Photos of over 150 buildings tell the story of Berlin’s Brutalism

Brutalist Berlin, the latest title from Blue Crow Media – the independent publisher known for its themed maps of cities worldwide, such as Vienna – is written by architectural historian Felix Torkar. The 144-page volume of photographs and essays is a comprehensive guide to Berlin’s Brutalist architecture: buildings of exposed concrete, glass-block façades, and an urban memory that spans the twentieth century. The cover features the (former) St. Agnes Church, designed by Werner Düttmann in the 1960s, when the Kreuzberg area underwent large-scale urban renewal projects. Entire blocks of early twentieth-century social housing were demolished to make way for new public housing developments.

In the postwar period, the urgent need for reconstruction demanded fast and economical solutions. Reinforced concrete, prefabricated structures, and the aesthetics of “raw material” became ideal tools to express modernity, efficiency, and a precise ideological stance. In the postwar period, the urgent need for reconstruction demanded fast and economical solutions. Reinforced concrete, prefabricated structures, and the aesthetics of 'raw material' became ideal tools to express modernity, efficiency, and a precise ideological stance" Torkar writes.

At the same time, the scarcity of land and the need for urban density led to massive residential blocks that have now become icons of a bygone era. One example is the Pallasseum, a monumental housing complex in Schöneberg built in the 1970s: a concrete giant stretching over about 2.6 hectares, with 514 apartments distributed across twelve floors and three lower side wings. Constructed on the site of the former Sportpalast and atop a World War II bunker, the Pallasseum stands as a “social palace” that has since become the symbol of a failed utopia.

The book also tells more intimate stories of buildings that have withstood time and undergone multiple design phases, such as the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche: the neo-Romanesque tower by Franz Schwechten, built between 1891 and 1895. Destroyed by bombings, it was deliberately left in ruins — a “hollow tooth,” a memorial to war. Around it, modernist architect Egon Eiermann created a Brutalist complex in the 1960s, composed of twenty thousand blue stained-glass windows designed by French artist Gabriel Loire, bathing the interior in a mystical light. Following the path of Brutalist Paris, the book published in 2023 by the same publisher, Brutalist Berlin is a portrait of the city and the materials — concrete, glass, light — that have shaped its postwar urban landscape. Blue Crow Media has announced that the series will continue in 2026 with Brutalist London and Concrete New York.