Climbed an aircraft, skin shade pale,
Amongst elderly fields of Daily Mail;
Time is dead, time to kill,
Travelling, yet feel so still.
Leaving grey, mist relief,
Into colour; flame Tenerife.
Gigantic mountainous, against so weak,
They speak, they tower, the mighty peak.
Amidst snaking roads fear do give,
Astonishment! In this they live.
Such beauty makes a Spine-a-curled,
I'm here. Not there. In my other world.
Brutalist architecture is an addictive beast that has a bewitching spell on those who delight in its elephantine aggression. Coined from the french phrase "beton brut" - raw concrete - by the British architectural critic Reyner Banham, Brutalism described the style of simple, blocky concrete constructions which flourished in the 1950s & 60s (its origins begin earlier in the 20th century). It was, of course, a pun on the french word to reflect the overall general disgust in which the style was received in the country. Yet I have come to learn that whilst it often evokes much distain amongst critics and the general public alike, there are many, like me, who have an insatiable appetite for the utilitarian concrete ogres whose mundane functions, like a gaping wound, are left very much exposed. I have been traveling the world to take photographs of buildings for the past 15 years, even before I knew I was doing it. Now I actively seek them out mostly for that purpose, as we
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