About This Book
A windowless skyscraper in Manhattan. An abandoned listening station rusting above Berlin. Disused Underground stations beneath London, and an experimental concrete treehouse in the hills outside Rome. The Architecture of Doom collects buildings that most architectural photography politely avoids, and photographs them with real attention.
What holds the selection together is not period or style — Soviet monuments under snow sit beside private houses and frankly utilitarian infrastructure — but a shared quality of bold simplicity and raw presence. These are buildings that refuse to charm. The book makes the case that this refusal is itself a kind of beauty, and that the unease these structures provoke is worth sitting with rather than designing away.
Key Features
- 208 pages of colour photography spanning several continents and building types
- Subjects range from Brutalist landmarks to Soviet-era monuments, disused transport infrastructure and private residences
- Compact 151 x 199 mm hardback format
What You'll Discover
- How stark, unornamented buildings generate atmosphere through mass, blankness and scale alone
- The visual continuities linking Brutalist masterworks to purely utilitarian structures never intended as architecture
- Abandoned and repurposed sites — listening stations, closed stations, decommissioned monuments — photographed as they now stand
- Why buildings widely regarded as ugly hold such durable fascination
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Dimensions: 151 x 199 mm
- Pages: 208
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781917719223
- Publisher: Hoxton Mini Press
- Publication Date: 21 May 2026
Perfect For
Architects and photographers drawn to Brutalism and post-war concrete, readers of Hoxton Mini Press's photographic series, and anyone who slows down to look at buildings other people hurry past.