The New Brutalism By Reyner Banham Access

Reyner Banham’s 1966 book, The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic? , remains the defining manifesto for one of the most misunderstood architectural movements of the 20th century. This paper argues that Banham’s primary intervention was not merely to catalogue a style, but to elevate a nascent architectural attitude into a coherent critical category. By tracing Banham’s argument from its origins in the 1950s Architectural Review to the book’s final form, this analysis demonstrates how Banham distinguished New Brutalism from orthodox Modernism through its tripartite commitment: memorability as an image, a radical honesty of materials , and an aesthetic of “as found” reality. Ultimately, the paper concludes that Banham’s Brutalism was less about raw concrete (béton brut) and more about a moral and intellectual posture against the establishment of the International Style.

Banham’s 1955 article, “The New Brutalism,” in the Architectural Review , first codified the movement. He identified three core principles: 1) Formal legibility of structure (the “beauty of the skeleton”), 2) Clear exhibition of materials (no paint over brick), and 3) An architecture of “image” rather than space—a building that reads as a single, memorable gestalt. This was a direct riposte to the picturesque spatial manipulation of figures like Frank Lloyd Wright. the new brutalism by reyner banham

When critic Reyner Banham first used the term “New Brutalism” in 1955, it was almost a joke—a label for a cluster of unpolished, aggressive projects by Alison and Peter Smithson, such as the Hunstanton School (1954). By the time he published The New Brutalism in 1966, the term had been applied to everything from Marseille’s Unité d’Habitation to London’s brutalist council estates, often as a pejorative. Banham’s task was therefore forensic: to rescue the term from mere abuse and forge a precise critical framework. This paper explores how Banham shifted architectural criticism from formal description to ethical evaluation, arguing that New Brutalism’s true legacy is its demand that architecture reveal, not conceal, its means of existence. Reyner Banham’s 1966 book, The New Brutalism: Ethic