A personal note on the Brutalist architecture of London
I've been meaning to write this for a while, well- before I forget these gems I had cycled past more than a decade ago during my 9-5 era and also partly because I think they deserve better than a glance.
I grew up in Mumbai, a city that doesn't really do quiet or polished. Concrete there isn't precious, it's just what things are made of, and buildings wear their age openly: water stains, cracked render, wiring running along the outside because that was the easiest place to put it. I think that's where my pull toward gritty, honest architecture started. I never had much patience for buildings that try too hard to charm you. I like the ones that just tell you what they are.
That's probably why, when I moved to London, it was the Brutalist buildings that stopped me in my tracks rather than the postcard ones. And it turns out a huge number of the best examples, the odd, unfussy, slightly unloved ones, sit right here in South London.
Charing Cross Hospital
The commission came from Imperial College's brand team, which gave me a proper excuse to spend time with a building I'd only ever half noticed from a bus window before. Up close, it's enormous. The balconies stack and repeat all the way up, and there's a small clock set into the brick facade near the entrance that I found strangely moving, a tiny, human detail on a building built at an almost inhuman scale. I ended up circling the whole site more than once trying to find the angle that captured that scale honestly. The one where the corner cuts sharply against the sky is the one that stuck.
Stockwell Bus Garage
This one is genuinely a cathedral, and I mean that without exaggeration. When it opened in 1952, it had the largest unsupported roof span in Europe, a fact that still gets people (Will Self among them) calling it the most important building in London. It came out of a steel shortage, so the architects turned to concrete instead, and the result is this vast, calm, glazed hall that still holds two hundred buses. The garage wasn't directly on my route to work, but as soon as I got to know about it, I had to take detour from Clapham road to admire it in real life.
Peckham Rye Car Park
This started as a commission for a clothing brand launching at the newly refurbished 'Peckham Levels' in what was originally a brutalist multi storey car park. I have a soft spot for this one because it refuses to sit still in its own history. Now it's an open air gallery and one of London's best kept summer secrets, with views over the whole city from the roof. It's a good reminder that these buildings don't have to stay frozen as monuments. They can be reused, reclaimed, argued over, and loved in ways their original architects never planned for.
Brutalist Library, South Norwood
My Covid years in West Norwood. Long walks and bike rides to not lose my mind. This building is 100% miss-able if you weren't looking for it. Small, unassuming and nearly lost more than once. Designed by Hugh Lea and completed in 1968, it's often described as a "Mini Mies," all glass and clean geometry, dropped into an otherwise Victorian high street. It nearly closed a few years ago before a local campaign, led by residents who clearly loved it as much as I do from the outside, fought to keep it open. It's one of those buildings that proves Brutalism was never really about scale. Sometimes it's just about being honest with a small budget and a good idea.
Lambeth Towers
This is the one I whizzed past almost daily on the way into work. Designed by George Finch in the 1960s and completed in 1972, its ten storeys of cranked concrete stack irregularly so that every maisonette gets its own balcony and dual light. Finch was a committed socialist who believed architecture could genuinely improve people's lives, and you can feel that intention in the building. It's not trying to impress you from a distance. It's designed for the people living inside it, which I think is the whole point of Brutalism that so often gets lost when people only see the concrete and stop looking.
Brixton Recreation Centre
I almost left this one off the list, not because it's less interesting than the others, but because I know it so well I nearly forgot it counts as something to notice. It was George Finch's last project for Lambeth, designed in the early 1970s and not completed until 1985, and it was finally given Grade II listing in 2016, decades after most people had already decided Brutalism was something to be embarrassed about rather than proud of.
I don't live in the area anymore, but pass it often it from the train from Bromley on the stretch coming into Brixton, where the facade rises up on the left. There's something about catching it from a moving train, half distracted, half looking at my phone and still having it register, that tells you a building is doing something right. It's not a subtle structure. As a graphic designer I love the bold signage on it as well, like it's been designed with intention for this particular structure alone. Sitting in the middle of Brixton, still in daily use, still full of people swimming and playing basketball and going about ordinary life inside it, it feels like proof that these buildings were never meant to be admired from a distance. They were meant to be lived in and used, and Brixton Rec still is.
None of these buildings are asking to be beautiful in the conventional sense. They're asking to be looked at properly, maybe for the first time in years. That's probably why I loved illustrating this series, and will always be looking to add to these (suggestions welcome!). My illustrations of Brutalist London architecture can be found here.
