Béton brut --> Brutalism at Ben-Gurion University

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For better or for worse,  Beer Sheva is called our capital of Brutalism.*
And the city's Ben-Gurion University is full of Brutalist architecture. 
BGU's main library, for instance, whose cornerstone was laid in 1971.

 From the Aranne Library website:

In designing the library building, the architects wanted to bring several ideas to life:
The building was planned to be washed in natural light – present in abundance in the Negev - which,  diffused from the North (to eliminate the direct rays of the sun),  floods the library's reading areas. . . .
The combination of concrete, dark in appearance and representing durability in desert conditions,  and gleaming cupolas made of glass mosaic, expresses the blending of material with light.

Here is the back of the library. 

* From Wikipedia:

The English architects Alison and Peter Smithson coined the term in 1953, from the French béton brut, or "raw concrete", a phrase used by Le Corbusier to describe the poured board-marked concrete with which he constructed many of his post-World War II buildings.
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Brutalist architecture is a style of architecture that flourished from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, spawned from the modernist architectural movement. Examples are typically very linear, fortresslike and blockish, often with a predominance of concrete construction. Initially the style came about for government buildings, low-rent housing and shopping centres to create functional structures at a low cost, but eventually designers adopted the look for other uses such as college buildings.

UPDATE: Here is a nice new article about the beauty of Brutalism.
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(Linking to ABC Wednesday, Whimsical Windows, Delirious Doors, and Our World Tuesday.)
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