Brutalism's definition has shifted over time

A guide to brutalism, architecture's most polarizing style

Brutalism is an architectural style that emphasizes raw materials, bold lines, and limited ornamentation. Although it was most popular in the middle of the 20th century, its fans can still be found across the globe, championing the misunderstood buildings in the world's major cities. This article from Dwell defines the style and unpacks why people feel so passionately about this design style.

Often-maligned Brutalist architecture inspired a design renaissance

Despite petitions worldwide to demolish some of its more notorious examples, Brutalism was a transformative moment in architecture. The reinforced concrete style arguably reduced costs, enabled new designs, and reduced the need for maintenance.

Breaking down the Bauhaus' minimalist, modern aesthetic

The Bauhaus style valued objects' functions above all else and, as such, largely did away with the ornate decoration of previous styles such as Victorian, colonial, or Art Deco. Instead, Bauhaus used primary colors, clean lines, and exposed industrial elements to create simple but sleek buildings, products, and typefaces.

Why the Nazis hated the Bauhaus style

The Nazis viewed the Bauhaus internationalist and collectivist philosophy to be communist and considered its modernist aesthetic as an affront to the more classical German identity they wished to project. This article from the Conversation explores the history behind that conflict, which forced the Bauhaus to move several times before ultimately closing.

Bauhaus' biggest contributions to modern architecture

Walk around almost any major metropolitan area, and you'll see Bauhaus' influence in the glass facades, tubular steel, and windows offering ample natural light. This ArchDaily explainer illustrates those concepts through iconic Bauhaus buildings, such as the Gropius House, along with detailed diagrams of their design.

Why Bauhaus—the 20th-century design school and aesthetic movement—matters today

The school, founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar, Germany, in 1919, was an experimental educational environment that valued the function of an object before its form, a philosophy that would animate the rise of minimalist and modernist design in the 20th century.

Why Le Corbusier called a house a 'machine for living'

Modernist architects aimed to boil design down to its essence, stripping ornamentation and frivolity. One of the most famous designers of that movement was Le Corbusier, who famously called a house a "machine for living in." This resource breaks down Le Corbusier's architectural theory and highlights where it can still be found today.

The widespread violence of World War I birthed surrealism

Following World War I, artists used unconventional forms of expression to make sense of the death and destruction they'd witnessed for years. Life as they knew it had ended, and movements like Surrealism, founded by André Breton, rebelled against tradition.

The de stijl movement embraced bright colors and abstract images

The 20th-century movement sought to develop a universal language for the modern era by fusing form and function. Modern day viewers will recognize its bright colors and clean aesthetic, popular with retro-styled book and album covers.

The Bauhaus school developed a sleek typography that intentionally contrasted Nazi propaganda.

American modernism highlighted a rapidly changing America

Featuring work from 1915 to 1950, the movement illustrates the country's evolution between World War I and World War II. Artists captured the loss and uncertainty of a post-war, industrialized world.

Postmodernism is a cultural movement that valued pluralism

Postmodernism is an artistic movement (in architecture, fashion, music, literature, and more) that embraced fragmentation, eclecticism, pastiche, and pluralism. The movement's practitioners reacted against modernism, which valued Enlightenment ideals, high culture, and clean aesthetics.

Basquiat's work is often called neoexpressionist

The neoexpressionist movement was a reaction to the minimalism of the 1960s, employing bold colors and brash symbolism to convey emotion and, at times, make political statements. As the style’s name implies, it was a new form of expressionism, a movement popular in the early 20th century.

Some art critics believe that Liminalism, a form of art exploring the uncanny yet familiar, defines our present moment

While analyzing images of abandoned malls or empty hallways, art historians and critics argue that this style captures the feelings of this moment in time. Liminalism, they propose, expresses prominent themes in our age like anonymity, alienation, and anxiety.

A history of Bauhaus, the influential 20th-century design movement

The design school was short-lived but immensely impactful, turning design in architecture, typography, and a number of other fields away from superfluous ornamentation and toward practical, straightforward expression. This history of the movement from the Metropolitan Museum of Art outlines its major figures, key events, and the ways its influence persists.

'The grotesque' describes a feature of Gothic literature

The term harkens back to decorative aspects of Gothic architecture, including mythical creatures like gargoyles. In literature, the grotesque describes similarly monstrous characters and situations.

What it means to call something 'Orwellian'

The adjective often refers to anything that resembles the dystopian governments of George Orwell, usually a state like the one in "1984" that monitors its citizens to ensure compliance. But as this video essay from Noah Tavlin makes clear, the more precise definition is a society that redefines language to control thought.

Modernist novels used unconventional narrative approaches

Modernist writers in the early 20th century sought to capture the complexities of the human mind in their fiction. Novelists like Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Jean Rhys, and William Faulkner experimented with the form by using unconventional approaches to narrative, time, and structure. This lecture from Dr. Madeleine Davies from the University of Reading explains how modernists revolutionized fiction, using Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” as a primary example.

The 'Movie Brats'—the nickname given to 1970s film directors like Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and others—ushered in a new era of Hollywood.

'Dystopia,' explained

John Stuart Mill introduced the term "dystopia" in 1868 to critique harmful policies, calling it the opposite of utopia, or an ideal world. The concept grew as industrialization and totalitarian regimes exposed societal flaws, inspiring works like George Orwell's "1984" to warn against oppression and moral decay.

The ways Bauhaus still shapes modern life

The German art school was around for less than 15 years, but its aesthetic and philosophy can still be seen today in sleek, minimalist design, bold typefaces, and even the corporate aesthetics of IKEA, Apple, and other brands. This DW feature visits the schools that have taken up the Bauhaus legacy, using its ideas to tackle contemporary problems.

The mid-century modern design behind 'Severance'

The streaming show "Severance" has been praised for its distinctive visual aesthetic, which blends dystopian color with tasteful mid-century modern design. This interview with the show's production designer highlights the influences and symbolism of the show's carefully-constructed sets.

Disillusioned mid-century playwrights, such as Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco, brought existentialist ideas to the stage through the Theater of the Absurd.

The political ideology of fascism originates in Italy

Fascism—first named by Benito Mussolini in 1919—derives from the Italian word fasci, linked to the Roman fasces, symbolizing authoritarian unity. Mussolini adapted this term to represent his autocratic, ultranationalist movement.

Frank Lloyd Wright was known for his uncompromising personality and visionary architecture

Written the year of his death, this article reflects on Wright’s notorious arrogance and difficult personality that kept him at odds with his contemporaries and the architectural establishment of the time. However, his boldness was an essential trait that helped define his legacy.

‘Moshing,’ an aggressive style of dancing, was initially called 'mashing'

The style, which involves audience members thrashing their bodies into one another, evolved from “pogoing,” a style popular in England where listeners jumped up and down in place. The term “moshing,” sometimes called “slam dancing” in California, is believed to come from HR, the lead singer of Bad Brains.

Body horror is a subgenre that uses anxieties about appearance

Made popular in the 1980s through films like “The Fly,” the body horror subgenre focuses on physical transformation and violence. It gained significant attention in 2024, thanks to the critical attention “The Substance” received, including an Academy Award nomination for best picture.

Literary theorists distinguish between ‘terror’ and ‘horror’

In her essay “On the Supernatural in Poetry,” gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe defined “terror” as the lurking, unseen specter in a story—something that defined gothic literature. “Horror,” on the other hand, was the explicit portrayal of it. For her, the former was artistic, while the latter was cheap.

Robber barons, the monopolistic business people of the 19th century, explained

“Robber baron” was a term used to describe 19th-century businesspeople who engaged in monopolistic business practices and didn’t face much business regulation, resulting in significant wealth.

Robert Venturi designed a whimsical house for his mother, imagining it as a child's drawing of a house.

Organic architecture marries man-made buildings with the natural context around them

Frank Lloyd Wright’s nebulous concept of organic architecture is one that even he struggled to define. Its basic premise is to make a building look as though it grew from the land it stands on by emphasizing natural materials and incorporating the surrounding environment into the design.

George Orwell: What is fascism?

This 1944 article by George Orwell attempts to answer the question, "What is fascism?" Orwell's book Animal Farm was published at about the same time at the article, and he penned 1984, a book with anti-totalitarianism sentiments, a few years afterward. In this article, Orwell argues that the term "fascism" has become near "meaningless" due to being essentially demoted to a swearword.

Modern bodybuilding evolved in the 19th century.

Browse some of the most iconic Bauhaus furniture

The Bauhaus style has become so commonplace that you might not have realized its influence on modern furniture, but the German school's impact is profound, from the Wassily and Barcelona chairs to Gropius' industrial style door knob.

Dystopian literature is focused on oppressive societies

The subgenre can come in many forms, but its shared traits are the way it reflects the anxieties and satirizes the utopian thinking of its writers’ societies. One of the earliest examples is Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels."

The history of brainwashing in America

"Brainwashing" refers to a coerced shift in worldview, often associated with cults or oppressive totalitarian governments. Though such processes are not well understood on a neurological level, they hold an outsized role in public imagination, particularly in science fiction and dystopias. This article reviews the history of the term, first popularized by Edward Hunter in 1950, and the subsequent use of the approach in pop psychology, the CIA, and more.

Dystopian narratives have influenced real-life extremists

J.M. Berger, a senior research fellow at Middlebury’s Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, traced how terrorist organizations have latched on to dystopian narratives, with some groups even embracing the texts’ lexicons and iconographies.

Bad Brains sped up punk, creating hardcore

Punk was already fast, but Washington’s Bad Brains pushed the tempo even further, creating music that would come to be known as hardcore, influencing acts like Minor Threat, Nirvana, and countless others. The band was hardly one-dimensional. Their self-titled debut bounced between blistering hardcore and slow-burning reggae about Rastafarianism.

Frank Lloyd Wright influenced contemporary architecture to have a more holistic approach

Frank Lloyd Wright’s work throughout the 20th century introduced concepts like open plans, floor-to-ceiling windows, and community-focused design. His “organic architecture” philosophy can be seen as a predecessor to today’s sustainable architecture.

The human cost of creating medieval monsters

The concept and creation of monsters have been used since time immemorial to communicate social norms and the consequences of breaking them. Some so-called monsters were judged as such solely due to having features that would be considered birth defects in modern times. This in-depth article explores the human cost of creating medieval monsters, many of whom were defined by a physical appearance that deviates from the expected.

How Bauhaus resonated in Norway

The Bauhaus style may have originated in Germany, but it had a major impact in Norway. This history unpacks the work of Marianne Brandt, Thorbjørn Lie-Jørgensen, Ola Mørk Sandvik, Hans Mollø-Christensen, and other Norwegian designers and architects

Dystopian satire became more prominent in the 20th century

Although "anti-utopian" stories have always existed, the international conflicts of World War I and World War II inspired some of dystopian literature’s most influential novels, like Yevgeny Zamyatin’s "We," Aldous Huxley’s "Brave New World," and George Orwell’s "1984." In the decades to follow, more writers would follow the example of those early novels, using the dystopian model to critique artificial intelligence, climate change, and more.

Political science professors say dystopias are defined by government coercion

Shauna Shames and Amy Atchison, two political science professors and the authors of "Survive and Resist: The Definitive Guide to Dystopian Politics,” argue that defining a real-world dystopia depends on whether a government is using coercion to protect its citizens or to control them. Shames and Atchison seek to provide a more nuanced understanding of the word “dystopia,” one they note they began hearing more and more as the COVID-19 pandemic progressed.

Toni Morrison's novels were popular postmodern texts

Toni Morrison’s novels broke new ground in American fiction by using bold structures and colloquial voices to reckon with the country’s past, developing her approach through classic early novels like “The Bluest Eye” and “Beloved,” all the way to later works like “Home.” Morrison once said, “The meaning of a novel is in its structure.”

Reactions to Abramovic’s work range from adoration to religious scorn

Abramović’s willingness to mainstream transgressive and symbolic work has inspired many, but some have also interpreted that same work as ridiculous, pretentious, or even Satanic.

Endurance art strains and exhausts the body

Artists like Marina Abramović are known for testing the limits of human endurance. Endurance art can involve carrying heavy objects or posing uncomfortably for long durations. (This resource contains some artistic depictions of violence.)

Orwell warned readers about how abuse of language can lead to dystopias

In his 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language," Orwell argues that language is the primary tool of political control and is "designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." The essay warns readers that how they use and consume language will dictate what they permit—or prohibit—in society.

The word 'dystopia' was first used in 1868

John Stuart Mill, an English philosopher, economist, and politician, uttered the word at the House of Commons while criticizing what he considered to be the government’s insufficient land policy for the Irish, saying, “What is commonly called Utopian is something too good to be practicable; but what they appear to favour is too bad to be practicable.”

Postmodern novels challenged narrative itself

Postmodernism describes the cultural movement following World War II, which found artists and thinkers responding to the horrors of the war by challenging the conventional narratives they believed allowed for it. In literature, postmodernist writers played with genre, gallows humor, and intertextuality, interrogating the form itself.

Albert Camus believed existence was 'absurd'

He didn't use "absurd" as we often do—meaning something silly—but instead to describe humans' desire to ascribe meaning and transcendence in a world that provided neither. Camus believed we needed to acknowledge and accept this absurdity rather than hopelessly believing we'd one day overcome it.