My Relationship with Brutalist Architecture Is as Complicated as My Relationship with God

I am in Sofia, a city where history does not merely reside in museums but remains standing among its inhabitants, embedded in facades, monuments, broad boulevards, and enormous public buildings. Sometimes, when walking past the government quarter, I find myself stopping in front of its almost provocatively monumental architecture. The gigantic entrances, heavy stone facades, seemingly endless rows of windows, and proportions that appear to have been calculated for some entirely different species than ordinary human beings. One can hardly accuse the architects of lacking ambition. What I often wonder, however, is whom these ambitions were actually intended to impress. Were these buildings designed to welcome citizens into the institutions of their shared society, or were they primarily intended to remind them how insignificant they were in relation to the state?

It is a particularly interesting question in a country such as Bulgaria, where the communist experiment left behind an architectural inheritance that continues to shape the urban landscape. Here, grand visions of a new society encounter the political realities behind those visions. Some buildings are astonishingly beautiful in their uncompromising character. Others are so oversized that they almost become absurd. Yet regardless of what one thinks about their aesthetic qualities, their psychological power is difficult to deny.

These buildings want something from us.

And perhaps this is what connects monumental political architecture with the great buildings of religion. Both attempt to influence our understanding of our own place in the world.

When the State Began Building Its Own Cathedrals

It is tempting to describe all monumental communist architecture as Brutalism, but architecturally speaking, that would not be entirely accurate. The government buildings surrounding Sofia’s Largo, for example, were largely constructed during the 1950s and belong more closely to Stalinist classicism and the architectural tradition of Socialist Realism. Brutalism developed partly from different ideas, emphasizing raw concrete, exposed structures, and a deliberate desire to allow materials to speak for themselves. Its origins can be found in postwar Western European modernism, and it was never an exclusively communist architectural style.

Nevertheless, there is a relationship between many of these buildings, not necessarily in their architectural origins but in their treatment of scale, authority, and the individual.

And it is this broader architectural language that interests me.

The concrete, the stone, the enormous volumes, and the political desire to create something that appears capable of outliving its own time. In Sofia, this becomes particularly evident because the central government buildings were constructed as part of a larger transformation of the capital following the Second World War. Architecture was not merely supposed to provide office space for the administration. It was also intended to give physical form to the new political order. The state was to be visible, dominant, and historically inevitable.

When I look at these buildings, I often think about Europe's great cathedrals. Not because they look alike, but because they operate through the same fundamental human mechanism. You create something so enormous that the observer instinctively looks upward. You construct spaces in which the individual becomes a very small part of something infinitely larger. And you allow the building itself to communicate a message that never needs to be spoken.

In a medieval cathedral, that message was that God was greater than humanity. The towering interior, the light filtering through the windows, and the vaults stretching towards the heavens were intended to create a sense of proximity to the divine. At the same time, these buildings demonstrated the Church's earthly power, financial resources, and organizational capabilities. Religion and institutional authority were rarely far apart.

In the monumental architecture of the totalitarian state, religious belief was replaced by political conviction. It was no longer God who was to be elevated, but the state, the Party, the revolution, or the future that those in power believed they had the right to define.

The individual was still expected to feel part of something greater.

The difference was that the divine order had acquired an earthly administration.

There are, of course, fundamental differences between a cathedral and a communist government palace. A cathedral could also offer comfort, community, and personal faith, while political monumentalism was often directly associated with the state's demand for obedience. But as architectural expressions, they share an intriguing characteristic: both attempt to transform abstract authority into a physical experience.

Perhaps that is why I sometimes perceive these enormous government buildings as secular cathedrals.

Buildings in which humanity was no longer expected to worship God, but history, the state, and its leaders.

Concrete's Strange Ability to Be Both Ugly and Beautiful

What makes Brutalism particularly interesting is that it was not originally about dominating people. Quite the opposite. Within postwar Brutalism, there was a strong belief in honesty, functionality, and social responsibility. Architecture should not conceal its materials behind decorative facades. The structure should remain visible. Concrete should be allowed to be concrete. A building should reveal what it was rather than pretend to be something else.

There was almost something moral about this idea.

After the devastation of war, Europe needed housing, schools, universities, and public institutions. Architecture was supposed to contribute to the creation of a new and more equal society. British architects Alison and Peter Smithson became central figures in early Brutalism, while Le Corbusier's use of béton brut, or raw concrete, became closely associated with the movement's visual identity.

This is worth remembering because Brutalism today is frequently portrayed as something almost inherently hostile to human beings. An enormous concrete building with small windows and dark entrances may resemble an institution designed to keep people at a distance, yet its architect may have imagined precisely the opposite.

Perhaps the intention was to liberate people from old class structures, inadequate housing, and outdated institutions.

Here lies one of architectural history's more intriguing paradoxes. Buildings created with the ambition of improving people's lives sometimes produced environments in which people felt abandoned, diminished, or even imprisoned. That does not mean Brutalism itself was a failure. There are buildings and communities from this tradition that continue to function well and remain appreciated by their inhabitants. But it illustrates just how complicated the relationship between architectural vision and human experience can be.

I can stand in front of a Brutalist building and think it is one of the ugliest things I have ever seen. Then I move a few metres to one side, the light changes, the shadows deepen, and suddenly I discover an almost sculptural beauty. A rhythm in the structure, an unexpected balance between enormous volumes, or an uncompromising clarity that seems absent from much of today's commercial architecture.

There is something irresistible about buildings that appear so completely uninterested in being liked.

Contemporary architecture is often expected to be welcoming, flexible, sustainable, transparent, and preferably decorated with greenery on the roof. There is nothing inherently wrong with these ambitions. But sometimes I feel that modern architecture is almost afraid of expressing a strong conviction. Everything must be adaptable, marketable, rentable, convertible, and commercially attractive.

Brutalism, by contrast, seems to say: Here I am. Think whatever you like.

And I cannot help appreciating that attitude.

At the same time, there is something uncomfortable about admiring uncompromising determination when one knows how easily it can turn into indifference towards other people's needs. It is one thing to create architecture that dares to challenge the observer. It is quite another to create environments where individuals are expected to adapt themselves to an ideology that has already been defined for them.

Much of my ambivalence lies in that distinction.

God, the State, and Our Need to Be Impressed

My relationship with God has never been particularly straightforward either.

I am fascinated by the history of religion, its symbols, narratives, rituals, and remarkable ability to influence human beings across thousands of years. I can enter an old church and find myself deeply affected by the silence, the proportions of the room, and the feeling that countless lives have passed through the building before mine. I can appreciate the artistic and human power of all this without necessarily being convinced by the religious explanations behind it.

That does not mean I dismiss the experiences of believers. Quite the opposite. I consider humanity's need to understand its own existence one of our most fascinating characteristics. We want to know where we came from, why we are here, and whether there is some greater meaning to what we do. For thousands of years, religion has offered answers to these questions, and even those who do not share those answers can appreciate the cultural world that has developed around them.

But I have always struggled with the moment when personal conviction transforms into institutional authority.

When someone else begins telling me what I must believe, how I should live, and which questions I would be wiser not to ask.

That is where a clear parallel with political monumentalism emerges.

The communist state did not merely construct factories, housing developments, and administrative buildings. It also attempted to formulate a comprehensive narrative about humanity, history, and the future. There was an explicit belief about where society was heading, who would lead that development, and what role the individual was expected to play.

That narrative needed symbols, ceremonies, and monuments.

When I study old communist propaganda murals, gigantic statues of workers and soldiers, idealized human bodies, and monumental public buildings, I therefore see more than political propaganda. I see an attempt to construct a new form of belief, one in which history had a predetermined direction and the Party claimed to understand it.

There is something almost religious about that ambition.

The obvious difference is that communism, at least in its official Marxist-Leninist form, rejected religion's supernatural explanations. But that did not eliminate the human appetite for reverence, symbols, rituals, and sacred narratives.

In many places, religious figures were replaced by political heroes, martyrs, and revolutionaries. Portraits of leaders acquired an almost icon-like function. Monuments became physical manifestations of the officially approved version of history.

And just as within organized religion, doubt became troublesome once conviction was institutionalized.

I think that is where my real resistance begins.

Not against humanity's need to believe in something greater than itself, nor against architecture's ambition to express grand ideas. My resistance emerges when someone claims ownership of the truth and subsequently constructs a world in which everyone else is expected to accept it.

It makes surprisingly little difference whether that truth is delivered from a pulpit, a Party headquarters, or behind a monumental entrance.

When the Buildings of Dictatorship Outlive the Dictatorship

There is another dimension that makes Sofia particularly fascinating.

The political system that commissioned many of the city's monumental buildings has disappeared, but the buildings remain. They have acquired new functions, new symbols, and new occupants. The former Communist Party headquarters is now part of the parliamentary environment of democratic Bulgaria. The red star that once crowned the building was removed in 1990, but the architectural structure remains.

It is a fascinating encounter between history and the present.

A building designed to demonstrate the power of one political system is now used within an entirely different one. One might interpret this as a kind of democratic conquest of the old architecture of power. What was once intended to symbolize the Party's historical supremacy has become part of a society where political authority, at least in principle, must be open to criticism, scrutiny, and replacement.

But I sometimes wonder whether architecture's psychological message really changes simply because someone replaces the flag on the roof.

The enormous doors are still enormous.

The authority of the facades remains.

The ordinary citizen is still physically small when walking past the building.

The state may have changed, but much of the physical staging of power remains exactly as it was.

This raises a question extending far beyond Bulgaria. How much of a building's original ideology survives within its architecture? Can a democratic institution fully inhabit a building originally designed to demonstrate an undemocratic political order? Or can a new purpose transform its meaning so completely that the original intentions eventually become little more than historical footnotes?

I have no simple answer.

What I do believe, however, is that automatically demolishing everything associated with an uncomfortable political past would be a mistake.

Preserving a building does not necessarily mean celebrating the ideology responsible for its construction. Quite the opposite. Preservation can make history easier to understand. A building is a historical document, but one that can be walked through, touched, and experienced physically. It tells us about the technology, economy, aesthetics, self-image, and power structures of its time.

If we destroy every uncomfortable document, understanding the past becomes considerably more difficult.

That does not mean every monument must remain in its original location or that every building deserves preservation. Some historical symbols continue to function as active celebrations of oppression, and their public presence deserves serious discussion. Relocation, reinterpretation, and other ways of confronting the past can be entirely appropriate.

But I wish these discussions were more often driven by curiosity about history rather than simply a desire to remove its most uncomfortable expressions.

Sofia has an unusual opportunity in this respect.

The city is not merely a collection of buildings from different historical periods. It is a place where competing visions of society can still be studied almost side by side. Religious buildings, monuments to the socialist state, institutions of modern democracy, and new commercial developments compete for space and attention.

Every era has attempted, in its own way, to tell us what matters.

And every era seems to have been remarkably convinced that its particular worldview would endure.

I Don't Have to Believe in It to Love It

The more I think about Brutalism and the monumental architecture surrounding me, the clearer it becomes that my fascination is not really about concrete.

It is about the human beings behind the concrete.

About our ability to imagine something greater than ourselves, mobilize enormous resources, and then give those ideas a physical form capable of surviving for generations.

There is something both magnificent and frightening about this.

I can admire the courage of the architect, the skill of the engineer, and the craftsmanship of the builders without sharing the worldview of those who commissioned the project. I can be fascinated by an enormous communist monument without feeling the slightest longing for the political system responsible for its creation.

Just as I can sit inside a cathedral, listen to the silence, and feel profound respect for the human creativity surrounding me without necessarily believing in the God to whom the building is dedicated.

It is actually quite a liberating realization.

We do not need to accept the ideas behind a work of art to appreciate its artistic qualities. Nor must we deny its aesthetic value to criticize the power structures that made it possible.

At the same time, I do not believe aesthetics can be entirely separated from history. A building created to demonstrate totalitarian power does not become politically innocent simply because someone photographs it in beautiful evening light.

It can be architecturally brilliant and historically troubling at the same time.

And perhaps that is precisely what makes it more interesting than a building that raises no questions whatsoever.

This may also explain why I sometimes struggle with contemporary architectural ideals. Not because I long for the era of monumental political buildings, but because I occasionally miss the ambition to create something that actually means something.

We build an enormous amount that is practical, profitable, and visually appealing.

But how much of it will make someone stop a hundred years from now and wonder what we actually believed in?

When I walk through Sofia and look at these enormous buildings, I therefore think about more than communism, Brutalism, or political history.

I think about humanity's desire to leave something behind.

To build something that continues speaking long after we ourselves have fallen silent.

It is probably the same impulse that once inspired people to construct stone cathedrals, pyramids, and monuments. We know our lives are limited, yet we build as though we might somehow negotiate with eternity.

And perhaps that is precisely where Brutalism and God meet in my mind.

Both represent something that claims to be greater than the individual. Both can inspire extraordinary creations. Both can also be used to legitimize power, submission, and the belief that certain people have the right to decide how others should live.

But there is a fundamental difference between experiencing reverence and accepting submission.

I can stand in front of an enormous building and feel small without accepting that I am insignificant.

I can be impressed by its size without bowing to the authority it attempts to represent.

I can appreciate its beauty, question its message, and continue walking.

Perhaps that is one of the greatest privileges of living in a society where we actually have the freedom to think for ourselves.

So the next time I walk past the government buildings in Sofia, I will probably do exactly what I usually do.

Stop for a moment, look upward, admire the proportions, and simultaneously experience a slight discomfort at the monumental power these buildings were once intended to communicate.

I will probably remain unable to decide whether I find them beautiful or horrifying.

And I suspect my relationship with God will remain equally unresolved.

But there is one thing I am reasonably certain of: You don't have to believe in God to love a cathedral. And you certainly don't have to be a communist to be fascinated by Brutalism.