When the critic Reyner Banham published his seminal essay, “The New Brutalism,” in 1955, the project he used to illustrate the essential elements of this new architectural language was a school. Designed by Peter and Alison Smithson, the Hunstanton School was assembled from brick, glass, concrete, and steel and, as Banham writes, was “almost unique among modern buildings in being made of what it appears to be made of.” More than half a century later, in 2020, the architect Derek Dellekamp took on a commission for one of nearly 300 publicly funded community centers built in marginalized districts of his native Mexico City, part of a city-wide initiative called PILARES, or Points of Innovation, Freedom, Art, Education, and Knowledge. He approached his design using the same fundamental principles. “There are no details or finishes. We’ve learned through previous government projects that that’s what works,” he says. “It’s Brutalism 101.”