Originally constructed as Paddington British Rail Maintenance Depot and known as Canal House, the building sits adjacent to the Westway Flyover (an elevated section of the A40/London to Fishguard Road) and is surrounded by roads on all sides. It fell into disrepair during the 1990s before being refurbished and converted into office space in 2000 by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris Architects. The nearest stations are Barbican London Underground station (easy to remember!) and Liverpool Street national rail station. Remarkable’: Hermit’s Castle on the north-west coast of Scotland. Photograph: unknown/Barnabas Calder News from Dezeen Events Guide, a listings guide covering the leading design-related events taking place around the world. Plus occasional updates. Dezeen Awards China

As such, things like lift shafts, ventilation ducts, staircases – even boiler rooms, were integrated into the fabric of the building in ways that celebrated them as distinct features rather than hidden away.The Dyott Street elevation (bottom left) is now an office development known as The Rookery. The name is derived from the 18th and 19th century colloquial term used to describe a city slum, which in turn is a reference to the cramped, noisy and messy nesting habits of the rook. The area around St Giles, where the Congress House is located, was an especially notorious rookery. The multi-phased refurbishment, which spanned a period of over 20 years, was completed in 2018 and carried out by Hugh Broughton Architects.

Perfect for a walking tour or framing, this map is printed on Cyclus Offset 140 gsm, measures 420mm x 600mm (slightly larger than A2) open and folds down to 210mm x 150mm (slightly larger than A5). The map is protected by a wide band. The success or failure of these buildings in achieving their socialist goals is heavily debated. For a period of time Brutalism was favoured for institutional buildings, but by the 1980s they were spurned as too abstract and inhuman, and many were torn down. Here are 10 of the most recognisable amongst the concrete behemoths that survived demolition in London. Southbank Centre and the National Theatre, 1976, Denys Lasdun

Sleep in a brutalist hotel

News about our Dezeen Awards China programme, including entry deadlines and announcements. Plus occasional updates. In London, it was used heavily in reconstructing the city in the aftermath of World War II – particularly for social housing and government buildings – though as it grew in popularity its uses extended beyond these spheres. Best Brutalist Architecture in London The Barbican What’s more, as mentioned above, Art Deco and pre-war modernism also made it onto our radar for the first time but adding examples of both genres into this post would create architecture-overload. Instead, I have put together a separate post featuring a collection of London’s best Art Deco and early modernist architecture. Work on the recreation centre began in 1971 and dragged right on through to 1985. During that time the project was stalled by labour disputes and political struggles in Lambeth council during the late 70s and early 80s. The project was nearly abandoned several times.

The term ‘ Brutalism’ was first coined by the British architects Alison and Peter Smithson, and was then popularised by the architectural historian Reyner Banham in 1954. It is deriveed from ‘Béton brut’ (meaning raw concrete) and was first associated in architecture with Le Corbusier, who designed the Cite Radieuse in Marseilles in the late-1940s. Brutalist LondonMap is the result of a collaboration between the Twentieth Century Society and independent map publisher Blue Crow Media. The pair are due to release an Art Deco London Map in March 2016.

Banham defined the key tenets of Brutalist architecture as follows: "l, Memorability as an Image; 2, Clear exhibition of Structure; and 3, Valuation of Materials 'as found'." He explained "Memorability as an Image" as meaning that "the building should be an immediately apprehensible visual entity; and that the form grasped by the eye should be confirmed by experience of the building in use." At the same time, his essay defiantly challenged certain critics of the movement, stating, in contrast to the community ethics of some of its proponents, that "[w]hat characterises the New Brutalism is precisely its brutality, its je-m'en-foutisme ['couldn't-care-less attitude'], its bloody-mindedness." For fans all all things concrete comes this map of London’s most famous Brutalist buildings. Created by Blue Crow Media (see also their craft beer and cycling maps, it is the first in a new series of map-based guides to London architecture, focusing on the modern 1950s/60s “raw” concrete-heavy designs by Le Corbusier and others of the post-war architectural phase.

Daily updates on the latest design and architecture vacancies advertised on Dezeen Jobs. Plus occasional news. Dezeen Jobs Weekly In the United States from 1962 to 1976 Brutalism was a popular style, employed not only for academic buildings but also for libraries, government buildings, churches, and corporate headquarters: particularly those of scientific and technology companies. Several well-known international architects were commissioned to design buildings in East Coast cities, as evidenced by Le Corbusier's role, alongside Oscar Niemeyer, Wallace Harrison, and Max Abramovitz, in designing the Headquarters of the United Nations (1948-1952) in New York City. Although partly a symptom of the map’s aesthetics, it is also characteristic of an approach to cities and their histories that centres on landmark ‘poster’ buildings. As parts of the city that have been singled out or separated, they become carriers of symbolic value, entries into a particular architectural canon that becomes somehow superior to the surrounding urban fabric. To better understand cities we must question this relationship, approaching the built environment as something continuous. Perhaps the answer is suggested by the map itself: a walking tour. After all, the act of walking connects these monuments, creating a new social space that would otherwise disappear with a piecemeal approach. Whether it be Brutalist housing estates or well-known public buildings, walking is not only useful for exploration, it also gives us a new sense of these spaces, challenges preconceptions, allows us to contextualise or even transgress. In a city fortunate enough to include successes such as the National Theatre and the Barbican, and progressive projects such as the Alexandra Road Estate, Brutalist London reminds us to view the escalating trend towards privately owned public spaces with a new criticality. The tower stood partially empty for the first decade after completion, and was highly criticised by housing activists, who saw its empty office floors as an insult to the many homeless people in London. In 2010 Conran and Partners was commissioned to update the building and convert office spaces to residential units; nearly 100 apartments were modernised and a series of communal amenities were added, such as a pool and a private clubhouse with treatment rooms. This bold cultural behemoth has been compared to a nuclear reactor and an overgrown car park, and is often as confusing to navigate as an Escher painting. However, its complex and imposing concrete volumes have many fans and there is an enormous amount to see and do in and around it. Have a good look at the texture of the concrete and you will see a variety of finishes, including the imprints left by the wood ‘shuttering’ (moulds) when the concrete was cast in situ. The Skylon restaurant, housed on the first floor of the Royal Festival Hall has wonderful views over the Thames and is recommended.Brutalism's most famous stylistic motif was the use of raw concrete (French "béton brut") for exterior surfaces, leaving evidence of the construction process, such as the holes and seamlines left by the setting of liquid concrete, visible on the outsides of buildings. For Brutalist architects this approach showed a truth to the textural qualities of materials, and to the labor of construction, that epitomized their socially engaged, ethics-driven approach to their work. Moshe Safdie was born and raised in Israel, moving to Canada with his family as a teenager. He was influenced as an architect by his experience living in a kibbutz (a communal settlement in Israel), as well as by the architecture of Le Corbusier and Metabolism, a Japanese post-World War Two movement that advocated for the use of organic forms in buildings, manifested in complex webs of prefabricated modules, as in Kisho Kurokawa's Nakagin Capsule Tower (1972). Like many long-term and avid travellers, we have more or less been grounded in our home country of England for the past ten months. Of course, there are numerous frustrations attached to this. We spend a high percentage of my time daydreaming about Soviet-era mosaics in Central Asia, brutalist-style architecture in Skopje and Belgrade, and socialist-era monuments and memorials in Bulgaria, all of which were part of our travel plans for the summer just gone. But, there has been one place that has helped ease the disappointment of not being able to travel overseas and in particular our lust for architecture and that is our capital and largest city, London. How many times have you walked past this Grade ll listed London landmark and never given it a second thought?