There have been many attempts to name and define the architectural movement that came to be known as Brutalism - and that thinking and writing, and indeed the controversial naming of this style of architecture, constitute one strand of what is considered to be Brutalist architecture today.
Brutalism is a style with an emphasis on materials, textures and construction, producing highly expressive forms.
The term originates from the use, by the pioneer modern architect and painter Le Corbusier, of ‘beton brut’ – raw concrete in French.
The term was first used by Alison Smithson in 1953 for an unexecuted project for a house in Colville Place, Soho in which she described its warehouse aesthetic of bare concrete, brick and wood “as the first exponent of the ‘new brutalism’” in England.
However, it was architectural historian Reyner Banham’s review in 1955 of Alison and Peter Smithson’s school at Hunstanton in Norfolk, with its uncompromising approach to the display of the steel and brick structure and its services, that established the movement.
