Perhaps the most hated building in America. Its inverted, upside-down wedding cake design is either a masterpiece of civic democracy or a concrete parking garage that got lost. Architects Gerhard Kallmann and Noel McKinnell designed it to be "monumental but accessible." Most Bostonians just call it ugly.

Here is the plot twist. While Boomers and Gen X are campaigning to demolish these "concrete monstrosities," Generation Z is obsessing over them. On social media, the hashtag #Brutalism has billions of views.

The term "Brutalism" (originally béton brut —raw concrete) was popularized by Swedish architect Hans Asplund and later adopted by the British duo Alison and Peter Smithson. However, the godfather of the movement was Le Corbusier. His Unité d'Habitation in Marseille is the primordial beast: a colossal slab of concrete raised on pilotis, containing 337 apartments, a rooftop track, and a hotel.

In the end, O Brutalista is not a film about an architect. It is a film about what the United States asks immigrants to abandon: memory, language, dignity, and sometimes sanity. László Tóth builds a cathedral of concrete, but the country sees only a bunker. Corbet’s masterpiece argues that the brutalist spirit—unyielding, honest, scarred—is the only appropriate aesthetic for the 20th-century exile. Because for those who have survived the unthinkable, there is no smooth facade to return to. There is only the quarry, the raw material, and the stubborn act of building anyway.

Some of the most iconic examples of Brutalist architecture can be found around the world. Here are a few notable examples:

: The film reveals that Tóth’s masterpiece, the Van Buren Institute, subtly mirrors the architecture of the concentration camps that imprisoned him, turning a capitalist commission into a subversive monument to trauma. The Brutality of The Brutalist - Commentary Magazine

Why? Because O Brutalista looks incredible on a phone screen. The high contrast, the moody shadows, the sheer scale—it is highly photogenic. But deeper than that, there is a philosophical resonance.

Despite these criticisms, O Brutalista has had a lasting impact on architectural design. The style's emphasis on sustainability, functionality, and social equality has influenced generations of architects and continues to shape the built environment.

By the 1980s, O Brutalista had fallen from grace. Why? Because concrete ages poorly in wet climates. Those heroic slabs turned black with mold and streaked with rust (a phenomenon known as "spalling"). The utopian plazas that were designed for community gatherings became havens for crime and neglect.