Prestel

Brutalist Korea - Paul Tulett

In this elegant follow-up to the bestselling Brutalist Japan, Paul Tulett brings his distinctive eye to South Korea’s post-war architecture, capturing the austere beauty of concrete across cities and decades. Brutalist Korea features more than 220 full-color images of buildings from Seoul to Busan, Daegu to Daejeon. These include government complexes, university campuses, cultural institutions, and public housing—structures shaped by a period of rapid industrialization and national rebuilding, rendered here with clarity and nuance. Korean Brutalism emerged in the 1960s and ’70s, informed by modernist ideals and adapted to local conditions. Architects such as Kim Swoo-geun, Lee Jong- sup, Choi Maeng-gi, and Seung H-Sang designed buildings that combined geometric severity with regional sensitivity. Their work reflects a desire for permanence and purpose, and for an architectural identity rooted in both function and expression. Tulett’s photographs reveal not only the formal qualities of these buildings—modular repetition, raw surfaces, monumental scale—but also their relationship to the landscape, their weathering over time, and their place in Korea’s evolving visual culture. With informed, understated commentary, Brutalist Korea offers a rare visual journey through a style often misunderstood and increasingly at risk.

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