London holds 8 Brutalist buildings in the catalogue — the highest concentration of the style in any single city. Brutalism in London was a social project above all: raw concrete deployed to house people, educate them, entertain them, and move them through the city. The Barbican Estate by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon remains the most complete expression of this ambition — a self-contained city within the city, with residential towers, walkways, a concert hall, and a conservatory, all in béton brut.
Ernő Goldfinger's Balfron and Trellick Towers use a distinctive service-tower-and-slab composition that became the template for social housing across Britain. Sir Denys Lasdun's Royal National Theatre stacks horizontal concrete strata along the South Bank like geological layers, creating terraces that function as public spaces. Patrick Hodgkinson's Brunswick Centre brings Brutalist stepped-section housing to Bloomsbury, while Rodney Gordon's Michael Faraday Memorial wraps an electrical substation in a windowless stainless-steel box — Brutalism at its most abstract.
John Heywood's Lecture Centre at Brunel University and R. Seifert & Partners' Centre Point complete the collection, demonstrating the style's range from campus teaching spaces to commercial towers. That many of these buildings are now Grade II-listed and gentrified is part of London's Brutalist story.
