Interventions peeled back to reveal a building’s brutalist beauty

If one is so inclined, an online search will uncover, in equal measure, vitriol and praise for the architectural movement of Brutalism (early 1950s to 1970s). In 2016, the New York Times proclaimed that not only were historians or preservationists lauding it, but also “an independent public has found beauty in [Brutalism’s] rawness.” Also in 2016, The Independent reported the “once-hated Brutalist social housing buildings in the U.K. have become some of the most sought-after addresses in Britain.”

Yet, Marcus Gee, writing in The Globe in 2022, called the University of Toronto’s John P. Robarts Library “a sci-fi version of a medieval castle” with “dull concrete walls [that] admit light grudgingly through tall slit windows.” In Western University’s student newspaper, The Gazette, Gabrielle Drolet wrote that Western’s D.B. Weldon Library “is ugly.”