Tag Archives: MARCEL BREUER

#207: THE BRUTALIST | FILM REVIEW BY AN ARCHITECT

June 13, 2025

Library renovation, Laszlo Toth’s first project for his new client, Harrison Lee Van Buren, film still from The Brutalist, 2024

Over time, architects have appeared in hundreds of movies and TV shows—from Paul Newman to Tom Hanks, Michelle Pfeiffer to Sharon Stone, Keanu Reeves to Elliot Page. But this architect trope is rarely integral to the story. With the 2024 film, The Brutalist, we finally have a movie with an architect being an architect. But I raise an eyebrow or two.

Sure this Oscar-winning movie—3 hours and 34 minutes—is grand and ambitious, an epic sweep of heroism and faltering humanity, like many Oscar films. All blubber aside, I question the accuracy of the architect’s portrayal, the fictional Laszlo Toth—loosely based on the famed architect of the Brutalist movement, Marcel Breuer.

Architect Laszlo Toth, film still from The Brutalist, 2024

Please know this: My movie review is not so much a critique of narrative structure, directorial agenda, and cinematic achievement. Rather, as an architect, it is the details about architecture that vex me.

Architect and design drawing, film still from The Brutalist, 2024

First, the design proclamations are pretentious, even ridiculous, but perhaps it is accurate for the many architects who fall victim to what is mocked as “archi-speak.” Example from a Harvard architect, “Unlike architecture that seeks to articulate understandings about the nature of things through expressive or metaphoric mimings, this remarkable building yields us actionable space.”

Our hero, Laszlo Toth, spews lines like, “Nothing is of its own explanation. Is there a better description of a cube than that of its construction?”

And “…skylights that can also be viewed as demarcations of units of space…”

Or “For its harmony.”

The chapter titles also encourage teasing.

– The Enigma of Arrival
– The Hard Core of Beauty
– The Presence of the Past

Of the script, Dezeen magazine critiqued, “Like the architecture itself, the conversation is cliched nonsense”

Under construction, The Margaret Lee Van Buren Center for Creation and Activity, film still from The Brutalist, 2024

Next, an architect is usually not a general contractor nor a structural engineer. But in The Brutalist, Toth is actually determining the number of construction workers needed and providing construction techniques. Every attorney to an architect will scold said architect for providing liability-stricken “means and methods” for construction. Architects design. The contractor builds. Simple as that.

Architect’s completed work, film still from The Brutalist, 2024

Speaking of the architecture, apparently no architects were consulted for this film. Perhaps one should have been hired to collaborate with the production designer, Judy Becker—competent and compelling, but appearing to have limited formal architectural training. For a movie about boxing, shouldn’t a boxer be consulted? For a movie about cooking, shouldn’t a chef be consulted.

right: Under construction, The Margaret Lee Van Buren Center for Creation and Activity, film still from The Brutalist, 2024; left: This image is not from the movie, but is “The Brutalist Scale Model,” $75 for the limited edition from the A24 shop.

We see familiar references to the work of Louis Kahn, Mies van der Rohe, and Paul Rudolph, but the resulting architecture, particularly the “visionary” community center—Toth’s career breakthrough project—is mildly interesting at its best, clunky at its worst. For that scene of the big presentation, I doubt any architect would walk into a public hearing with such a clumsy-scaled, crudely-made, white cardboard model.

The creative process, film still from The Brutalist, 2024

Lastly, if the actor, Adrien Brody, is going to use architect’s drafting tools, he should use them correctly, holding them, drawing with them. It’s like watching a movie where the assassin holds his gun upside down. And I don’t know many colleagues that draw with fat sticks of black charcoal. Artistic-looking on screen, yes, but practical?

I did sympathize with the sensitive, customer-serving architect who gets abused by the self-serving, affluent client—in this case (spoiler alert), literal rape.

Architect and his insidious client, film still from The Brutalist, 2024

I liked and disliked The Brutalist. Though I found fault in the portrayal of Laszlo Toth as an architect, I supported much of his depiction: thoughtful, creative, and bold, but also self-absorbed, uncompromising, and egotistical. Best to sum it up as Fountainhead-syndrome.

#41: TO BE LOVED

July 22, 2016

Portland Building, Oregon, by Michael Graves Architecture & Design (photo from archinect.com)

In my last year as an undergrad, the brilliant (to some) Michael Graves gave an evening lecture. As one of the founders of Post Modernism, Graves sparked a movement of creative but tradition-bound architects.

The lecture hall on the UC Berkeley campus was packed; no, over packed. Architecture, art, and even philosophy and history majors plus faculty filled the large auditorium. Alongside filled seats, students littered the aisles and corridors—on the steps, on the floor, wall to wall. Even the entire stage, typically left empty for the dramatic effect of the lecturer at his podium, was covered with eager audience members. This forced Graves to reach the podium by crossing the stage as if it were a minefield.

Which in a way it was.

Addition to the Whitney Museum, by Michael Graves Architecture & Design, Whitney Museum on the left, Graves addition on the right and on top (photo by Michael Graves Architecture & Design)

Delivering a fascinating presentation, Graves entertained with wonderful wit. At one point, he showed a slide of a city downtown, and said disapprovingly, “You can have office towers like these that are black, white or maybe grey.”

Then Graves displayed a slide of his misunderstood but enjoyable 1982 Portland Building in Oregon. He declared with enthusiasm that the freshness of his building lay in the happy shades of yellow, maroon and turquoise. “Or you can also have color!”

The esteemed architect concluded his two-and-a-half hour lecture by unveiling his ongoing design process for a big addition to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. The original museum, a brutal mass of a building faced with dark grey granite, presented only one window facing Madison Avenue. For those who support the friendliness of Post Modernism, Marcel Breuer’s 1960’s Whitney was an uninviting and even mean building—the worst of Modernism. (I admit that this building is a personal fave.)

Addition to the Whitney Museum, by Michael Graves Architecture & Design (photo by Michael Graves Architecture & Design)

That night, Graves displayed his multitude of designs being developed for the Whitney, each one already rejected by the museum committee. There were so many designs that it seemed to be an excessive, mindless path of creativity.

Was it the architect? Was it the client? Each design iteration was more bizarre than the last. Regardless of whether my young mind could comprehend the architect’s meandering artistic journey, a Post Modern addition to an existing Modern building exhibited the battle between the two artistic movements.

At the end of the epic presentation, the audience was split right down the middle. Some students cheered in support for this courageous architect’s vision. Other students booed his philosophy of architecture.

Graves tried to hold his ground at the podium, but even this senior diplomat could not handle the mix of admiration and disdain. Of love and hatred.

Graves raised his arms to quiet the audience. With tears running down his face, he felt defeat and embarrassment. Silence fell. Despite his stature in the industry, the very mortal designer expressed that night what many an artist must feel again and again, whether in private or in public. Here, he did so in public.

Exhausted of all defense, Michael Graves simply said: “All anyone wants, is to love and be loved.”

© Poon Design Inc.