According to the Twentieth Century Society, later twentieth-century architecture in Wales, particularly for the forty-year period following the Second World War, does not attract widespread public appreciation or admiration – in fact, there is a popular notion that in terms of post-war architecture, Wales is a wilderness. But this is far from the truth, because the country has a rich heritage of modern buildings and structures designed by architects engaged in the same wider currents and discourse as the rest of Europe.This includes the movement labelled “brutalism”.

Brutalism is the term widely used to describe much that was often the biggest and boldest in modern architecture, including some of the most forward looking buildings constructed on a scale and with an ambition unlikely to be repeated. As Elaine Harwood noted “perhaps no other architecture is so distinctive and defines so short a period”. Simon Phipps’ Brutal Wales reveals that Wales is surprisingly well represented when it comes to brutalism.

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