Concrete Wonders: 13 Brutalist Buildings in the USA & Britain

Temple Street Parking Garage, New Haven, Connecticut
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The post-modern six-story concrete parking garage standing on Temple Street in New Haven is textured by form-work and supported by paired reinforced concrete piers. It was designed by architect Paul Rudolph and built in 1961.

Carpenter Center at Harvard, Boston, Massachusetts
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The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard is the only building in the U.S. designed by Le Corbusier, and contrasts starkly with the traditional, centuries-old architecture most often seen on the campus. It’s a prime example of the visual innovations that went on to influence the modernist aesthetic in architecture for decades after.

Alexandra Road, London, England
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Featured in ’28 Weeks Later’ and other films, the Alexandra Road Estate is a massive 1978 reinforced concrete housing complex with 520 apartments, a school, a community center, youth club and parks. Along with two rows of housing, there’s a ziggurat-shaped eight-story block set on rubber pads to reduce vibration from the nearby trains.

National Theater, London, England

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Architect Denys Lasdun designed the National Theater building as an “urban landscape” of interlocking terraces. Again, noted Brutalism critic Prince Charles weighed in, calling it “a clever way of building a nuclear power station in the middle of London without anyone objecting.”