks appeared across the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. These buildings were designed according to a strict utilitarian logic. Everyone lived in the same kind of apartment, with little difference from one block to the next. The intention was equality, but the result often felt repetitive and impersonal. Stories circulated of people coming home late at night and entering the wrong building because every block looked the same. Whether exaggerated or not, these stories shaped the public image of brutalism.
At the same time, a new architectural movement was beginning to form. In 1966 Robert Venturi published Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, a book that openly rejected the austerity of modernist and brutalist design. He argued for a more complicated style of architecture:
I speak of a complex and contradictory architecture based on the richness and ambiguity of modern experience, including that experience which is inherent in art. … I welcome the problems and exploit the uncertainties. … I like elements which are hybrid rather than “pure”, compromising rather than “clean” … accommodating rather than excluding. … I am for messy vitality over obvious unity. … I prefer “both-and” to “either-or”, black and white, and sometimes gray, to black or white. … An architecture of complexity and contradiction must embody the difficult unity of inclusion rather than the easy unity of exclusion.”
Pop Culture and Dystopian Scenes:
Directors return to brutalist buildings again and again when they want to suggest oppression, surveillance, or the power of an impersonal system. Hollywood has developed a shared understanding of brutalism as the architecture of authority. When a director wants to show a world ruled by bureaucracy, by surveillance, or by an all-powerful state, concrete towers and endless corridors are the easiest way to do it.
Part of this comes from the physical qualities of the buildings themselves. Brutalist structures are often enormous, with thick walls and deep recesses that block light. When filmed from below, they make the characters look small and exposed. A single figure standing in front of a concrete façade can seem almost insignificant, as if the building itself represents something larger than any individual. This effect is used repeatedly in dystopian films, where the environment is meant to suggest that the system cannot be escaped. The architecture becomes a symbol of the world the characters are trapped inside.
Brutalist buildings appear in films like The Island, in series such as Severance, and throughout the visual design of Star Wars, especially in Andor and The Mandalorian. Film versions of Orwell’s 1984 use the same architectural language, as do many dystopian settings inspired by real places such as Brasília.
The modular nature of brutalist design also plays an important role here. Many brutalist buildings are made from repeating units, identical windows, identical balconies, identical corridors stretching into the distance. On screen this repetition shows a life that has been carefully organized and controlled. Everything has its place, and nothing is allowed to exist outside the pattern. In stories about totalitarian societies this visual order becomes a way of showing the loss of individuality. The characters move through spaces that look as if they were designed for machines rather than people.
This contrast is especially clear in Star Wars. The worlds associated with the Empire often use hard surfaces, grey concrete, and rigid geometry, while the rebels are shown in environments that feel irregular, improvised, and alive. The architecture itself tells the story. The huge monolithic buildings suggest a government that values order above all else, while the scattered bases of the rebels suggest movement, freedom, and unpredictability. The same visual language appears in film versions of 1984, where Winston moves through offices and housing blocks that seem designed to erase personality. The scale of the buildings makes him look powerless, and the repetition of the spaces suggests a life that has been reduced to routine.
Standing the Test of Time
By the 1990s and early 2000s, architecture had moved toward increasingly complex and experimental forms, often made possible by new construction methods. Yet the brutalist buildings remained, standing exactly where they had been poured in concrete decades earlier. Today they are divisive. Some people see them as ugly relics of a failed utopian vision. Others see them as simple and beautiful, reminiscing about a last surge of public works after the war.
In New Zealand, where an earthquake destroyed much of the city of Christchurch in 2011, many of the buildings that survived were brutalist. This speaks to their construction method; the solidity and capacity to withstand the test of time, and anything thrown against them. Although they may be unappealing to look at, it’s clear that as buildings (as spaces that should exist across time), they do an excellent job of surviving where others fall down.
