Brutalist Interiors

Coming soon...

Brutalist Interiors offers a rare and richly documented exploration of the concrete spaces that define many of the world’s most significant Brutalist works. Moving beyond the façade, this volume presents a global narrative of Brutalist interior architecture—from sacred structures and civic monuments to private dwellings and contemporary reinterpretations—through new photography and original critical essays.

With contributions by leading architectural writers and historians—including Blake Gopnik, Ewan Harrison, Deane Madsen, Gili Merin, Naomi Pollock, Ljubica Slavković, Felix Torkar and Rixt Woudstra—the book foregrounds the conceptual and material intelligence embedded within Brutalist interiors. These essays offer a nuanced examination of the ethical and aesthetic imperatives that shaped Brutalist design, as well as the social and political conditions in which these interiors were conceived and constructed.

Photographs by renowned photographers such as Iwan Baan, Roberto Conte, Leonardo Finotti, Stefano Perego and Simon Phipps capture the austere beauty, formal precision and spatial dynamism of interior environments that are frequently overlooked or inaccessible. Featured projects include Denys Lasdun’s work in Ghana, Tadao Ando’s concrete meditations in Japan, and Moshe Safdie’s iconic Habitat 67 in Montreal, alongside interiors across Europe, Asia, South America and North America. These spaces—often threatened—are documented here with rigour and clarity, making Brutalist Interiors both an essential visual archive and a critical intervention.

Rather than a conventional survey, this book positions Brutalist interiors as a field of inquiry in their own right, attentive to the sensorial experience of concrete, the expressive potential of raw materials, and the ideological frameworks that informed postwar spatial practice. As such, Brutalist Interiors offers new perspectives on the afterlives of modernism and the continued relevance of Brutalist ethics in contemporary architecture.

Edited by Derek Lamberton and published by Blue Crow Media—the studio acclaimed for its architectural maps and annual Brutalist Calendar—the book reflects a commitment to intellectual rigour and considered design. With large-format pages, tactile materials and a restrained typographic palette, Brutalist Interiors is conceived as both a reference work and a collector’s object, inviting reflection on the intersections of architecture, ideology and material culture.

Brutalist Interiors will be shipping from early September.

ISBN 978-1-912018-22-2