Jessica,

Have a wonderful vacation. I will miss your blogs. I try to check in at least once a day. This site is definately on my favorites list. I pass this URL on to all my women friends, YOUNG AND OLD, and a few guys. I'm in the old catagory, but it does my heart good to know that there are young feminist women following behind me. My mother was a feminist, and so was my grandmother. Keep the faith.

Jeanette

The term “Brutalism” was introduced by the architectural critic Reyner Banham in his 1966 publication The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic? This movement was meant to redirect modern architecture toward a more monumental and heroic form and away from what was increasingly perceived as a frivolous, less utilitarian modern mode of architecture. Although the origins of Brutalism are found in Le Corbusier’s later work, the style was further established in London by Peter and Alison Smithson, and it flourished through the 1960s and 70s in the concrete buildings of many internationally known architects such as Gordon Bunshaft, I. M. Pei, and Tadao Ando, all three of whom have received the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize. One of the earliest buildings in the Brutalist style is Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation, built in Marseilles, France, in 1946–1952.

This 12-story apartment building consists of a rectangular structure elevated on piers. Made from reinforced concrete, the grid design allowed for precast apartment modules to be set into the building frame. Le Corbusier’s béton brut, or “raw concrete,” became the most popular style of material for Brutalist buildings, and is characterized by the appearance of seams and imprints left in the concrete after being processed. Although Brutalism was initially meant to restore honesty to modern architecture, it quickly became synonymous with the more severe and ugly concrete buildings constructed across Europe after World War II.