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SOS Brutalism: A Global Survey
Edited by Oliver Elser, Philip Kurz and Peter Cachola Schmal
(Park Books £39)
THE TERM brutalism creates disparaging associations in English — it is diametrically different in meaning from Le Corbusier’s initial usage of “beton brut” meaning “raw concrete.” British critic Reyner Banham coined the glib misnomer in his study of concrete architecture The New Brutalism and it has become a shortcut for heaping scorn.
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