Weronika Dudka is a Leicester-based design student who has discovered a fondness for photographing brutalist and modernist buildings. Understandably so, as I’ve got a similar love for those particular architectural styles which more often than not meets with much shaking of the head when I express it. There’s a beauty in the geometry, symmetry, and repetition that’s hard to get across to people who can’t see past the typical colour scheme of the buildings that features more shades of grey than an E. L. James novel and very little else. There’s also a mystique to brutalism that some people don’t get as the architect’s vision is usually transformed wildly and often darkly by the social structure in which the building is located; far more so in my opinion than any other type of architecture.
Enough of my waffling about the glorious gorgeousness that is brutalist architecture and onto the reason for this post, which is to showcase some of Weronika’s photos, all of which were sourced from her Tumblr page: Veronicadelica.
Brutalist photography is most often dark, oppressive, and impressive, but here’s a great example of injecting colour into the shot thanks to some great reflections from the Manchester sky.
And colour looks good on less brutal, more modernist architecture too as seen in this photo from Birmingham.
The more familiar black and white shot now most associated with brutalist architecture photography but you can hopefully see in this photo from Sheffield how the block design resembles a monochromatic Mondrian work of art.
A great example of a typical brutalist external staircase, this from a building in Sheffield. You often see these simple rectangular blocks and parallelograms forming stairwells but the curved backside is great to spot too. What’s also really nice here is the paint job which shows off the potential for just how attractive this type of architecture can look in the right setting and with the right light.
A nicely-framed photo from Manchester showcasing the geometry and the contrast of angles prevalent in brutalism.
Spirals, zig-zags, and long, vertical lines come together in this photo from Birmingham. A colour version of the same shot can be seen here.
To finish with, Carradale House in London shot by Weronika. The building is one of Goldfinger‘s listed modernist designs. Sky bridges and narrow windows reminiscent of medieval arrowslits merge to form another wonderful piece of architecture.
Check out all of Weronika’s photos as well as the things she finds inspiring here.
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