Bits of Brutalism

The forms and language of Brutalism have always inspired, especially the internal structures, radiuses and shuttered imprints. This image (via Tumble) gives a detail of St. Peter's Seminary in Cardross, near Glasgow. The building, commissioned in 1966 and designed by Metzstein and MacMillan (of Gillespie, Kidd and Coia), is now a ruin having been abandoned in 1980. Even in its graffitoed delapidation friends tell me of the magic of it's aspect emerging out of the now overgrown site. In 2003 Ruaridh Nicoll argued in the Observer for its world-class status but also bemoaned public distaste for the restoration of such a form.



A long-coveted bible of Brutalism from Camberwell's library, also born in 1966. Featuring a beautiful kindergarten with a white-brick cylindrical den on recall, which I must review. The austere, gravity-laden typesetting and grid totally at one with the subject matter.



A Stephen Russ Penguin Poets jacket from 1967. His designs for the series throughout the 1960s carry a real signature quality. The premise for the series, sustaining an abstract-pattern-interpretation to the content, is something I always wish could carry through more to prose fiction jacket commissioning. I guess Picador got close with Russell Mills' images for Ian McEwan's early novels.