IT’S ALL ABOUT THE CONCRETE. It occurs to me that Brutalism, more than other architectural movements, depended on the material used rather than design elements. In writing yesterday’s post, I realized how significant the definition of Brutalism was. The name comes from “beton brut”, the French phrase for raw concrete, and the architecture reflected the pluses and minuses of concrete. Concrete enabled the creation of massive innovative structures, some with unusual shapes—Filler refers to them as “seemingly invulnerable, fortress-like edifices”.
As for the interiors, I said in this post in 2008: “Not surprisingly, people don’t like interior concrete walls. Architects seemed to know this. The interior walls of concrete buildings were often striated to evoke the feeling that wood gives.”