Following the release of The Brutalist, which garnered numerous awards and widespread acclaim, the renewed interest in brutalism shows no sign of fading. This architectural movement, born to speak to the masses and to meet their needs without intellectualism or rhetoric, continues to serve as a creative vehicle for many generations of artists where, often reinterpreted, it becomes a powerful medium for expressing opposition to dominant culture and for collective reclamation.

This is precisely what unfolds in NUEVAYoL, the latest video by trap artist and political activist Bad Bunny (Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio), where music and architecture intertwine in a visual narrative that transforms one of Marcel Breuer’s brutalist masterpieces into a living, communal, and symbolic space. With its concrete cladding, carved volumes, and suspended, uncompromising geometries, Meister Hall — part of the Bronx Community College campus — becomes the surface upon which the diasporic Latin culture inscribes its own story, reshaping the building’s austere, functionalist language.

The act of staging a quinceañera — a Latin American rite of passage, both familial and collective — within this typically academic setting disrupts any utilitarian rhetoric. Medrano’s visual choices reveal a clash between the raw rationalism of the architecture and the chaotic vibrancy of the celebration, which bursts forth uncontrollably into every space. Breuer’s grey, ribbed interiors fill with pastel tones, sequins, kitschy decorations, shimmering dresses, and shared food — a contrast that is not only aesthetic, but deeply political.

Breuer originally designed Meister Hall in the late 1950s as a space for education and discipline, but here it is reinterpreted by Medrano and Bad Bunny as a theatrical, malleable, and permeable structure. The camera movements, the shots of staircases, and the overhead views of the central courtyard help to soften the atmosphere’s severity: the formality of the architecture is loosened by flaming dresses and carefree dancing, which reanimate its materiality and infuse it with new humanity. At a time when Donald Trump issues executive orders in favor of promoting the "beauty of federal civic architecture" in neoclassical form, reclaiming brutalism as a counter-narrative means restoring to the urban landscape of the Bronx — and to Breuer’s architecture — a centrality that is no longer merely symbolic, but deeply cultural.

Opening image: Bad Bunny on the Meister Hall