The Epic of Brutalism: When Concrete Became a Manifesto

Brutalism begins among the rubble of postwar cities, when neighborhoods, schools and hospitals had to be rebuilt quickly and truthfully. Its principles say that material does not lie, that mass speaks, that function should be visible and that light sculpts concrete, with Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation, the Barbican rising on devastated land in London and Boston City Hall as stations. The book then faces the hardest question, whether honesty is enough to make beauty, and explains why many people came to hate these buildings before a new generation looked at them again. It closes with an architecture that refused to dress up and still provokes love and hatred at once.