Atlas of Brutalist Architecture: Classic format

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This open-minded approach from the outset bewitches the author’s genuine intention to give everyone a fair-minded depiction, to see these architects and their works with a fresh and unbiased eye. A 560 page, oversized format book that deserves a place on every design and architecture nerd's coffee table.

A wonderful compendium of brutalist architecture—especially béton brut—from all corners of the world. A world tour in black and white with capsule histories of many of the most celebrated (and derided) Brutalist buildings. In its thick, heavy, and appropriately dense weight, the Atlas not only covers the 'big names' of Brutalism, but also its lesser well-known members and more recent practices and places that have been inspired by it. They analyze the evolution of the style's definitions, examine the relationship between the projects and their site/landscape, and explore experimental programmatic and design concepts that the movement offers to contemporary architectural concerns.If you're part of the increasingly large ranks of brutalism fans, or interested in late 20th-century architecture and society in general, Brutalist Britain is the book for you.

Works featured include Raffaele Contigiana’s Hôtel du Lac in Tunisia from 1973; Ludwig Godefroy’s Casa Zicatela in Oaxaca, Mexico from 2015; and Alison and Peter Smithson’s Robin Hood Gardens in London from 1972, among others. Though the omission of Sir Basil Spence’s Beehive in Wellington, NZ, which houses the parliament, seems like a bizarre oversight/omission. From the hand-carved stairs in Greek villages to free-floating catwalks, from the elegant processional steps of Renaissance Italy to Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterly manipulation of form, from the seemingly random placement of Japanese stepping stones to the staircase in Chareau’s Glass House, all provide very difference experiences of stepping from one level to the next, and all affect our experience of that space. Instead, it puts the spotlight on 50 key buildings, connecting them with seven academic essays that look deep into French culture’s relationship with architecture, modernity, and social change. Brutalism has garnered an almost cult-like following, but the book questions whether it has a role in the architecture of tomorrow.

This book aims to understand how these everyday acts in space are influenced by architectural form, a concept that is vital for all architects to grasp if our buildings are to be anything more than a commercial or aesthetic enterprise.