I’ve always thought of brutalism as the ultimate “function over form.” It’s brutal in the sense that it “brutally” strips away the form until all that’s left is the function. It’s like minimalism without the vanity.
Unfinished concrete, specifically. I would translate "brut" as "bare" or "unrefined" here. English brutality is related to French brut, but in French it means more like crude, unrefined, raw, blunt, with no particular sense of animalistic or violent.
It's called brutalism because brute is the French word for concrete. To many being made out of concrete would be a defining feature of brutalism, to others it's the exposed building materials without façade.
