What happens when the guts of buildings become part of the experience of space? Three Brutalist interiors—a restaurant in Madrid, a workspace in Bilbao and a hair salon in Thessaloniki—move beyond rawness as an aesthetic, embracing a spatial attitude that makes construction, infrastructure and material systems visible. Design moves away from the perfectly finished, image-driven interior to reveal how spaces are assembled, serviced, occupied and transformed. In Thessaloniki, Yianni by UBUplan turns concrete into a continuous spatial field; in Bilbao, ENBI offices by I-ARCHITECTURE employ hollow brick as a porous architectural device; in Madrid, MO de Movimiento by Lucas Muñoz Muñoz exposes reuse, ventilation, water, wiring and fabrication as integral parts of its architecture. Together, they propose a Brutalism that gives ordinary components architectural agency, bringing into plain sight what has long been designed to remain concealed.
Yianni Hair Spa in Thessaloniki by UBUplan architects
At Yianni Hair Spa, Brutalism is not a historical style, but an ethic of material intensity. The project is organised around concrete, repeatedly transformed from surface into volume, from singular mass into an almost geological field of smaller elements. Rather than being neutralised by finishes, material is allowed to retain its weight, roughness and chromatic irregularities.
Its radicality lies precisely in this refusal of the conventional beauty salon as a polished, frictionless interior. Here, beauty is staged against matter in an almost primordial state.
Concrete does not merely clad the space; it actively choreographs it. Reception and waiting occupy the foreground, while individual workstations unfold freely beyond, each acquiring a distinct spatial and sensory condition. Deeper inside, the spa becomes increasingly elemental, with geometry and material reduced to what the architects describe as their more primitive expression.
The result suggests a softer, almost corporeal Brutalism. Hardness becomes sculptural; repetition becomes rhythm; roughness coexists with intimacy. Brutalism here is about material truth and sensory confrontation: architecture stripped of decorative mediation, where concrete is permitted to remain concrete—heavy, imperfect, tactile—while the human body becomes its counterpoint.
Light—both natural and artificial—functions as a design instrument, revealing curvature, discontinuities, and material nuance, while reflections, tonal subtleties, and tactile contrasts deepen sensory engagement.
ENBI Offices in Bilbao, by I-ARCHITECTURE
At ENBI’s headquarters in Bilbao, I-ARCHITECTURE reconnects the contemporary workplace with a Brutalist ethic of material truth, structural legibility and constructive directness. Its radicality begins with an ordinary, almost archaic component—the hollow ceramic brick—and its transformation into an architectural system. Rather than concealing construction beneath immaculate surfaces, the brick remains exposed, repeated through shifting bonds that produce walls of varying density, porosity and transparency. Material is not decoration applied to space; material generates space.
Rooted in a Brutalist sensibility, the design reclaims brick as both a structural and spatial protagonist.
This approach recalls Brutalism’s fascination with as found conditions: the expressive potential of materials derives from what they are and how they are assembled. Yet here, mass gives way to permeability. Perforated brickwork filters daylight, casts changing shadows and negotiates degrees of privacy, allowing boundaries to operate simultaneously as enclosure, screen and environmental device. Private functions occupy the plan’s core, while collective workspaces gravitate towards natural light.
Perforated brick surfaces precisely regulate natural light, casting changing patterns of shadow and illumination that recalibrate perception throughout the day.
The result could be understood as a porous Brutalism that makes assembly visible: repetition, joints, voids and imperfections become its architectural language. Instead of polishing the workplace into corporate neutrality, ENBI exposes how space is made, allowing a humble construction unit to become structure, filter, atmosphere and ornament at once.
Read more about the project here!
MO de Movimiento Restaurant in Madrid by Lucas Muñoz Muñoz
MO de Movimiento is radical because it refuses to treat interior design as an act of concealment. Instead, Lucas Muñoz Muñoz turns the processes of construction, maintenance, energy and material consumption into architecture itself. Pipes, wiring, ventilation, structural mesh and technical equipment remain exposed, while demolition rubble is recast into terrazzo-like benches and timber recovered from the existing building becomes furniture. Even mandatory interventions—fireproofing, acoustic insulation and electrical infrastructure—are allowed to constitute the finished spatial language.
In this sense, the project connects to a Brutalist ethic beyond the conventional imagery of exposed concrete.
Its Brutalism lies instead in material honesty: nothing pretends to be something else. Construction is legible, imperfections remain visible, and ageing, repair and degradation are understood as legitimate stages in the life of architecture.
The building does not hide how it works.
Yet Muñoz pushes this ethic further through an environmental agenda. Terracotta-and-water ventilation, reclaimed materials, visible water circuits and waste transformed into new building components turn resource consumption into a spatial question. MO de Movimiento is therefore brutal not through monumentality, but through radical exposure: an architecture stripped of cosmetic finish, where infrastructure, labour, reuse and material consequence become the aesthetic.
Read more about the project here!
