Prestel Brutalist Korea: A Photographic Tour of Post-War Korean Architecture

In this elegant follow-up to the bestselling Brutalist Japan, Paul Tulett brings his distinctive eye to South Koreas 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 housingstructures 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. Tuletts photographs reveal not only the formal qualities of these buildingsmodular repetition, raw surfaces, monumental scalebut also their relationship to the landscape, their weathering over time, and their place in Koreas evolving visual culture. With informed, understated commentary, Brutalist Korea offers a rare visual journey through a style often misunderstood and increasingly at risk. Autorid: Paul Tulett