Editing Brutalism (section)

== University of Pennsylvania ==

The University of Pennsylvania campus developed significant Brutalist buildings during the 1960s and 1970s, as expansion required new facilities for growing programs. These buildings employed concrete construction appropriate to institutional budgets while expressing the era's confidence in modernist architecture. The results varied in quality: some buildings achieved powerful presence through skilled handling of concrete forms; others appeared merely cheap and oppressive, their raw materials suggesting poverty rather than honesty.<ref name="tatum"/>

Richards Medical Research Laboratories (1960), designed by Louis Kahn, influenced Brutalist development while remaining distinct from the style's typical expression. Kahn's brick and concrete towers established principles of "servant and served" spaces that Brutalist architects adapted, but his refined detailing and warm materials differed from later Brutalism's more aggressive concrete forms. Other Penn buildings, including dining halls, dormitories, and academic buildings, employed Brutalist vocabularies with varying success, creating a campus of considerable architectural variety.<ref name="banham"/>