Concrete Attachments: Reclaiming Brutalism for a Contemporary Public
Can midcentury concrete be seen as “beautiful” in the public imagination? Recent presidential orders suggest classical architecture alone can uplift and ennoble our public spaces—but in doing so, they cast uncertainty over the futures of hundreds of modernist and Brutalist federal buildings.1 More than an aesthetic debate, this policy shift raises urgent questions about collective memory, technological innovation, and fiscal and environmental responsibility. How we choose to adapt, preserve, or reject our midcentury buildings will shape not only our architectural legacy but also the values that we carry forward.
Two recent presidential directives have called for the “beautification” of federal architecture across the United States. The first action, issued on December 21, 2020, ordered new federal buildings to “uplift and beautify public spaces, inspire the human spirit, ennoble the United States, and command respect from the general public.” It also established classical architecture as the “preferred and default” style for new federal buildings in Washington, DC, with only ambiguous exceptions. The order encouraged altering the exteriors of existing buildings that did not meet these criteria—particularly modernist and Brutalist structures—proposing a sort of architectural camouflage, perhaps to make them appear more classical.2
Following backlash from the American Institute of Architects and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, this order was revoked.3 Yet, a second memo, entitled “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture,” was published earlier this year. It reiterated that federal architecture should “respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States and our system of self-government.”4 This push to redefine federal architecture is not just theoretical; it has material consequences. On March 4, 2025, the US General Services Administration announced the planned disposal or sale of 440 federal buildings deemed “functionally obsolete” due to “decades of funding deficiencies.”5 Nearly 10 percent of the buildings on the list were located in Washington, including two Brutalist landmarks on the National Register of Historic Places—Marcel Breuer’s Robert C. Weaver Federal Building, which houses the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Hubert H. Humphrey Building, home to the Department of Health and Human Services.6
Far from being mere concrete relics, key Brutalist federal buildings—like the Weaver and Humphrey buildings—reflect an era of expanded federal responsibility, embodying ideals of transparency, public service, and technological progress. These structures housed the birth of major social programs—where policies including urban housing initiatives and Medicare were shaped—making their removal not just an architectural loss, but an erasure of monuments to civic ambition. Villainizing them comes with steep consequences: it diminishes cultural memory, wastes taxpayer-funded infrastructure, and generates significant environmental costs through demolition and lost embodied energy. Yet beyond these tangible losses lies a deeper question: Should buildings be erased simply because their aesthetic has fallen out of favor, or can they be reimagined to serve new needs?
Looking abroad, the transformation of Berlin’s Reichstag provides a striking example of how public engagement can breathe new meaning into an architectural form once considered outdated or undesirable. When artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the Reichstag in aluminized fabric, they symbolically reclaimed a site burdened by ideological trauma and division, transforming it into an expression of collective renewal. Over a two-week period in 1995, their temporary installation drew more than five million visitors to Berlin’s Platz der Republik.7 Four years later, Norman Foster and his firm completed an ambitious renovation of the Reichstag, adding an innovative steel and glass dome that contrasts with the original neo-Renaissance architecture. Today, members of the public can ascend the dome’s helical ramp to view both the city and the government chamber beneath their feet. Once dismissed as “too big, too weird, and too eclectic” and a “major embarrassment,”8 the Reichstag is now regarded as a “working, open, modern ship of state”9 and remains one of Berlin’s most celebrated landmarks.10
Germany’s reimagining of the Reichstag offers a significant reminder that architecture’s meaning is never fixed but constantly renegotiated through public engagement. While the Reichstag was weighed down by historical trauma, the challenges facing America’s federal Brutalist buildings are different—but they raise a similar question: How do we forge emotional and cultural attachments to buildings often perceived as unwelcoming or inaccessible? Today, as federal architecture faces mandates rejecting modern (and specifically Brutalist) forms, this question feels especially urgent. Indeed, as international designer Satyendra Pakhalé aptly says, “You take care of what you connect with.”11 The future of our public infrastructure may then rely on its ability to foster genuine human connection and warmth.
On the National Mall, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden offers a striking case of a Brutalist building that, through public engagement, has evolved from being perceived as austere and unapproachable to a site of cultural vibrancy. Designed by Gordon Bunshaft of SOM and completed in 1974, the museum is a four-story concrete cylinder with a central courtyard.12 Upon its completion, critics denounced it as a “circular bombproof blockhouse,”13 “born-dead, neo-penitentiary modern,”14 and “not a particularly friendly building.”15 Far from evoking human connection and warmth, it was seen as imposing, inward-facing, and disconnected from the public realm.
Yet, over the past two decades, curators and museum leaders have actively reimagined the Hirshhorn building’s identity, transforming it into a site of interaction, spectacle, and playfulness. In 2009, the Smithsonian Institution commissioned Diller Scofidio + Renfro to design the “Bubble,” a concept for a seasonal inflatable pavilion that would emerge from the Hirshhorn’s hollow center, glowing ice-blue at night.16 Although the project never materialized, it set a precedent for treating the building as a changing canvas. A few years later, the Hirshhorn’s entire concrete facade became a dynamic 360-degree video installation with Doug Aitken’s SONG 1, which drew masses of visitors to the Mall from sunset to midnight, activating an otherwise eerily quiet public space.17 Then, in 2021, while the museum underwent envelope repairs, Nicolas Party’s Draw the Curtain transformed the surrounding scaffolding into another immersive, full-circle artwork.18 Inside, artists including Jim Lambie, Barbara Kruger, and Hiroshi Sugimoto have reshaped the museum’s interiors, further pushing the boundaries of how the space is experienced.19
Today, the Smithsonian continues this trajectory, working with SOM, Selldorf Architects, and Sugimoto on a modernization plan for both the museum and its sculpture garden.20 Through these interventions, the Hirshhorn has demonstrated that a Brutalist building’s identity is not static but can be continually reshaped through creative engagement, public interaction, and thoughtful design.21 As part of a broader reimagining of Brutalist federal buildings, architects have proposed interventions that soften and revitalize these structures rather than erase them. For example, Studio Gang’s concept for the Forrestal Building suggests “pruning” the megastructure to introduce light and permeability, while Brooks + Scarpa’s proposal for the Robert C. Weaver Building explores how the building could become converted to light-filled affordable housing units. The Washington-based firm BLDUS reimagines the Humphrey Building as the home to a proposed “US Department of Play,” with a mission of “fundamentally reorienting the perspectives of Americans toward play and happiness.” Still other proposals, such as Gensler’s vision for the FBI headquarters, integrate lush greenery and public access, showing how even the most imposing federal buildings can be rethought as sites of engagement.22
Rejecting modernist and Brutalist federal buildings risks more than losing concrete and steel—it threatens cultural memory, economic responsibility, and environmental integrity. As the Reichstag and Hirshhorn examples show, government buildings once condemned as cold or obsolete can evolve into dynamic spaces of public engagement when met with imagination and care. By choosing adaptation over erasure, we affirm that the beauty of architecture lies not in fixed aesthetic ideals but in the evolving relationship between buildings and the people who use them. If given the chance to transform, these civic structures may not simply endure, but become places of warmth, connection, and renewed purpose for generations to come.
Person is Associate Dean for Research and External Engagement and associate professor of architecture at the University of Oklahoma Gibbs College of Architecture. She recently curated an exhibition, Capital Brutalism, at the National Building Museum, which explored the reuse of Brutalist buildings.