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In this elegant follow-up to the bestselling Brutalist Japan, Paul Tulett brings his distinctive eye to South Korea's 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 housing-structures 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. Tulett's photographs reveal not only the formal qualities of these buildings-modular repetition, raw surfaces, monumental scale-but also their relationship to the landscape, their weathering over time, and their place in Korea's evolving visual culture. With informed, understated commentary, Brutalist Korea offers a rare visual journey through a style often misunderstood and increasingly at risk.
About the author
Paul Tulett is a British architectural photographer and urban planner whose work focuses on post-war modernist and Brutalist architecture across East Asia. His photographs have been featured in The Guardian, Fast Company, and other design publications, and his Instagram account, @brutal_zen, has attracted nearly 140,000 followers for its striking compositions and global perspective. He lives in Japan.
Summary
In this elegant follow-up to the bestselling Brutalist Japan, Paul Tulett brings his distinctive eye to South Korea’s 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 housing—structures 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. Tulett’s photographs reveal not only the formal qualities of these buildings—modular repetition, raw surfaces, monumental scale—but also their relationship to the landscape, their weathering over time, and their place in Korea’s evolving visual culture. With informed, understated commentary, Brutalist Korea offers a rare visual journey through a style often misunderstood and increasingly at risk.
