BRUTALIST ARCHITECTURE MODELS

Brutalism has had a complicated few decades. Beloved by architects and architectural historians almost from the beginning, it spent thirty years being blamed for everything wrong with postwar urbanism before a serious critical reassessment began — one that is still ongoing, and that has made these buildings some of the most discussed and most defended in the world.

The case for Brutalism was always straightforward: these are buildings that take structure seriously, that refuse to disguise what they are made of or how they stand up, and that treat concrete not as a regrettable necessity but as a material with its own texture, weight, and expressive possibilities. Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation in Marseille (1952) established the terms. Erno Goldfinger's Trellick Tower in North Kensington (1972) remains the most argued-about residential building in Britain. Denys Lasdun's National Theatre on the South Bank (1976) is the movement's finest civic achievement in London — and, most would now concede, one of the finest buildings of any era in the city.

The collection also includes Centre Point at the top of Charing Cross Road, the Lauderdale Tower at the Barbican, the Toast Rack in Manchester, and Marcel Breuer's Armstrong Rubber Company Building in New Haven — a reminder that American Brutalism, at its best, was every bit as serious as its British and European counterparts.

Each model is cast in fine plaster and finished by hand in our West Sussex studio.