Beauty in Brutalism. Washington, D.C., U.S.A. August 2017.
Washington, D.C., USA. August 2017.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is one of the more interesting brutalist buildings in D.C. Modernist Marcel Breuer designed the building and included two of his style signatures: the concrete curve and the deep-set rectilinear windows. The "curvilinear" shape of this 10-floor building was designed to ensure the maximum amount of light to shine into the offices while the seemingly endless grid of windows reminds you just how immense the concrete structure is. I am not typically drawn to brutalism, but HUD is striking to me because it integrates these two opposing design aspects.