Brutalism (or just plain ugly)

Like the earlier Art Deco, Brutalism is also about concrete - but unlike Deco's vision to cheer the place up with decoration and colour, Brutalism goes for 'raw honesty'. The concept is essentially exposed concrete, poured into and 'formed' by a mould. That mould is usually made of wooden planks or sheets of plywood - hence the wood-grain pattern that some buildings have. There's an idea that low-skilled tradies can build moulds quickly, and concrete can be poured quickly, so the whole process is relatively cheap - or a lot cheaper than, say, building in brick. And in New Zealand of course it ought also to resist earthquakes.

When the French architect Le Corbusier used the expression beton brut he meant simply raw or exposed. Working in the sunny warm south of France and not knowing how it would turn out 40 years later, it didn't occur to him that it might come to mean ugly, filthy, stinky, suicide-inducing or dystopian, all of which it came to mean in Britain. In English the connection with the word brutal is all too obvious, so the word brutalism is often stretched and (mis) used to describe anything that's ugly - or indeed just distinctively geometric, blocky or boxy. 

Wellington, being a haven for narcissist obsessions, cheap knock-offs and fashions that have long expired elsewhere, has quite a lot of true brutalism still lurking around - not to mention plenty of the more general ugly sort. There's also a fine collection of horrible concrete churches all over New Zealand ... but they'll get their own page some day. Meanwhile here are some of the local classics.