The pioneer of this aesthetic was the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier. In the post-World War II era, Europe faced a desperate shortage of housing and a scarcity of steel. Le Corbusier turned to concrete—not as a cheap substitute to be hidden, but as a material to be celebrated. His Unité d'Habitation in Marseille (completed in 1952) was the manifesto. It did not hide the seams of the wooden planks used to cast the concrete; it highlighted them. It was honest, tactile, and unadorned.
It is being compared to There Will Be Blood (for the score by Scott Walker) and The Fountainhead (for the philosophy). But perhaps the best comparison is to the buildings it depicts. El Brutalista
Corbet famously forbade the use of digital effects for the architecture. The massive brutalist structures seen in the film (a library in the Poconos, a car-shaped chapel in Utah) were built as full-scale practical sets in Budapest. This commitment to physical texture gives its visceral power. You don't just see the concrete; you feel its weight, its coldness, and its permanence. The pioneer of this aesthetic was the Swiss-French