British Architectural Library Trust

Join us on March 26th for the third installment of BALTs “The Brutalist Revolution” web lecture series! The Brutalist Image, a lecture by Valeria Carullo will discuss how Brutalist architecture, seen as a descendant of the Modern Movement, was highly photogenic. Its bold forms, sculptural shapes, and large scale suited the sharp, high-contrast style of post-war architectural photography, while rough materials like raw concrete and exposed brick highlighted texture and strength, conveying optimism about modern architecture.

By the late 1960s, growing criticism of post-war planning changed how Brutalism was photographed. Formal, dramatic images were replaced by grainier, informal photos influenced by social documentary, often showing people and everyday life.

Brutalism later fell out of favour but was rediscovered in the new millennium. Today, photographers once again emphasise the same striking visual qualities that first made these buildings appealing.

Details and registration link in our bio!

Join us next Thursday for the second installment of BALTs “The Brutalist Revolution” web lecture series, Brutalism and the Transformed City!

Dr. Otto Saumarez Smith is an architectural and urban historian whose work explores modern British history through the lens of the built environment. He is Associate Professor at the University of Warwick, where he teaches and researches the political, social, and cultural histories embedded in everyday buildings and cities. His first book, Boom Cities: Architect Planners and the Politics of Radical Urban Renewal in 1960s Britain (OUP, 2019), was a History Today Book of the Year and widely reviewed. He is currently completing a second monograph on housing, sociology, and public-sector expertise in post-war Britain, and is co-editor of The Modern British City, forthcoming in 2025. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Trustee of the Twentieth Century Society.

Information and registration link in our bio!

Image Credit: Joanne Underhill / RIBA Collections

Join us on February 26th via Zoom for the second installment of BALTs “The Brutalist Revolution” web lecture series! Brutalism and the Transformed City, a lecture by Dr. Otto Saumarez Smith, explores how architects and planners of Britain’s 1960’s “Brutalist” generation imaged bold new urban futures, from multi-level cities with vast megastructures to radical attempts to make the car a central part of city life. It looks at projects like the Barbican and Hook New Town, along with influential plans and reports that shaped city centers in Newcastle, Liverpool, and Blackburn. Driven by post-war optimism and faith in progress, these ideas promised a new kind of city. The reality, however, was often controversial, leaving behind concrete visions that still divide opinion today.

Information and registration link in our bio!

Image Credits: Architectural Press Archive / RIBA Collections

Join us this Thursday for the first lecture of 2026: Defining Brutalism by Owen Hopkins!

A cultural leader, curator, and writer, Owen Hopkins is currently Director of the Farrell Centre at Newcastle University. Previously, he held senior curatorial roles at Sir John Soane’s Museum and the Royal Academy of Arts, and is currently part of the curatorial team for the British Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. He has curated major exhibitions in the UK and internationally and is the author of eight books, including The Brutalists: Brutalism’s Best Architects. He writes widely on architecture and its intersections with technology, politics, and society, lectures internationally, and regularly contributes to public debate through print and broadcast media.

Interlocutor: Hugh Pearman
9 AM PST/12 PM EST/5 PM GMT
Via Zoom

Registration link in our bio!

Join us on Thursday January 22 for Part 1 of the 2026 BALT Lecture Series The Brutalist Revolution. In Part 1 Owen Hopkins will define Brutalism, the most controversial – yet misunderstood – architectural movement of the 20th century. Surveying examples of Brutalism from every continent, the lecture proposes a definition of Brutalism not in terms of singularity, but as duality, or rather a series of dualities. Beginning with Reyner Banham’s famous dichotomy of ‘ethic or aesthetic’, the lecture considers the ways Brutalism oscillates between the global and the local; how it frequently pointed to the future but was also deeply embedded in the architecture past; it synthesis of the hand-crafted and machine-built; and how exists in both visceral material form and as image. This duality was, the lecture suggests, both Brutalism’s greatest strength, its driving animated force, but also its downfall. Where Brutalism attempted the heroic reconciliation of the contradictions that had begun to fatally undermine the modern movement, the Postmodernists simply revelled in them. Nevertheless, despite its flaws and contradictions, Brutalism still stands as powerful evidence of architecture’s ability to remake the world – an ability, this lecture contends, we now need more than ever.

January 22 2026
Part 1 – Defining Brutalism
Speaker: Owen Hopkins
Interlocutor: Hugh Pearman
9 AM PST/12 PM EST/5 PM GMT
Via Zoom

Register at the link in our bio!

[📸: RIBA Collections RIBA45151] Balfron Tower, Rowlett Street (to the left) and Robin Hood Gardens (to the right), Tower Hamlets, London  
Subject date: 1967
Architect/Designer: Alison & Peter Smithson, Erno Goldfinger

The British Architectural Library Trust (BALT) is pleased to announce the 2026 Web Lecture Series - The Brutalist Revolution! Join Owen Hopkins as he opens the series by redefining Brutalism beyond cliché, examining its ethical, aesthetic and global contradictions, before turning to the radical ways Brutalist architects reshaped the post-war city.

Date: Thursday, January 22, 2026
Time: 12:00 pm EDT, 5:00 pm GMT, 6:00 pm CEST, 9:00 am PDT
Location: Zoom Webinar

Register at the link in our bio!

[📸: RIBA Collections RIBA69674]
Subject date: 1972
Architect/Designer: Philip Johnson

Join us and Valeria Carullo this Thursday for a new lecture exploring the history of the RIBA Refugee Committee, established in early 1939 in response to the growing displacement of architects and artists fleeing N**i persecution in Central Europe. Tune in to learn how RIBA, guided by its young Librarian Edward “Bobby” Carter, created the Refugee Committee to balance support for émigré architects with protecting local employment.

Register at the link in our bio!

Thursday, November 20, 2025
12:00 pm EDT / 5:00 pm BST / 6:00 pm CEST / 9:00 am PDT Via Zoom

📸Czechoslovak Pavilion, Golden Gate Fair, San Francisco: the exhibit of Bohemian glass and optic equipment
📸Apartment or house in the Czech Republic, probably in Prague: the living room*

[📸: RIBA Collections RIBA15819, RIBA56667] Subject date: 1939, 1930 Architect/Designer: Antonin Heythum, Charlotta Heythum, Kamil Roskot, Arthur Blitz

*Arthur Blitz was chief architect between 1927 and 1939 for the firm Emil Gerstel, based in Prague, which specialized in interior decoration and furniture. This photoprint was originally part of the Refugee Committee Papers in the RIBA Archives Collection.

Tune in on November 20 for a lecture on The RIBA Refugee Committee: Architects in Exile, 1933–1939. Valeria Carullo will cover refugee architects like Stefan Buzas, Desiderius Rott, Endre Steiner, and Erich Ziffer and their profound impact on British and international modernism.

Date: November 20th, 2025
Time: 12:00 pm EDT, 5:00 pm GMT, 6:00 pm CEST, 9:00 am PDT
Location: Zoom Webinar

Register at the link in our bio!

[📸: RIBA Collections RIBA39716, RIBA56856, RIBA56872, RIBA56883]
Subject date: 1951, 1930
Architect/Designer: Stefan Buzas, Desiderius Rott, Endre Steiner, Erich Ziffer
These photoprints were originally part of the Refugee Committee Papers in the RIBA Archives Collection.

Meet the speakers of BALT’s next lecture - RIBA Refugee Committee: Architects in Exile, 1933-1939 on Thursday November 20th via zoom!

Valeria Carullo is Curator of the Robert Elwall Photographs Collection at the Royal Institute of British Architects. An architect by training, she researches the relationship between modern photography and modern architecture. She is the author of Moholy-Nagy in Britain 1935–1937 and the forthcoming Richard Bryant (2025). Valeria also leads the RIBA Refugee Committee project and curated the international conference Displaced Lives: Architects Seeking Refuge on the Brink of WWII (2024).

Barry Bergdoll
Barry Bergdoll is Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History at Columbia University and former Chief Curator of Architecture & Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A leading historian of modern architecture, he has curated major exhibitions around the world and authored the widely used textbook European Architecture: 1750–1890. He is an honorary fellow of both the Royal Institute of British Architects and AIA New York, and serves on the jury of the Pritzker Architecture Prize.

Register for the web lecture at the link in our bio!

The British Architectural Library Trust (BALT) is pleased to announce a new web lecture on the RIBA Refugee Committee! Join Valeria Carullo and Barry Bergdoll for a fascinating conversation on how the architectural community responded to one of the most turbulent periods of the 20th century. Discover the story of how British architects, led by RIBA’s visionary Librarian Edward “Bobby” Carter, founded the Refugee Committee in 1939 to assist displaced colleagues while navigating fears of economic competition and antisemitism.

Date: November 20th, 2025
Time: 12:00 pm EDT, 5:00 pm BST, 6:00 pm CEST, 9:00 am PDT
Location: Zoom Webinar

Register at the link in our bio!

This photoprint of Villa Spisek, a Baba Werkbund housing estate in Prague, was originally part of the Refugee Committee Papers in the RIBA Archives Collection.

[📸: RIBA Collections RIBA56795]
Subject date: 1933
Architect/Designer: Ladislav Machon

The BALT Fellowship Application is now live!

The annual Fellowship Program aims to provide an individual currently pursuing graduate studies, or a young professionals at work in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, urban design, and architectural history with the opportunity to travel to and study at the Royal Institute of British Architects. While researching at the largest collection of architectural materials in the world the fellow will work closely with the RIBA archival team, gaining hands-on experience with primary source materials, receiving guidance on navigating the collection, and engaging in discussions that will help contextualize and deepen their research focus.

The selected fellow will receive a fixed $7,500 grant to conduct their research. The fellowship will include an online lecture component that will live on our website and YouTube, further extending the impact of the fellow’s research and making it accessible to a wider audience. The goal, consistent with the broader aims of the Trust, is to promote knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of art and architecture by affording the grantees hands-on academic and cultural experiences at the Royal Institute of British Architects, located at 66 Portland Place, London.

Check out the link in our bio to apply!