The term Brutalism does not come from the German word brutality. It is based on the French term for raw concrete: béton brut. This is what the world-famous architect Le Corbusier, among others, called the concrete left visible on some of his defining buildings.
In our new site-specific work BRUTOLOGY, we explore the utopian and dystopian potential of brutalist architecture and infrastructure. As distinctive international architecture style after World War II, Brutalism also symbolized the reconstruction of Europe with its dreams of modernism, urban growth, and social justice.
Today, it has long been associated with a sense of disenchantment. Many people perceive its massive buildings of exposed concrete as monotonous, ugly, and unlivable.
Nowadays this style seems strangely substantial, yet its infrastructure permeates our entire society, for concrete is still the most widely used building material. In the age of deconstruction, nonlinearity and digitalization could Brutalism, with its promise of security, even represent a sort of final spirituality, a “Brutology”?