Brutal Scotland

Brilliantly designed and beautifully produced, Simon Phipps' major new book - arguably his richest collection of architecture since Brutal London - is a celebration of Scotland's best Brutalist and Modernist buildings. From the Peter Womersley's cinematically brilliant Bernat Klein Design Studio set on the edge of birch woods in the Borders to the innovative, liveable Langside Housing Estate in Shawlands, Glasgow (originally designed by Derek Stephenson and Partners), there is a wealth of architectural aspiration and inspiration these pages. Capturing a half century in which architecture reached, however perfectly or imperfectly, for solutions for the public's good, this is an epic journey through a nation's period of reimagining. As some of these buildings fall into neglected disrepair this is an urgent reconsideration of an era when architects, planners and councils of the period were reaching for a new architectural language, in a period of public investment.