Concrete Concept: Brutalist Buildings Around the World by Christopher Beanland
Frances Lincoln, 2016
Hardcover, 192 pages

Heroic: Concrete Architecture and the New Boston by Mark Pasnik, Michael Kubo, Chris Grimley
The Monacelli Press, 2015
Hardcover, 336 pages

Late last year when I was at the New York Public Library's main building I stopped into the gift shop, which was decked out for holiday shopping. On a shelf alongside other toys was Blockitecture, its first series devoted to Brutalism (photo below). My first thought was that Brutalism ? the "style" of concrete architecture from the late 1950s to early 1970s ? was finally, officially hip. This was good, since it implied that the hatred of Brutalist buildings was waning, subject to reappraisal by younger generations that grew fond of the rough concrete and aggressive forms, much like others now embrace Postmodernism, a style I still have a hard time swallowing. But my second thought was that the toy blocks didn't really resemble Brutalist buildings. Some of the blocks interlocked, which made sense, but they were faceted rather than orthogonal; full of color; and the windows were appliqué rather than integral to the forms. In other words, there was an evident misunderstanding of Brutalist architecture. These books, in their own ways, serve to remedy that rampant confusion.
A photo posted by John Hill (@therealarchidose) on Dec 5, 2015 at 11:42am PST

Concrete Concept assembles 50 Brutalist buildings...