Bare concrete walls with protruding ventilation pipes: Berlin’s mouse bunker looks like a battleship full of cannons. The building conveys an aura of isolation, even hostility – and that fits its function perfectly. It housed the “Central Animal Laboratories” of the Free University of Berlin, so it was a huge animal testing facility.
Long derided as “ugly as hell”, unused and doomed to demolition, the building has gained new appreciation in recent years, so that it was listed as a historical monument in 2023. The same goes for other buildings that are classified as brutalist. Images of these concrete monsters are shared en masse on social networks.
On the occasion of the Open Monument Day on Sunday (8 September), the question arises: What is behind this change of heart?
Bodybuilding Architecture
Brutalism has nothing to do with brutality – it is more like champagne brut, dry champagne. “Béton brut” means “raw concrete”. The expression was coined by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier (1887-1965). After the Second World War, he stopped covering concrete structures and began to make the concrete visible as it appears after the wooden formwork has been removed. Hence the name “exposed concrete”.
Le Corbusier found that more honest. Brutalist architecture is almost provocatively direct, it is monumental, it shows off. Brutalism expert Oliver Elser, curator at the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt and founder of the “SOS Brutalism” initiative, calls it “bodybuilding architecture”. In West Germany, the architectural style was also a conscious contrast to the architecture of the economic miracle period: “This is especially true of the brutalist churches, which exude an aesthetic of austerity and humility.”
It is not for nothing that the grand master of brutalist church building, the Cologne architect Gottfried Böhm (1920–2021), was called “the god of concrete”. His main work is the pilgrimage church of Neviges near Wuppertal.
A real concrete mountain that you climb up an ascending path, like on a hike to the summit. Then you step through a crevice in the rock and initially think you are in a cave. Beautiful red light falls in through a window niche – you feel like you are in another world, removed from the earthly and enchanted. “It is simply a brilliant piece of architecture,” says former Cologne Cathedral master builder Barbara Schock-Werner to the German Press Agency.
The Bensberg Acropolis
Böhm’s most important secular building (non-ecclesiastical building) is the town hall in Bensberg near Cologne: another mountain of concrete that Böhm cheekily placed on the remains of a medieval castle. The color even matches, and the outline of the new building is reminiscent of a ruin with a tower.
Nevertheless, there is something shocking about the stark combination of castle walls and concrete facades. The building has been given numerous nicknames such as “Bensberg Acropolis”, “Civil Service Bunker” and “Aapefelse” (Monkey Rock).
Germany has many such brutalist-style town halls because local governments expanded in the post-war period. At that time, the public sector – as well as the Catholic and Protestant churches – had the money needed for ambitious new architecture.
In addition, new universities were founded as part of the major education initiative of the 1960s and 70s – an outstanding example is the Ruhr University in Bochum, which was built entirely in the brutalist style. It is intended as a knowledge port in the sea, in which the buildings of the various faculties are anchored like ships. The Audimax in the center looks like a giant shell.
“Concrete is practically celebrated here, and that is brutalist architecture in the best sense,” says expert Oliver Elser. “Brutalist architecture is very artistic, it throws tricks.” That’s why not every concrete building from that time can be described as brutalist. The database at SOSBrutalism.org provides an overview.
In the 1980s, concrete houses became too expensive
At the beginning of the 1980s, brutalism gradually went out of fashion – for various reasons. Firstly, it was simply too complex and too expensive: a wooden formwork always has to be built first, into which the concrete is then poured, and once it has dried, nothing can be changed – a very demanding construction method if the result is to be as sculptural as Gottfried Böhm’s. Concrete walls are also difficult in terms of energy because they cool down quickly.
Brutalist buildings were soon seen as a perversion of taste – for example, the Ruhr University in Bochum was long said to be built in such an inhumane way that it made people depressed.
“But that was mainly because there were too few cafes, too few places where you could relax,” says Elser. “As a student, you had the feeling that you were entering a scientific battery farm with one giant cafeteria where everyone had to eat at the same time. You learned something later and made adjustments.”
Elser also denies that concrete is a building material that weathers particularly quickly. After all, the concrete bunkers from the Second World War still stand in the landscape pretty much unchanged. Cleaning the concrete with a water jet every few decades is actually all that is required in terms of maintenance – unless the concrete was poorly processed during construction.
After 2010, brutalism was rediscovered by a new generation. In many cases, this was triggered by the demolition of concrete buildings that had shaped the cityscape, which provoked resistance. It also attracted attention on social networks.
“It all started with a Facebook group for the Brutalism Appreciation Society, which had a lot of English humor,” says Elser. “The name itself contains a conscious counter-action – for a long time, brutalism was not appreciated. But then it went viral.”
For Africans, brutalism marks the overcoming of colonialism
The new interest in brutalism is by no means limited to Germany. “Many African countries and also India are currently exploring their brutalist architecture as a liberation from colonial rule. So that is a positive legacy,” says Elser.
“Whereas in former Eastern Bloc countries such as the Baltic states or Slovakia, brutalist architecture is also associated with Moscow’s dominance during the Soviet era, so there it is regime architecture.” The context changes from region to region.
In Germany, Elser recommends the Mouse Bunker in Berlin, the Ruhr University Bochum and the cathedral in Neviges as special eye-catchers, as well as the Ingolstadt City Theater, the Munich Courthouse on Nymphenburger Strasse and the town halls in Pforzheim, Meckenbeuren-Kehlen, Bad Friedrichshall, Gronau and Marl.
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