Barnabas Calder

Part history, part aesthetic autobiography, wholly engaging and liable to convince those procrastinators sitting (uncomfortably) on the concrete fence.

Barnabas Calder brings us tales of the unexpected and breathes life into what some night call one of the unloveliest of building materials … illuminating and spirited.

This celebration of all things concrete will please both its aficionados and those who find it hard to love ... Calder's distinctive approach is a combination of scholarliness with personal association ... An engaging and accessible guide for those drawn towards these ex-monstrosities.

Calder provides the ideal eye-opening introduction for the curious general reader. It deserves a large audience ... This is a charmingly personal book, authoritatively knowledgeable and spikily argumentative.

The best introduction to this most exciting and visceral period of British architecture – a learned and passionate book.

A compelling and evocative read, one that is meticulously researched, and filled with insight and passion. Through Barnabas Calder’s personal narrative we gain a deep understanding and appreciation of a tough subject.

Kate Goodwin, Head of Architecture, Royal Academy of Arts

A fascinating odyssey through Britain's Brutalist landscape. The journey is sometimes breathtaking, but always insightful and informed. By its end, we understand the complexity, skill, and vision, as well as the politics, that created the buildings he explores in such loving detail.

Elizabeth Darling, author of Re-Forming Britain

Barnabas Calder is a self-outed lover of concrete, a man who doesn’t visit buildings but makes “pilgrimages”. He holds back on neither his praise for the objects of his passion, nor his wrath against those who threaten them. Buy this excellent book, read it and go out and hug your nearest lofty edifice in concrete and glass!

Neil Baxter, The Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland

This engrossing book by a fellow self-confessed concrete lover is both a witty travelogue and memoir and the clear-sighted history of Brutalist buildings.  Barnabas Calder relishes the craftsmanship, the  financial back stories, and the aims and ambitions of a diverse generation of architects, whose works deserve our sympathy.

Catherine Croft, Director, Twentieth Century Society

It’s not a history book … It’s chatty, anecdotal and thoroughly entertaining … My advice? Read the book, load up your mobile with some rock ‘n’ roll and Calder’s online photos, and go hug some concrete.

Calder wants to make an argument about the greatness of Brutalism as an architectural style. He writes beautifully.

Observer 'Architecture Books of the Year'

Impressively well-written... Calder writes with the opinionated self-assurance of the young Ruskin. Compelling reading... thrilling... excellent.

This is a strongly-argued and at times refreshingly polemical book, one guaranteed to change your opinion of an ambitious and much-maligned architectural style that, like it or not, has had a profound effect on our built environment.

Calder’s book is the very antithesis of the recent glut of coffee-table-style, #brutalism, which focus primarily on appearance. By adopting a personal perspective, he humanises what is often demonised as an alienating material.

An excellent – and highly readable – guide … If you’re interested in Brutalism as architecture and construction practice, if you’re interested in its meaning and its context, buy this book.

In the historian Barnabas Calder’s marvellous Raw Concrete, he tries to persuade us to love the architecture of the 1960s. Not just wonderfully well-researched and beautifully well-written, it’s also the story of a conversion, as Calder himself comes to value buildings he, too, once disliked.

Reverend Professor William Whyte, University of Oxford

The Beauty of Brutalism

AN OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR 
Beginning in a tiny hermitage on the remote north Scottish coast, and ending up backstage at the National Theatre, Raw Concrete embarks on a wide-ranging journey through Britain over the past sixty years, stopping to examine how eight extraordinary buildings were made - from commission to construction - why they have been so vilified, and why they are beginning to be loved.

Barnabas Calder

Praise for Raw Concrete

Part history, part aesthetic autobiography, wholly engaging and liable to convince those procrastinators sitting (uncomfortably) on the concrete fence.

Barnabas Calder brings us tales of the unexpected and breathes life into what some night call one of the unloveliest of building materials … illuminating and spirited.

This celebration of all things concrete will please both its aficionados and those who find it hard to love ... Calder's distinctive approach is a combination of scholarliness with personal association ... An engagi ...

Part history, part aesthetic autobiography, wholly engaging and liable to convince those procrastinators sitting (uncomfortably) on the concrete fence.

Barnabas Calder brings us tales of the unexpected and breathes life into what some night call one of the unloveliest of building materials … illuminating and spirited.

This celebration of all things concrete will please both its aficionados and those who find it hard to love ... Calder's distinctive approach is a combination of scholarliness with personal association ... An engagi ...

Part history, part aesthetic autobiography, wholly engaging and liable to convince those procrastinators sitting (uncomfortably) on the concrete fence.

Barnabas Calder brings us tales of the unexpected and breathes life into what some night call one of the unloveliest of building materials … illuminating and spirited.

This celebration of all things concrete will please both its aficionados and those who find it hard to love ... Calder's distinctive approach is a combination of scholarliness with personal association ... An engagi ...

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