Brutalism for Babies

The Concrete Collective did not set out to write a children's book. They set out to write a rebuttal to what they describe as "the ongoing sentimentalization of the built environment" and somewhere in the third draft they realized they were writing for babies. They have not addressed this publicly.

The book has twelve spreads. Each spread is a photograph of a Brutalist building — or a building the Collective considers Brutalist, which is a broader category than most historians would accept — accompanied by a single word. The words are: MASS. WEIGHT. SURFACE. SHADOW. INTENTION. SHELTER. PURPOSE. MATERIAL. TRUTH. REPEAT. ENDURE. ENOUGH.

The photographs are not softened for a young audience. The Collective's position is that children are capable of looking at concrete. Several early reviewers disagreed. The Collective's response to these reviews is included in the back matter, under the heading "Correspondence." It is not recommended for the same age group as the book.

Harold stocks this book with some ambivalence. He agrees with the Collective's position on sentimentalization. He is less certain about the execution. He sells it anyway because, he says, the alternative is not selling it, and not selling it would be its own kind of position, and he prefers to let the customer decide. He has not, however, placed it in the window.

It is his best-selling children's book. He is still thinking about what that means.