Brutalist Interiors

Brutalist Interiors

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.

Printed in Italy on lovely heavy stock paper, it includes a foreword, seven essays, and over 100 photographs.

Brutalist Interiors is also available to purchase at a discount with our 2026 Brutalist Calendar here.

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.

About the authors

Blake Gopnik is one of North America’s leading art critics. He has served as the art and design critic at Newsweek, and as the chief art critic at the Washington Post and Canada’s the Globe and Mail. In 2017, he was a Cullman Center fellow in residence at the New York Public Library, and in 2015 he held a fellowship at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York. He is the author of Warhol: A Life as Art (2020) and The Maverick’s Museum: Albert Barnes and His American Dream (2025). He has a PhD in art history from Oxford University and is a regular contributor to The New York Times.

Naomi Pollock FAIA is an American architect who writes about architecture and design in Japan. Her recent books include The Japanese House Since 1945 (2023), Japanese Design Since 1945: A Complete Sourcebook (2020) and Jutaku: Japanese Houses (2015).

Felix Torkar is an architecture historian with a focus on 20th and 21st century architecture and design. His research centers on Brutalist architecture and its resurgence. He is the author of Brutalist Berlin (2025).