The best brutalism books to add to your library in 2025

While brutalist buildings and their formidable exteriors can feel at odds with nature, Brutalist Plants, by Olivia Broome, shows otherwise. This beautifully-photographed tome captures the beauty of stark concrete architecture alongside lush environments—a tactic that many architects used to soften their buildings. Here you'll take in inspiring images of modernist classics and contemporary structures alike engulfed in greenery—proof that calm can co-exist with a concrete jungle.

Brutalist Italian architecture is the result of a five-year project by photographers Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego. Their work places a spotlight on some of Italy’s most interesting (and most neglected) concrete buildings. The book captures architectural heroes of the era, while also documenting forgotten ones, whether left unfinished or abandoned.

London's world-famous brutalist icon is celebrated in a book of images and commentary from its architects and residents both past and present. This book takes a deep dive into the functionality of the building and showcases the 140 different flat types via drawings, maps and intricate details – all proof that the Barbican is an icon for a reason.

Concrete Architecture offers more than a century’s worth of the world’s most influential brutalist buildings, from soaring Soviet-era memorials to sculptural apartment blocks. This hefty tome, as its name suggests, is a celebration of concrete and offers a survey of its role in building design, from its earliest usage until the present day.

Brutalist Paris, the first book from the design-focussed map-making company Blue Crow Media, a photographic study of the French capital’s surviving brutalist treasures. This book is not one to skim through, as it focuses on 50 of the French capital’s buildings, each with accompanying academic essays that explore French culture’s deep relationship with architecture, modernity and social change.

Brutal Wales dives deep into the surprising history of modern Welsh architecture. This hefty volume is part of a series of publications by Simon Phipps, who has been investigating brutalist architecture across the country for more than 20 years. The book is designed by Marc Jennings, and comes with both Welsh and English language text throughout.

Simon Phipps is back with another brutalism tome. Yet if you think this fine art photographer is just about aesthetics, think again. Instead, through his lens, he captured the rebuilding of Britain after World War II. Of course the imagery appeals to the eye, however this collection and extensive research also documents the political and social landscape following the aftermath of the war. Read the full review here

Simon Henley, an award-winning architect, knows a thing or two about a materials-led approach to designing buildings. But, rather than architecture, this book focuses on the social idealism that underpinned so many of brutalist buildings. For Henley the best examples were a response to society and free from hierarchies. The book goes deep into the critique of brutalism, both positive and negative, and frames this architectural movement as a living and evolving entity.

For a view into Brutalism's wilder side, add this tome about the architecture of the former USSR to your bookshelf. The other-worldly buildings and monuments on display here – constructed between 1970 and 1990 – reflect the ideology of the time with architecture that awes as much as it puzzles.

This book takes a look at the architects behind the monolithic, concrete facades. Flip through its pages and encounter 250 architects, both historic and contemporary, that have shaped brutalism as we know it today, through 200 renowned and forgotten works. With more than 350 photographs, The Brutalists is so much more than mere eye-candy.