The Russian embassy has taken a hard line in Bulgaria where Soviet monuments have been spray-painted to become iconic American fictional characters from Superman and the Joker to Santa Claus and Ronald McDonald.

According to the Moscow Times, Russia has continued to demand that measures be stepped up to clean and protect the statues. They also want Bulgarian authorities to identify and punish the criminals and do more to prevent future attacks.

The monument at the center of the controversy was sprayed with red paint around the anniversary of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, but some artists have had other ideas over the years as well.

Previously, this same monument in Sofia was painted bright pink to recall the Prague Spring — it later got covered in Ukrainian colors to show solidarity. They have been covered with masks as well.

Of course, this is all a bit excessive in context — these are memorials to a defunct regime and situated in a foreign country over which Russia has no control. One solution would be to simply remove them from public view, as has happened in other countries over the years, but, in the end, it’s up to Bulgaria, not Russia.

While the most theatrical Brutalist buildings remain in the former USSR, there are plenty more of these controversial concrete complexes around the world, and they draw both admiration and ire in Britain and the United States. While Prince Charles of Wales likes to call them ‘monstrous carbuncles,’ and sloppy Brutalist blunders certainly exist, many modernist concrete structures built between the 1950s and ‘80s are striking in their minimalism and solidity.

Geisel Library, San Diego, California

The Geisel Library at the University of California, San Diego (named for the author best known as Dr. Seuss) was made of reinforced concrete to save money, which enabled a more sculptural design. The 8-story structure by William Pereira has two subterranean levels and was “deliberately designed to be subordinated to the strong, geometrical form of the existing library” on the campus.

Tricorn Center, Portsmouth, England

This weird building called the Tricorn Center was a retail, nightclub and parking garage complex completed in the mid-1960s and so named because it resembles a tricorn hat from above. It was voted the third ugliest building in the UK in the ‘80s, and demolished in 2004. Charles, Prince of Wales famously called it “a mildewed lump of elephant droppings.”

Barbican Estate, London, England

This residential complex built in the ‘60s and ’70s stands right in the financial district of London, one of the few examples of British brutalist architecture that’s still mostly intact. There are three tower blocks and 13 terrace blocks positioned around a lake and green squares; the towers are each 404 feet tall.

Brunel University, London, England

Built in the ‘60s and designed by Richard Sheppard, Robson & Partners, the Brunel University Lecture Center was one of two ‘high Brutalist’ structures prominently featured in Stanley Kubrick’s film A Clockwork Orange.

Brownfield Estate, East London

Balfron Tower at the Brownfield Estate, an area of social housing in East London, is often considered the sister building of Trellick Tower. Designed by Erno Goldfinger in 1963, it contains 146 residences and features a separate elevator shaft with skybridge connections on every third floor.

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Concrete Wonders 13 Brutalist Buildings In The Usa Britain

It can be hard to explain to someone from Europe or elsewhere just how vast and variegated the United States really is, but this short epic photo series is a great start. It depicts a series of surreal landscapes, carefully chosen to show the amazing range of environments found across the American West.

Photographer Reuben Wu came originally from the United Kingdom and was awed by what he found traveling cross-country in America. On his latest trip from his home in Chicago, he looped through the northern and southern Midwest on his way to the West Coast and back, taking incredible images along the way, dubbing the series Cross Country.

He traveled this route with a plan: capture scenes at night when natural marvels were devoid of human activity and using technology to calculate when peak moonlight would allow for stunning visibility. The result is this set of vivid images that make familiar places seem alien, and speak both to beautiful variety and carefully found settings.

Subjects of the series span from Illinois and Indiana through North Dakota and Nevada, California, New Mexico and Kansas, and featured sites (or sights) include: Yellowstone, Badlands, Death Valley, the Grand Canyon and the Grand Prismatic Spring, the Devil’s Tower and the Smith Mansion.

If castles of sand are ordinarily creative (if childish) works of artistic expression, then these are their opposite – boring and relentless repetition of identical houses inspired by postwar suburbia and deployed on an incongruous grid.

This piece of Master Plan is (or rather: was) the first small and temporary installation of an ongoing series by Chad Wright (photography by Lynn Kloythanomsup of Architectural Black). The project is intended as a personal reflection on his own history as well as commentary on the American Dream in light of recent history, particularly the housing crisis. Much like market shocks (metaphorically) or the passage of time (literally), each incoming wave cracks and erodes the constituent buildings in a relentless yet unpredictable fashion.

About the artist and how his history is intertwined with this work: “I was raised in Orange County—a sprawling suburb of Southern California built by disciples of Levittown. We lived in a tract house, a symbol of the American Dream, just like our neighbors. Dad, a realtor, and mom, a preschool teacher, met while working at JCPenneys in 1970. We spent our summers in Breezy Point, New York, at the yellow beach bungalow that my grandma Stella bought with war bonds, unknown to grandpa who was stationed in Iwo Jima soon after they eloped. As children, my big brother Christopher and I would build cities in the sand, beneath the bungalow’s slatted porch floorboards. Phase One [of Master Plan] focuses on the mass-produced tract house, re-examining it as symbol for the model American Dream.