Brutalism, the minimalist architectural style that takes its name from béton brut (French for “raw concrete”), might as well describe the violent reaction it inspires in some people. That’s especially true in Washington, where the style is widespread — and widely despised. A 2023 analysis by the British building materials company Buildworld, for example, claims the FBI headquarters is the ugliest building in the country, and the second ugliest in the world.

Imposing monsters or iconic landmarks? That’s the question at the center of Capital Brutalism, a new exhibit at the National Building Museum exploring the architectural style that seemingly defines our nation’s capital.

Brutalist buildings have been called ‘imposing monsters’ and yet they feature prominently in the architectural landscape of the U.S.’s capital. The National Building Museum uses this perspective as a launching point for its new exhibition, Capital Brutalism, which opens on Saturday, June 1, 2024. Co-organized with the Southern Utah Museum of Art (SUMA), Capital Brutalism is the largest-ever survey of Brutalist architecture in Washington, D.C. and will be on display at the Museum through Monday, February 17, 2025.

Two new exhibitions at the National Building Museum (NBM) in Washington, D.C., examine particular strains of Modernism in different places—and then wonder what could be or what might have been. Capital Brutalism looks at the architectural style that found fertile soil in D.C, in the 1960s and 1970s and later became the type of design the public loved to hate. Focusing on seven polarizing examples of Brutalism, it presents brief histories of these projects and then offers an alternative future for six of them. The other exhibition, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Southwestern Pennsylvania, shows a range of works designed by the architect from the 1930s through the 1950s in Pittsburgh and the area around Fallingwater, the landmark house he created for department store magnate Edgar J. Kaufmann. For five of those projects—ones that weren’t built—Skyline Ink Animators + Illustrators has produced animated films that depict what they would have been had they been realized.

If you ask Americans, the vast majority will say they want to live in their homes indefinitely. In fact, 95% of respondents to a 2024 U.S. News survey say that aging in place is an important goal for them.

Walking along the edge of a seasonally dry lakebed on the eastern outskirts of Mexico City, there is near perfect silence except for the occasional airplane that flies overhead.