Almost all architectural styles are visible in Paris, but I’ve long wondered if there are any authentic examples of the truly brutal. Coming from the United Kingdom I share my birthplace with a style of architecture that was harsh and cold, and which marked my upbringing. On Saturday afternoons we parked the family car in damp multi-story car parks then trudged around windswept concrete shopping centres watching the rain form large patches of moisture on the blank, grey exteriors.

I’ve since come to associate these images with the United Kingdom and had found nothing similar in Paris – until one day when I was walking across the 13th arrondissement and discovered this office block at 64-68 Rue du Dessous des Berges. The rarity of such structures could be considered surprising, as although the school of architecture was British-based, the origin of the term brutalism comes from the French béton brut, or “raw concrete”. It was the English architects Alison and Peter Smithson who first coined the term in 1954, and two of their influences were also French based; one that could be safely mentioned, Le Corbusier and his love of concrete, and one that was almost unmentionable – the German sea-defences that had been built along the western coast of France.

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