Category: Buildings

It’s everywhere and all around you and at first you may not have noticed it. And when I say that you didn’t notice it, I don’t mean that you walked through your day blindly or that you never stopped to admire the way it looked. I’m not saying that you never had a feeling about it—a feeling that made you want to come back to that place, to that building.

I don’t know when I first encountered Brutalist architecture, precisely because I didn’t realize as a kid that there was such a thing as architectural movements or that all these different buildings that felt both ancient and futuristic were part of a conversation between people thinking and talking and writing about how we organize our lives and building these massively cool buildings to manifest that conversation in concrete.

I was living in Rhode Island when I first became aware that these buildings were part of something larger than their individual greatness. Several times a week as I headed eastward into Massachusetts, I’d drive under the Fall River Government Center on I-195. Here’s a better view of this magnificent building than you’ll get from a quick glance as you shoot, at speed, through the tunnel underneath it.

I began to see Brutalism all around me. In the government buildings in Boston, on the campus of Brown University, in hotels and apartments buildings tucked away in the woods. I had made the mistake of sharing my re-categorizations of the buildings that occupied the landscape of my life with a friend of mine who I’ll call Pedantic Pete. The conversation would go something like this:

Me: I saw this building north of Seekonk. I don’t know which town I was in exactly because I took a wrong turn up there, and it’s this really cool Brutalist building.

Pedantic Pete: I know which one you mean. I wouldn’t really call that Brutalism.

Me: It’s made out of concrete.

Pedantic Pete: So, are parking garages Brutalist?

Me: Oh, maybe?

And then something very strange would happen. As he began to outline an academic definition of Brutalism and explain a series of authors he was aware of who would question my pedestrian judgement on the topic, his head would continue to expand. First his cheeks and then his forehead. His ears would pop inside out and a short string would drop down as the entire cranium—which wasn’t a cranium at all—revealed itself to be a purple balloon. I always assumed it was filled with helium because it floated upwards, and Pete would always grab onto the string in an attempt to keep his head. As you can imagine though, he was never able to bring his head back onto his shoulders or even slow his ascent. I would finally give up and just patiently watch him float off into the distance.

After that I wouldn’t see him again for several days. Once he disappeared for over a month, and I hoped that he’d found a land where his particular brand of oxygen-sucking intellect might be appreciated. I imagined him sitting atop a gilded throne on a platform at the center of a room full of sleeping party guests in ill-fitting tuxedos and torn party dresses. The image hardly made sense, even to me! So, I did what we all do when we have a friend with a barely tolerable habit, I told myself this time was really it! No more! I would never speak to Pedantic Pete again!

But, I was weak and very soon I was being educated about another building I liked and how that building, strictly speaking, did not fit the definition of Brutalism.

In fairness, it wasn’t just Brutalism. Pedantic Pete is an expert on nearly everything. I’m sure you know the type, have probably sorely regretted opening your mouth at all, and maybe some of you have learned to simply pretend you don’t know about or appreciate anything at all.

So, in honor of Pedantic Pete, here’s a great example of a more or less Brutalist building that I came to love in Fort Worth, Texas, designed by the architect Louis Kahn.

I prefer thinking about a building as more or less Brutalist. It’s a soft definition that includes as much feeling as thought. And that feeling for me is both ancient and futuristic as if the space opens up your view of time. It’s made of concrete and so has a color palette of greys and blacks and browns that you might have in rock.

With all this in mind, I have begun to collect images of more or less Brutalist buildings that I have visited and a list of those that I hope to someday visit. From time to time, I’ll post about particularly spectacular examples. And when the topic comes up with Pedantic Pete, I remind him that I’m not talking about Brutalism. I’m talking about Brutalism more or less, which is in fact a field of admiration different from the academic notion of Brutalism.

Brutalism more or less, as fields of admiration and not a field of study, is dominated by amateurs and fuckabouts. If you are an amateur or a fuckabout, welcome to my blog! And if you, like Pedantic Pete, have the one true gospel truth on any of the topics that I’ll write about, please don’t waste your genius on my comment section. Start yourself a Substack! I hear there’s money in it!