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To Preserve the Concrete: Architectural Enthusiasts Map Dutch Brutalism

As an architectural style, brutalism is not generally a favourite amongst the general public. Yet these rough, often monumental concrete buildings certainly have some fans. In the book Bruut, five enthusiasts describe a hundred Dutch buildings. They have a dual purpose: to stimulate appreciation for Brutalism and also to protect the concrete heritage from the demolition hammer.

The Brutalism Appreciation Society was founded in 2007 as the first manifestation of a renewed interest in the monumental, often intimidating concrete structures that appeared all over the world from the 1950s to the 1980s. Today, the society can boast more than 200,000 followers on Facebook. The brutalist architectural style has often been considered ugly by the general public, but more recently architects and other aesthetes have increasingly wondered what should become of all those striking buildings; many of which have, by now, seen their best days.

In 2014, the more than 100-meter-high AfE Tower, a concrete skyscraper built in the early 1970s, was demolished in Frankfurt, while brutalist buildings in the United Kingdom and the United States have also fallen prey to the demolition hammer. Three years later, those demolitions inspired the large-scale SOS Brutalism exhibition in Frankfurt. The exhibition and its accompanying book provided an inventory of the most important brutalist buildings from the 1950s, 60s and 70s and, as the title indicates, suggested that these monoliths are in danger and need rescuing.

A similar idea has recently taken hold in the Low Countries, as seen by the protests of a Belgian action committee against the demolition of the brutalist swimming pool in Ostend, a design by Paul Felix and Jan Tanghe (1978). The resistance was, however, futile: the province issued a demolition permit for the pool. People have also appealed to stop the planned demolition of the Ter Leie swimming pool in Wervik, another structure in the same province, because they do not believe that the special structural design by architect Lucien Cnockaert should simply be destroyed.

In the Netherlands, too, a lively discussion surrounding the heritage value of brutalist buildings is ongoing. A few years ago, for example, it was argued that Leeuwenburg, the concrete building designed by Piet Zanstra on the Amstelplein, which housed the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences for many years, should be protected as a municipal monument. That didn’t happen. Instead, part of Zanstra’s building will be demolished and the remaining structure will be extensively renovated, as part of a redevelopment of the area. Meanwhile, nothing remains of one of Zanstra’s other masterpieces: the Burgemeester Tellegenhuis, better known by its nickname Maupoleum, after the infamous real estate entrepreneur Maup Caransa who helped finance its construction, was demolished in 1994, just 23 years after its completion. Few shed a tear at the disappearance of what was widely considered as one of the ugliest buildings in the Netherlands. Even today there are people who are not remotely concerned about the disappearance of the brutalist building tradition, as evidenced by the founding of the Society for the Non-Preservation of Brutalism (which, at the time of writing, counts about 1,700 members on its Facebook page).

The recently published Atlas of Brutalism in the Netherlands (main title: Bruut) takes a pro-preservation stance in the discussion. The book was compiled by five ‘enthusiasts’: Arjan den Boer, Martijn Haan, Bart van Hoek, Martjan Kuit and Teun Meurs. They support “the preservation of brutalist heritage” and see their book as a means “to introduce a wide audience to this architectural style.” The authors of the pleasant and amply illustrated coffee table book have even dared to formulate two very concrete goals. They hope that, due to their book, “at least one building will be saved from demolition” and that another will receive “a national monument designation”.

The latter goal is by no means a pipe dream, as their book shows. Of the hundred selected buildings, more than a fifth do have an official monument designation. The designation is sometimes municipal (for example the Star Tower of Utrecht University, a design by Sjoerd Wouda) and sometimes national (including the Municipal Sports Centre in Breda by Bureau Margry and Van Hoytens, and the mighty Aula of TU Delft by Van den Broek and Bakema). It is, perhaps, another building in the oeuvre of Van den Broek and Bakema that has the greatest chance of being recognised as a national monument in the foreseeable future: the town hall in Terneuzen, which has been likened to “a concrete ark that jumped over the dike and found its home in Zeeland Flanders,” according to the authors. It’s also “one of the few buildings in the Netherlands that everyone agrees is an example of brutalism.”

This agreement is important because, even though the style is much discussed, it is not always exactly clear what brutalism is or is not. The determination of a precise definition remains a subject of animated discussion. The French-Swiss Le Corbusier was the first to use the term béton brut or raw concrete. But the fact that the concrete facade of his world-famous Unité d’Habitation in Marseille, for which he coined the term, remained so unpolished had more to do with a tight budget than a preconceived aesthetic. The word brutalism was subsequently used by architects and architectural historians such as Hans Asplund, Alison Smithson and Reyner Banham. The authors of Bruut, however, do not indulge in any academic nitpicking. Instead, they regard brutalism as a “set of characteristics” rather than a style. They have cleverly used the title of their book as an acronym indicating the characteristics of brutalist architecture: the B for Concrete (béton), the R for Rough, the U for unambiguous (uitgesproken in Dutch, meaning that we are able to see how the building is put together), the second U for Ultra (massive, imposing) and the T for Texture (the tactility of the concrete surface).

This list of characteristics is, of course, just a starting point. Moreover, the characteristics mentioned do not apply to all the buildings included in the book. The question remains whether the sleek minimalism of the well-known Stichthage office building, with its black horizontal strips, which sits above The Hague’s central station or the futuristic Zonnetrap senior complex designed by Enrico and Luzia Hartsuyker on Rotterdam’s Molenvliet even belong in a book about brutalism.

The authors ultimately selected a hundred buildings from a list of almost five hundred. They candidly admit that the selection was “not an objective process” but, rather, a somewhat personal choice in which they took into account the use of concrete, the period in which a building was constructed and the regional distribution. After all, their ‘atlas’ is primarily organised on geographical grounds. The buildings were collected from five regions: North and South Holland and the Southern, Central and Northeast regions.

For each region, they present a number of brutalist buildings with three in-depth pieces as follow-up: an architect’s portrait (from Ben Ingwersen to Hugh Maaskant, Sier van Rhijn, Piet Zanstra and Van den Broek and Bakema), and two “thematic pieces” that focus on certain sub-disciplines of architecture.

It is noteworthy that there are very few brutalist houses in the Netherlands, with the Parpart villa in Geleen providing an important exception. Brutalism was used much more in commercial or municipal facilities, such as schools (including the beautiful First Christian LTS Heritage building designed by Ben Ingwersen on Amsterdam’s Wiebautstraat), universities (for example, the campuses of the VU, Erasmus University, TU Delft, TU Eindhoven, the University of Twente and Utrecht University) and in civil engineering projects like roadway flyovers (such as that of the Lelylaan over the Huizingalaan in Amsterdam), factories (such as the Berenplaat production company in Spijkenisse) or other infrastructure projects (such as the extremely elegant windbreak on the Calandkanaal in the port of Rotterdam). Official and office buildings were also often built in brutalist style, such as Hugh Maaskant’s North Brabant provincial government building in Den Bosch and his design for the Johnson Wax headquarters in Mijdrecht.

Thanks to the many possible approaches into Bruut (via the region, building, architect, theme or photos by architectural photographer Bart van Hoek) the atlas is a pleasant book to look at and read. What it lacks in scientific foundation it makes up for in accessibility. It is a book by and for enthusiasts – and that is the sum of its ambition – apart from the previously mentioned hope that Bruut will actually succeed in convincing more people of the importance of brutalist heritage and the need to preserve it.

But whether or not it is a good idea to preserve every brutalist building is another question. For example, the mighty St. Joseph’s Church (1952), an impressive design by Gerard Holt and Karel Tholens in the Amsterdam district of Bos en Lommer, still stands proudly upright. It even has the status of a national monument. A planned demolition in the 1990s never happened. Instead, the church was repurposed and now the dark colossus houses… the Candy Castle Play Paradise. It might have been better to blow it up, if you ask me.

Bart van Hoek, Martijn Haan, Teun Meurs, Arjan den Boer & Martjan Kuit, Bruut. Atlas van het brutalisme in Nederland, WBooks, Zwolle, 2023, 319 pages

• architecture
• brutalism