♪ Washington, DC is home to massive buildings in an architectural style called Brutalism, which many condemn as ugly.

But it has fans, and one of them helped me see Brutalism through his eyes.

Hey, everybody.

I am here in downtown Northwest DC.

This is my old stomping ground.

I used to work over at Ford's Theatre and would walk this strip of Pennsylvania Avenue all of the time, but today, I'm here for a different reason.

I am meeting the founder of Brutalist DC, Deane Madsen, to tell me a little bit about the Brutalism that is here in Washington, DC.

Hi, Deane!

Hi.

How are you?

Thank you so much for meeting me here.

I have to ask, why did you decide that we should meet at this particular location?

Well, it's kind of looming over us.

The FBI Building is the starting point for a discussion about Brutalism in Washington, DC.

When you say Brutalism, what exactly is that?

The term Brutalism comes from the French, "béton brut" meaning "raw concrete."

"Béton" is the concrete part, "brut" is the raw part, and it's a style that mashes together immense quantities of concrete.

It usually involves exuberant structural forms, recessed windows, and, as you can see, the FBI Building has all of that and plenty more.

Everything you're saying right now is exactly what I think people don't love about Brutalism.

Am I right in saying that?

Sure.

Sure, yeah.

Brutalism gets a lot of flak for feeling imposing, sounding like it's menacing in nature.

What I appreciate about it is a rhythm of the windows, the senses of proportion and scale, and also, kind of the way that the windows are recessed from the outside wall, you get a lot of interesting, diagonal shadows crossing the windows themselves.

Now, I noticed there is some netting on the top of the building, way up top.

Right.

A safety concern?

That tall part is wrapped in netting because chunks of concrete had started to fall from the building down onto the sidewalk below.

♪ There's a lot of talk about the FBI Building as being an example of demolition by neglect.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Building, the HUD Building, the Hirshhorn--all of these are buildings that have taken a look at their concrete, recognized that some seams are starting to show, and taken measures to start to prevent erosion of the material.

So, as we talk about these buildings and renovation and crumbling...

Right.

I have to ask, why do you love them so much?

I come from a minor, like, adoration of photography, and with Brutalism, what I like to see is the light getting cast across the windows at different times of day, in different seasons.

You don't necessarily see that from this vantage point.

It's really getting up close to the buildings.

We'll take a closer look at the FBI Building, but I also want to take you down to L'Enfant Plaza, which is probably ground zero of Brutalism in DC.

I am excited to see it.

♪ [Camera shutter clicks] Curry: The next stop on our Brutalism tour is across town in Southwest DC.

♪ Welcome to L'Enfant Plaza.

[Chuckles] Wow.

We are surrounded by Brutalism.

That's right, yeah.

I know.

Whenever anyone asks me, "Where can I max out on Brutalist architecture in DC?"

I say right here in L'Enfant Plaza.

And as you can see, there's concrete everywhere you look.

Everywhere.

It's amazing.

Yeah.

♪ I'm seeing a lot of buildings that are concrete, raw... Mm-hmm.

the windows are identical.

If I see all of that, can I immediately assume that it's a Brutalist building?

Well, a big part of it is the time period within which they were created.

In the sixties and seventies, when most of the Brutalism in DC arose, the government was expanding.

It needed to house all of these government employees in new departments that were arising around.

This brings us to a rather rough patch in DC history.

There was urban renewal, which is not a positive term.

It refers to the displacement of tens of thousands of residents of Southwest.

With federal architecture came an idea that the buildings should be grand edifices that were functional for the federal workers who were inside them.

Everything in L'Enfant Plaza is this stacked layering of infrastructure, so you have buildings on top, but then there's a parking garage, freeway on-ramps, and below all of that, the Metro system.

[Camera shutter clicks] I have to ask, do you have a favorite building amongst all of these Brutalist buildings here-- Amongst these?

Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

Well, you know, they're like children, right?

Of course.

You can't say they're favorites out loud, but I do like L'Enfant Plaza North and South, which are these paired, mirrored office buildings.

What I like about these is they have this corduroy concrete.

There's almost a striping on the facade of these deep grooves that are inset in the concrete, practical in the sense that they help moisture flow down the exterior so that it doesn't stay and penetrate the concrete, but also, from an aesthetic standpoint, it provides a lot of sort of granularity and texture.

Those are the kinds of things that I appreciate as a photographer.

And they're not all government buildings, either, in the Brutalist style, correct?

Yeah, absolutely.

There are plenty of other types of Brutalist buildings around, like the Arena Stage, which is kind of encapsulated in glass now, so it no longer faces the weathering problems.

I also had no idea-- I worked at the Arena Stage, and didn't know that it was a Brutalist building.

Oh, yeah, there are even Brutalist residential towers, where people actually live beyond just their workday.

I love that.

I can't wait, but I first want to take a picture of all the Brutalist buildings in one spot.

Ha ha ha!

[Camera shutter clicks] So I have to say, Brutalism, or being in a Brutalist structure, is not meant to be aesthetically pleasing.

It's aesthetically pleasing to me, anyway, and I want to take you down to Reston.

Maybe that'll help you see the softer side of Brutalism.

Oh, I'm looking forward to seeing that.

Let's go.

♪ This is beautiful.

[Camera shutter clicks] Look at the difference between this and L'Enfant Plaza.

I mean, shorter buildings, obviously, and it looks like people live here.

Yeah, absolutely right, so welcome to Lake Anne Plaza, and you're spot-on about the different feel of the scale here, and that's by design.

Lake Anne is a fully constructed environment.

There was a developer, Robert E. Simon, who purchased 6,700 acres of land, including an artificial lake, and put planned communities around it.

Why the Brutalist style for this community?

Concrete was, at the time, very cheap to build with and easy to do.

You could, for example, create a module, almost like a Lego brick, but at a much larger scale, and repeat it several times with concrete.

Here, you start to see the modularity play out, even in the curve of the set of buildings around us, but also in the repeated structures along the water's edge.

There is a nice mix of low-rise and mid-rise here that I think helps develop the scale and proportion of the place.

Now, does being in a place like Lake Anne excite you?

Because I can say it is so inviting.

Yes, and I hope that through my rambling on about it, you've found a little bit of appreciation, too.

Absolutely.

We are so lucky to have had the opportunity to travel around to all of these places.

Thank you for taking us on this tour.

We should probably take a few more pictures and maybe get a cup of coffee?

Sounds great.

[Camera shutter clicking] Curry: Here's some concrete advice-- tour the city, guided by Deane Madsen's web site, brutalistdc.com, and check out the National Building Museum's exhibition "Capital Brutalism," which runs through February 17, 2025.

Check out their website, nbm.org, for details.