[6][7] The style commonly makes use of exposed, unpainted concrete or brick, angular geometric shapes and a predominantly monochrome colour palette;[7][8] other materials, such as steel, timber, and glass, are also featured.

[10] Derived from the Swedish phrase nybrutalism, the term "new brutalism" was first used by British architects Alison and Peter Smithson for their pioneering approach to design.

[7][15] In the United Kingdom, brutalism was featured in the design of utilitarian, low-cost social housing influenced by socialist principles and soon spread to other regions around the world, while being echoed by similar styles like in Eastern Europe.

The term nybrutalism (new brutalism)[19] was coined by the Swedish architect Hans Asplund to describe Villa Göth, a modern brick home in Uppsala, designed in January 1950[11] by his contemporaries Bengt Edman and Lennart Holm.

[12] Showcasing the 'as found' design approach that would later be at the core of brutalism, the house displays visible I-beams over windows, exposed brick inside and out, and poured concrete in several rooms where the tongue-and-groove pattern of the boards used to build the forms can be seen.

[19][21][12] The first published usage of the phrase "new brutalism" occurred in 1953, when Alison Smithson used it to describe a plan for their unbuilt Soho house which appeared in the November issue of Architectural Design.

[4] Hunstanton school, likely inspired by Mies van der Rohe's 1946 Alumni Memorial Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, United States, is notable as the first completed building in the world to carry the title of "new brutalist" by its architects.

[24] The term gained increasingly wider recognition when British architectural historian Reyner Banham used it to identify both an ethic and aesthetic style, in his 1955 essay The New Brutalism.

Banham further expanded his thoughts in the 1966 book, The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic?, to characterise a somewhat recently established cluster of architectural approaches, particularly in Europe.

"[34] Architect John Voelcker explained that the "new brutalism" in architecture "cannot be understood through stylistic analysis, although some day a comprehensible style might emerge",[35] supporting the Smithsons' description of the movement as "an ethic, not an aesthetic".

[8] However, due to its low cost, raw concrete is often used and left to reveal the basic nature of its construction with rough surfaces featuring wood "shuttering" produced when the forms were cast in situ.

From another perspective, the design of the Hunstanton School included placing the facility's water tank, normally a hidden service feature, in a prominent, visible tower.

[13] Brutalism as an architectural philosophy was often associated with a socialist utopian ideology, which tended to be supported by its designers, especially by Alison and Peter Smithson, near the height of the style.

[37] This style had a strong position in the architecture of European communist countries from the mid-1960s to the late 1980s (Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, USSR, Yugoslavia).

Some well-known examples of brutalist-influenced architecture in the British capital include the Barbican Centre (Chamberlin, Powell and Bon) and the National Theatre (Denys Lasdun).

[40] Evans Woollen III, a pacesetter among architects in the Midwest, is credited for introducing the Brutalist and Modernist architecture styles to Indianapolis, Indiana.

Architectural historian William Jordy says that although Louis Kahn was "[o]pposed to what he regarded as the muscular posturing of most Brutalism", some of his work "was surely informed by some of the same ideas that came to momentary focus in the brutalist position.

[47] In Serbia, Božidar Janković was a representative of the so-called "Belgrade School of residence", identifiable by its functionalist relations on the basis of the flat[48][49] and elaborated in detail the architecture.

The treatment of the form and details is slightly associating the building with postmodernism and is today one of the rare surviving representatives of this style's early period in Serbia.

[51] In Vietnam, brutalist architecture is particularly popular among old public buildings and has been associated with the bao cấp era (lit: subsidizing), the period during which the country followed Soviet-type economic planning.

[90] Evans Woollen III's brutalist Clowes Memorial Hall, a performing arts facility that opened in 1963 on the campus of Butler University in Indianapolis, was praised for its bold and dramatic design.

[95] However, in recent years, as public attitudes towards brutalism have shifted, the library has been referred to as one of the "ugliest" buildings in Georgetown and Washington, D.C.[97][98][99] Examples of brutalist university campuses can be found in other countries as well.

Although it has been called "a crowning achievement of the brutalist movement", its opening in 1974 came after public sentiment had turned against brutalism, leading to it being condemned as "a blunder on the grandest scale".

Many of the defining aspects of the style have been softened in newer buildings, with concrete façades often being sandblasted to create a stone-like surface, covered in stucco, or composed of patterned, precast elements.

[109] The Twentieth Century Society has unsuccessfully campaigned against the demolition of British buildings such as the Tricorn Centre and Trinity Square multi-storey car park, made famous by its prominent role in the film Get Carter, but successfully in the case of Preston bus station garage, London's Hayward Gallery, and others.