Brutalism in Ecuador

Ecuador's concrete modernism reached its most monumental expression in Quito, where Milton Barragán, the country's leading brutalist, designed a series of powerful exposed concrete works from the 1960s onward. The Templo de la Patria (1982), set on the slopes of Pichincha above the site of the 1822 battle that secured independence, combines memorial, museum and viewpoint in raw concrete. Barragán's churches and civic buildings made Quito an underappreciated center of South American brutalism, now gaining wider recognition.