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Brutalism

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HOLIDAYS IN SOVIET SANATORIUMS

AT THE CENTER of the Venn Diagram of Brutalist architecture, spa culture and Communist kitsch lies the Soviet sanatorium. In its heyday, the USSR had a network of hundreds of such centers across dozens of territories, from Estonia to Kazakhstan to the Russian Far East. Though their roots lie in the Russian tradition of curative baths, the sanatoriums of the 20th century shoehorned nicely into Soviet ideals of health and responsible rejuvenation, with workers encouraged to check themselves in yearly for a tune-up of their corporal machinery.

John Peck
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THIS BRUTAL WORLD

THIS BRUTAL WORLD, a catalog of worldwide Brutalist architecture, presents its starkly beautiful black-and-white photos as both a treatise and a love letter. The book’s author, Peter Chadwick, falls resolutely and joyously on the side of Brutalism as an egalitarian, economically progressive, and fundamentally global movement.

John Peck
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CCCP: COSMIC COMMUNIST CONSTRUCTIONS PHOTOGRAPHED

DURING THE FINAL decades of the Soviet Union, architects found themselves freer to create unconventional structures than at any point in the country’s history. This was particularly true in the republics outside Russia, where, while cursory tributes still had to be paid to overarching socialist ideals, the structures themselves took on a dizzying array of forms.

John Peck
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PHOTO GALLERY: YOYOGI STADIUM, TOKYO

IN THE SUMMER of 2020, Yoyogi Stadium (also known as the  Yoyogi National Gymnasium) will come full circle, playing host to the Olympics for the second time in half a century. Built for the 1964 Tokyo games, the stadium’s striking combination of viking-ship roof and brutalist concrete is the work of acclaimed architect Kenzo Tange, who also designed the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.

John Peck
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