Illuminating Brutalism

With Mark Millstein

Amherst, Massachusetts

Illuminating Brutalism was a collaboration with Professor Mark Millstein of UMass Dartmouth — a projection and live music experience cast onto Kevin Roche's Fine Arts Center Bridge at UMass Amherst (1975). Over the course of an hour, animations I created covered the building's iconic facade: a land acknowledgment developed with the UMass Native American Advisory Council and read by two of its members, and a short history of concrete, Brutalism, and the architectural legacy of UMass Amherst and Dartmouth.

The history animation was designed to be fun. Brutalism is often misunderstood, and the goal was to reframe it — connecting the buildings on these two campuses to 2,000 years of concrete construction without making it feel like a lecture.

Pictured: Promotional poster, Illuminating Brutalism, UMass Amherst, 2022