Radical statement or eyesore? Japan’s divisive brutalist buildings – in pictures

International Conference Center, Kyoto (Sachio Otani)

‘This silhouette, a composition of bold geometric lines and the stark honesty of exposed concrete, channels the brutalist ethos. Its colossal, forthright forms stand in sharp relief to Kyoto’s delicate tapestry. Yet, within its robust frame, the structure nurtures the flexible, organic essence of “metabolism” – a Japanese architectural vanguard of the 1960s. The design, a tessellation of modular units and transformable spaces, breathes the metabolist vision of perpetual evolution’