Brutalism is a beautiful thing

Graphic designer Peter Chadwick shares his passion for Brutalist buildings

My fascination with concrete, industrial landscapes, and what I later came to know as ‘Brutalism’, started at an early age. It’s hardly surprising as I grew up in the North East of England in the late Seventies. At the time, British Steel and the ICI chemical plant commanded the north and eastern flanks of Middlesbrough, the town in which I was born and raised. These chemical and steel plants not only dominated the horizon beyond the town centre, they also supplied an industrial soundtrack of relentless clattering metal. That collision of an industrial landscape and of sheet-metal audio has shaped and informed my taste both in architecture and music. It has also served me well as a regular source of inspiration in my work as a graphic designer and my unceasing photographic documentation of Brutalist architecture. 

On the handful of times I visited it, the concrete cubist spaceship of the Apollo Pavilion in Peterlee, Co Durham, designed by the British artist Victor Pasmore, transported me to a galaxy far, far away. The pavilion was named after the first manned mission to the moon in 1969, the year the structure was built. You could play in it and climb on it, although it was unforgiving on the knees. Without doubt, its sharp edges, 90-degree angles and straight lines kick-started my interest and enthusiasm for all things ‘Brutal’ long before I had heard the word. It was the first building of its kind I had ever seen. From that moment on I fell in love with raw concrete. 

Later, aged nine, I remember on one of my first trips?to Newcastle marvelling at the recently opened, futuristic Eldon Square Shopping Centre. After yet another ‘Are we there yet?’ I unwittingly had my first real Brutalist experience. The horizon on the River Tyne, as you enter the city, was once dominated by the Owen Luder Partnership-designed Trinity Square car park. Blink and you definitely wouldn’t have missed this uncompromising hunk of sublime concrete. Both gracious and forthright, this sadly now demolished structure became one of my most cherished Brutalist buildings. I remember my first sight of it looming in the distance and asking my mum: ‘What’s that?’ I had never seen anything like it. The structure was thrilling and scary, and I immediately liked it, although I wasn’t quite sure why. 

Trinity Square car park was already a star in its own right, after featuring in the 1971 film Get Carter starring Michael Caine, a movie I would later go on to watch many times. Remote control in one hand, I was always ready and waiting to pause the VHS at the various points in the film whenever this concrete beast loomed. Owen Luder, the architect of a number of controversial brutalist buildings in the UK, was also responsible for another landmark on the Gateshead skyline: the 29-storey Derwent Tower, also known as ‘The Dunston Rocket’. Luder’s designs were some of the most powerful and raw examples of Brutalist architecture, characterised by massive sculptural concrete forms devoid of claddings or decoration. 

The cold, damp British climate, combined with poor maintenance, however, exacerbated the unpopularity of his buildings, despite a number of them winning prestigious architecture awards when they were built. Derwent Tower, along with Trinity Square’s older sibling, the Tricorn in Portsmouth, also by Luder, have all suffered the same fate. These once heroic, visionary buildings were all demolished between 2004 and 2012. In recent years, Luder’s work, along with Brutalist architecture in general, has seen a mass resurgence in popularity among those who see these buildings not as the failed dreams of an older generation of architects but as a vision of a society that was confident in its own expression, a society that gave us an architecture of a generous, open and radical welfare state. Perhaps the new-found public interest in the once-derided brutalist style and the race to preserve these buildings, had it emerged just a few years earlier, could have saved Luder’s Brutalist trio from demolition. My Trinity Square thankfully lives on in 1971 Technicolor glory. 

I became increasingly fascinated by the visionary buildings and bold housing estates that grew out of the bombed remnants of London’s East End. Not always a comfortable fit in their post-war Victorian surroundings, these new concrete buildings and social-housing developments looked, at times, as though they had descended from another planet to colonise Earth. But, while many architects were inspired by the social and aesthetic possibilities of Brutalism, the public’s reaction was often hostile. Some Brutalist structures came to be associated with the blight of urban decay as the buildings aged and were badly maintained. The concrete tended to weather poorly, especially in cold northern climates, and as they decayed the buildings became targets for vandalism and graffiti. What the popular perception overlooked, however, was the utopian ideology that genuinely sought to transform and modernise living and working conditions. Not surprisingly, these social ambitions also resonated in what was then the Communist bloc in Eastern Europe where Brutalism flourished from the Sixties in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Eastern Germany and Russia. Notable examples include the Ministry of Highways in Georgia, the Plac Grunwaldzki Apartment Buildings in Poland, the Design Institute for Robotics and Technical Cybernetics in Russia and the spectacular Druzhba Sanitarium in the Ukraine. 

Regardless of its political origins and social ambitions, the aesthetic power of Brutalist architecture is undeniable. In the Sixties and Seventies, many architects chose to employ the brutalist style, even when working with large budgets and private clients, purely for the sheer mass and majesty it offered. In the work of architects such as Marcel Breuer, Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn and Paul Rudolph, brutalism found its highest expression. Some of the iconic works of the style include Breuer’s St John’s Abbey Church in the USA, Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in France, Kahn’s National Capital Complex in Bangladesh and Rudolph’s Faculty of Art and Architecture building at Yale.

When the @BrutalHouse Twitter feed was born in 2014, and my first tweet was sent, I wasn’t sure what to expect but any early doubts were quickly dispelled, with the feed attracting 1,000 enthusiastic followers inside of two months.?It seemed there were other like-minded people out there, with?a love of brutalist architecture. I wanted to reinvent and reappraise the term ‘Brutal’. To celebrate the very best of the traditional canon of Brutalism, bring to light many virtually unknown brutalist architectural treasures that I have come across in my real and virtual travels over the years and also to propose that brutalism lives on in so much contemporary architecture of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Perhaps finally, Brutalism can now shed its sense of danger and has come full circle, from utopia, to dystopia and back again. Whereas once so much of the world’s Brutalist architectural heritage was neglected, unloved and in danger of being torn down and relegated to landfill, now we can celebrate the power and beauty of this most compelling style of architecture. 

Peter Chadwick

Peter Chadwick is a London-based art director and tutor in graphic design and communication at Chelsea College of Arts. He shares his passion for Brutalism and all things concrete and modern via Twitter (@BrutalHouse), an Instagram account (@thisbrutalhouse), a website (thisbrutalhouse.com) and a book, This Brutal World (Phaidon 2016).

Chadwick’s work has been published in publications and magazines worldwide, his work has been exhibited in the UK, Europe and Asia. With over 25 years experience working in the music, fashion, retail and arts sectors, Chadwick has worked with clients and major recording artists including Primal Scream, Beth Orton, Groove Armada, Defected, Ministry of Sound, Harvey Nichols and Paul Smith. 

He has now created a series of striking posters featuring three classic British car parks – Portsmouth’s Tricorn Centre, Gateshead’s Trinity Square and London’s Welbeck Street. Chadwick’s posters come in two formats. A2 posters cost £30 for one, £55 for 2 and £80 for 3. A1 posters cost £45 for one, £85 for two and £125 for three. (Prices exclude P&P)

To order email: [email protected] //

Excerpts from This Brutal World. Words by Peter Chadwick, published by Phaidon.