Raw Is The New Beautiful
New routes, new impressions – of exposed concrete, for example. Karin Bürki’s “Carte Brute” presents 50 Swiss buildings that have used the most popular building material of modernism as more than just a material.
We’re tired of walking in the woods. Carte Brute “is a two-page folding guide” that invites you to discover new urban walking routes in a Switzerland rich in architectural heritage. It offers a “tour de Suisse en béton brut”. Writer and photographer Karin Bürki presents 50 icons of Swiss exposed concrete architecture, complete with key data. Inventiveness and playfulness are key features of the easily misunderstood style of “Brutalism”. Derived from “raw concrete”, (béton brut in French) the style refers less to something brutal and ugly than to a peculiarly beautiful rawness. Since the invention of reinforced concrete in 1867, the mixture of cement and rock has given architecture almost limitless possibilities for sculptural and plastic expression.