Regenstein Library, Academic library at Hyde Park, Chicago, US.
This seven-story limestone structure houses over 4.5 million volumes focused on humanities and social sciences, distributed across expansive reading rooms, group work areas and individual study carrels overlooking the campus.
Opened in 1970 to replace earlier collections, this building rose on the site of old Stagg Field, where Enrico Fermi and his team conducted the first controlled nuclear chain reaction in 1942, launching the atomic age.
This facility serves as the central research hub for University of Chicago scholars, hosting thousands of students and researchers daily who work on complex academic projects across disciplines.
Located at 1100 East 57th Street, this facility extends hours to 4 AM during examination periods and provides public access to certain areas beyond university holdings after registering at the main desk.
An automated underground storage system retrieves rarely used works, while exterior walls display vertical lines resembling book spines on a shelf, serving as architectural reference to the building's function.
Location: Chicago
Inception: 1970
Floors above the ground: 5
Floors below the ground: 2
GPS coordinates: 41.79220,-87.59980
Latest update: December 1, 2025 09:12
Brutalist architecture emerged in the decades following World War II, producing buildings that challenged conventional design through their honest expression of materials and function. From Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation in Marseille to Louis Kahn's National Assembly in Dhaka, these structures define a global movement that prioritized raw concrete, bold geometric forms and exposed construction elements. The style reached across continents, shaping university libraries in Chicago, government buildings in Boston and Chandigarh, residential towers in London, and cultural centers in São Paulo. Each building reflects the architectural philosophy of its time, when architects sought to create functional spaces through direct expression of structure and material. This collection documents examples from Europe, Asia, North and South America, representing the full range of building types that defined the movement. You'll find administrative complexes that house parliaments and municipal offices, educational facilities serving major universities, residential towers providing urban housing, and cultural institutions including museums and theaters. The structures share common characteristics—concrete left exposed to show its texture and formwork patterns, geometric compositions that emphasize mass and volume, and architectural elements that reveal rather than conceal how buildings stand and function. These sites offer insight into a period when architects reimagined how modern cities could be built and how public spaces could serve their communities.
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