The 24 Most Beautiful Brutalist Buildings in the World
When it comes to easy-to-spot styles, brutalist architecture is one of the few that come to mind. After all, it’s simple in both appearance and composition: block-like concrete structures that are often stacked atop one another. The style came into fashion following World War II, when some architects were drawn to creating structures that were both monumental and highly functional. Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Marseille is considered to be the building that first sparked the style, which emphasizes the raw beauty of materials such as concrete, brick, and timber.
Brutalism was particularly prominent in England, which needed to quickly rebuild following the war. Architects like Peter and Alison Smithson, Ernő Goldfinger, and the firm Chamberlin, Powell & Bon helped pioneer the style, and British architectural critic Reyner Benham formalized the fundamental elements of the style in his 1955 essay “The New Brutalism.”
But there’s something unique about brutalism that its more traditional counterparts lack. There’s an element of futurism that makes looking away from a typical brutalist monolithic structure quite difficult. Principal of her eponymous firm, AD100 architect Elizabeth Roberts would agree when it comes to the unexpected attraction to brutalism. “My first real encounter with brutalist architecture was during my years as an undergraduate studying architecture at UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design in Bauer Wurster Hall,” Roberts explains. “The building is an unadorned concrete structure and was designed by the then dean, William Wurster.”
The circa 1964 building is not famous for its look, to say the least. In fact, Roberts admits that some consider it one of the university’s least attractive structures, “But to many of us—including myself—the building and its intentional lack of decoration, and honesty in form and materials, seems the perfectly neutral environment to learn all there is to know about architecture,” she continues.
That’s the thing about brutalism: It’s not beloved the way Baroque or midcentury modernism is, but there is such an obvious beauty in its rigid geometry and unquestioning simplicity. Below, AD surveys 24 of the most beautiful brutalist buildings from around the globe.
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San Diego, California
Geisel Library on UC San Diego’s 180-acre campus was designed by American architect William Pereira in the late 1960s. Constructed entirely of glass and concrete, the eight-story structure was built atop a pedestal that’s become quite iconic among locals. Pereira infused the immediately recognizable brutalism with touches of Space Age modernism and futurism, which pushed the sleepy coastal city into a more contemporary space.
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Vienna, Austria
Dubbed Wotrubakirche, the church in Austria’s capital was the brainchild of local artist Fritz Wotruba. He designed the sculptural church, built between 1974 and 1976, to mimic a set of blocks that are rather loosely piled atop one another. The spaces created between the unadorned blocks are filled with reflective glass, encouraging light to flow through the interiors.
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Madrid, Spain
In Madrid, only a mile or so from the grand Parque del Retiro, the Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oiza–designed Torres Blancas stand out against their more neoclassical counterparts flanking the city’s streets. Finished in 1969, the towers were densely populated residential buildings that the Spanish architect wanted to resemble enormous trees, complete with trunks and foliage, which, in this case, are rounded balconies.
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Marseille, France
An ode to the work of famed architect and furniture maker Le Corbusier, Le Brasilia is French brutalism at its finest. Fernand Boukobza designed the split-level apartments, some of which boast expansive loggias, for a developer wanting to offer housing to low- and middle-income families. Though Le Corbusier’s angular work was the architect’s primary source of inspiration, Boukobza’s visit to the Brazilian capital also played into his design.
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New Delhi, India
Until recently, the Mahendra Raj– and Kuldip Singh–designed Palika Kendra building, built in 1984, was one of the tallest buildings in the Indian capital. Standing at almost 300 feet, it’s also one of only a few brutalist buildings in the city. Today, the architecturally significant structure houses the New Delhi Municipal Council.
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Paris, France
Though there are plenty of architects who profoundly embraced brutalism, few did so with the finesse of Marcel Breuer, the grandfather of the famed architectural style. Inaugurated in November of 1958, the Breuer-designed UNESCO headquarters, known in Paris as the Maison de l’UNESCO, is a cubic building intended for permanent delegations and non-governmental organizations. Two additional buildings were designed by French architect Bernard Zehrfuss and Italian architect Pier Luigi Nervi.
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Birmingham, England
Birmingham is chock-full of Industrial Revolution–era landmarks that serve as thoughtful reminders of the city’s manufacturing history. The 1964 New Street Signal Box, called the Big Box, was (and still is) inaccessible to the public, making it even that much more intriguing, considering its eye-catching façade. Plus, it’s much taller than the traditional signal box, standing proud at five stories.
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Taichung City, Taiwan
The National Taichung Theater is tangible proof that good things do, in fact, come to those who wait. The $135 million project in Taichung City took Tokyo-based architect Toyo Ito a whopping 11 years to complete. The city’s newest performance space, where the Taiwanese opera puts on majestic shows, sits at the base of a long tree-lined walkway that delivers on the drama.
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London, England
So many historic buildings in London boast a more traditional style of architecture, such as Edwardian or Tudor, but the Royal National Theatre is undeniably brutalist. In 1988, Prince Charles said, the structure was “a clever way of building a nuclear power station in the middle of London without anyone objecting.” His low opinion of the public theater was shared by many.
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Créteil, France
In the Parisian suburb of Créteil, a collection of 10 whimsical buildings, all of which are the exact same height, has garnered the city quite a bit of international fame. Built in 1974 by architect Gérard Grandva, Les Choux (French for “the cabbages”) were meant to be decorated with thousands of ornamental plants and trees, which would both enforce its name and also cause the buildings to change appearance throughout the seasons, but the planting stage never happened.
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Lisbon, Portugal
The front façade of the Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo in Lisbon offers an oblique perspective of the symmetrical structure, which is brutalist in practically every regard. Like many buildings in Portugal, this one is backed by layers of symbolism: The two wings and their enormous fortress-like bases were built to last forever, and act as symbols of preservation. It’s a fitting design considering the National Archive houses seemingly the entire country’s centuries-long history.
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Buenos Aires, Argentina
Buenos Aires’s Biblioteca Nacional Mariano Moreno, named after one of the May Revolution’s ideologists, is the biggest library in the South American country. The library was designed by Clorindo Testa, Francisco Bullrich, and Alicia Cazzaniga, who happened upon the project by winning a design contest in 1961. However, their designs didn’t come to life until the early 1990s.
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Kazanlak, Bulgaria
The Monumento Buzludja was built on the tallest peak in central Bulgaria by the communist government to commemorate a big moment in the country’s history: In 1891, a group of socialists gathered in secret to revolutionize a socialist movement that soon led to the founding of the Bulgarian Social Democratic Party. The structure was erected in 1981 after several years of construction. One of the most time-consuming elements was laying the mosaic tiles that line the interior of the monument.
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Bogotá, Colombia
La Contraloría General de la República in Bogotá may be undeniably brutialist, but it was actually erected in 1923, in the Colombian capital. It may not be a destination for anyone visiting Bogotá, but architecture enthusiasts tend to delight in the almost hidden marvel.
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Montreal, Canada
Habitat 67 is one of Montreal’s most visited attractions, which is a bit ironic considering the housing community by Israeli Canadian architect Moshe Safdie’s was the thesis for his master’s at McGill University’s School of Architecture. He built it as a pavilion for Expo 67, but it stuck around all of these years and is now a historically protected architectural community in the Canadian city.
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Sydney, Australia
The Sirius Building in Sydney was originally built in the 1970s as social housing, but as people started flocking to the Rocks district, prices soared. In 2019, the Berejiklian government sold the brutalist complex to private developers for $150 million. Today, it’s called the Sirius Sydney Harbour building to make it sound a bit more luxurious to prospective buyers.
Photo: Yoshihiro Koitani17/24Todos Santos, Mexico
In Baja California Sur, the Ruben Valdez– and Yashar Yektajo–designed Paradero hotel is a brutalist masterpiece nestled within nearly six acres of desert landscape.
Photo: Getty Images18/24Boston, Massachusetts
Boston City Hall was designed by Michael McKinnell, Gerhard Kallmann, and Edward Knowles, three Columbia University professors who won an international design competition to design the building in 1962. The controversial structure was built using beton brut concrete and was designed to let the public feel connected to the government. The brick plaza serves as an extension of the lobby of the tapered building, and cantilevered spaces house the offices of elected officials, allowing them to feel accessible to the public rather than hidden away.
Photo: Getty Images19/24London, England
Architect Ernő Goldfinger improved upon ideas he had explored in his earlier Balfron Tower in his design for Trellwick Tower in West London, his last major project. Completed in 1972, the 31-story social housing structure features a central living tower and a service tower housing the stairs, elevators, and mechanical systems. The towers are connected at every third floor, and Goldfinger designed nine different layouts for the two-floor apartments that populate the building.
Photo: Getty Images20/24Toronto, Canada
Completed in 1973 and considered an icon of late brutalism, Robarts Library at the University of Toronto was designed by Warner, Burns, Toan & Lunde of New York with local firm Mathers & Haldenby Architects. The 14-story structure has an equilateral triangular footprint, and triangles are incorporated throughout the design. While Robarts Library has 1,036,000 square feet of floor space, it does not have an abundance of windows, earning it the nickname Fort Book.
Photo: Getty Images21/24Ahmedabad, India
Pritzker Prize–winning architect B.V. Doshi, who worked under Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn in the 1950s, was commissioned to design Tagore Memorial Hall in 1961. The auditorium was dedicated to Indian poet and author Rabindranath Tagore and located near Le Corbusier’s Sanskar Kendra museum. The building’s shell features a series of concrete frames that appear to be folded—and inside, Doshi devised an independently supported “seating bowl,” the structure of which is visible within the lobby. The intimate-feeling performance space has 700 seats set beneath cloud-like acoustical tiles.
Photo: Getty Images22/24Flaine, France
Architect Marcel Breuer developed the alpine ski resort of Flaine, France, from 1960 to 1976, contributing some of the region’s iconic designs, such as Le Flaine Hotel, the Bételgeuse building, and the ecumenical chapel. The poetic chapel, which opened in 1973, was constructed of wood with a sloping slate roof and is Flaine’s only non-concrete building. A bell tower rises from the center of the structure, and the interior is simply furnished with an altar, benches, light fixture, and bronze candle holders designed by Breuer.
Photo: Getty Images23/24Durham, England
Some towns are organized around a town square, but architect and artist Victor Pasmore arranged the village of Peterlee in County Durham around an abstract brutalist structure. Completed in 1969, the Apollo Pavilion, named for the Apollo space program, was designed to be both a work of art and architecture. The pavilion was constructed of reinforced concrete, which was cast in situ over a lake in the Sunny Blunts housing estate. Over the years, Pasmore’s pavilion fell into disrepair, but it was restored in 2009 and given a Grade II listing in 2011.
Photo: Getty Images24/24London, England
Architecture firm Chamberlin, Powell and Bon created a city within a city in their design for London’s famed Barbican. Built in an area that had been destroyed during World War II, the Barbican was designed with utopian living in mind, incorporating over 2,000 flats, maisonettes, and terraced houses, shops, restaurants, schools, a church, and an arts center. The Grade II brutalist complex was built during the ’60s and ’70s and officially opened in 1982.
