Maison Jaoul

With the flat exposed concrete arches and the exposed brickwork of the walls, the Maisons Jaoul and Unité d´Habitation  are Le Corbusier’s first béton brut project. Banham and many others believe the houses blazed the trail for brutalism.

Mill Owners Building

The structure is derived from the context: the building is oriented according to the prevailing winds. It overlooks the river and the daily spectacle of people washing clothes, buffaloes, and donkeys while standing in the water. The east and west façad…

Carrières Centrales Housing Project

The Smithsons compare this North African housing project with its socio-political intentions in the Golden Lane competition. Banham remarks: “The thin stick-and-matchbox aesthetic in which this ethic of permissiveness was offered in Morocco hardly acc…

Villa Shodhan

This villa was initially designed for Surottam Hutheesing, President of the Ahmedabad Mill Owners’ Association. In the end, the luxurious bachelor residence was actually built for Shyamubhai Shodhan on an entirely different plot. A parasol roof above …

Villa Sarabhai

The Villa Sarabhai is situated in Shahibag on the east side of the river. Parallel brick walls create long rooms. Strong beams allow the creation of wide rooms and large windows. These spaces together form a long series of vaults. Lengthwise, the house …

Secretariat Building

Shortly after independence in 1949 India was in a phase of finding its own identity. With his massive buildings made of exposed concrete and brick in Chandigarh and Ahmedabad Le Corbusier was, in 1951, one of the key masterminds stimulating the new arch…

St. Matthew Church (Matthäuskirche)

The refined use of concrete is still strongly influenced by the churches Auguste Perret designed. At the same time, a fledgling anonymous volume can be discerned here. This places it between the Classicism of the 1920s and the sober, brutalist concrete …

Yale Art Gallery

In 1955 Banham ranked this building as the second most important example of brutalism after the Smithsons’ design for the Hunstanton School. That said, he felt Kahn’s handling of details was too “arty” and the visual unity of inside and outside …

Groothandelsgebouw

The Groothandelsgebouw is a large office building next to the Central Station of Rotterdam. It was built for companies which lost their office spaces during the German bombardment in 1940. The pavilion on the roof used to house a cinema. The perimeter b…

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i
To represent a masterpiece of human creative genius.
260
ii
To exhibit an important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design.
474
iii
To bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared.
499
iv
To be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history.
633
ix
To be outstanding examples representing significant on-going ecological and biological processes in the evolution and development of terrestrial, fresh water, coastal and marine ecosystems and communities of plants and animals.
135
v
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167
vi
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252
vii
To contain superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance.
148
viii
To be outstanding examples representing major stages of earth's history, including the record of life, significant on-going geological processes in the development of landforms, or significant geomorphic or physiographic features.
96
x
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166