As Domus has observed, Brutalist architecture has delivered an important but sometimes controversial legacy to the contemporary world. Emerging in the post-World War II period from England as an architectural current openly contesting the principles and stylistic features then dominant in the Modern Movement, and then spreading all over the world, Brutalism displays recurring elements, despite contextual variables: the bare and “antigracious” lexicon of massive and rigorous volumes, the straightforward functionalism expressed through the clear and efficient planivolumetric layout and the strictly exposed structure, the enthusiastic use of raw reinforced concrete as the preferred material both for its structural and economic qualities and for its figurative valances.
In spite of the supporters who see in this proudly anti-intellectual architecture, speaking to the masses whose needs it interprets, above all in civic and community buildings, a ‘’rough‘’ (as Smithsons defined it) but powerful poetics, detractors see it as an emblem of the dysfunctions of the modern city, due to the sometimes indifferent and not always resolved relationship with the environmental context and the material degradation that has often undermined the durability of the works.
From Italy to the United States, from Tunisia to Japan, Domus has selected 10 Brutalist architectures “at risk” of survival which today, victims of decay, of the changing winds of the market, of a lack of programmatic vision on the part of public bodies and investors, languish in limbo waiting to see if they are to rise to new life or succumb to the blows of the bulldozer.
Opening image: Hilario Candela, Miami Marine Stadium, Miami, US. Photo Felix Mizioznikov from Adobe Stock

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