Styles and Movements

Brutalism

BROO-tl-iz-um

Also Known As New Brutalism

Postwar

Citation Formats

General Reference

Architecture and Design Atlas. "Brutalism." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://architecture.interactiveatlas.org/styles/brutalism.

APA Style

Architecture and Design Atlas. (n.d.). Brutalism. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://architecture.interactiveatlas.org/styles/brutalism

BibTeX

@misc{architectureanddesignatlas-brutalism,
  author = {Architecture and Design Atlas},
  title = {Brutalism},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://architecture.interactiveatlas.org/styles/brutalism},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

The postwar architecture of exposed raw concrete, named from the French beton brut, the untreated concrete Le Corbusier left visible at the Unite d'Habitation in Marseille. Through the 1950s to the 1970s it became the style of universities, housing estates, city halls and cultural centers worldwide, admired for its honesty and monumentality and attacked for its bleakness, and it remains architecture's most argued-over inheritance.

Facts

Disputed

Period

to 1980 2

Sources give a range rather than a single year: popularity declined through the late 1970s, with the movement generally considered over by the early 1980s.

Period

from 1952 1

The Unite d'Habitation was completed in 1952; the term New Brutalism was in British critical use by the mid 1950s.

Origin Region

France and Britain 1

Cross-Tradition Connections