Before many of these challenging buildings had time to settle into collective consciousness, they had gone. Buildings whose concrete forms were once so massive and heavy. Whose shadows once fell across neighbouring structures and streets. There were no traces in the grooves in a carpet or the wear on a staircase, to capture the daily routines of those who had once lived or worked in these buildings. It can be hard to picture where once they stood. Today, many exist only in our minds, and in the cultural artefacts – books, films, photography – that are left behind.

It is easy in a book such as this to point the finger elsewhere – maintenance, vandalism, politics… yadda, yadda, yadda. But of course, sometimes brutalist buildings failed simply because they failed. Architects sometimes overreached what was technically possible, and budgets didn’t match ambition. The entire Modernist movement, of which brutalism was part, has almost entirely faded too, just as all successive art movements are superseded by the next, often as a reaction. Perhaps modernism fell foul to a backlash that sought to take revenge for every Victorian railway station or terraced house demolished in the cause of progress.

Whenever it comes to discussing the loss of great brutalist work, two names inevitably come up: Owen Luder and Rodney Gordon, British architects who fully embraced the possibilities of raw concrete and created some of the most emblematic superstar structures of the post-war era. A trio of their most magnificent buildings has now gone: Trinity Square in Gateshead (1962–67); the Tricorn Centre in Portsmouth (1963–66); and Derwent Tower in Dunston, Tyne-and-Wear (1968–72).

The Tricorn was the first to go, demolished in 2004. It was a complex that included shops, a market, flats, pubs, clubs and a car park. Its absence left a hole in local landscape and memory, given that the subsequent promises of regeneration turned out to be, at best, a dream. And when a town loses a landmark as memorable as this the stories and myths grow over time. Next to go was Gateshead’s Trinity Square, demolished in 2010. This shopping centre topped by a car park was memorably featured in that 1971 thriller, Get Carter, where a grisly end is met by future Coronation Street actor Bryan Mosley’s character Cliff Brumby, thrown off a ramp by Michael Caine. The building itself came to an equally violent end. Homes all over the North East now contain bits of the car park, broken up and scavenged as mementoes like the Berlin Wall. Finally, the last of the three, Derwent Tower, came down in 2012. This was one of the most unusual tower blocks in Britain, a 29-storey brutalist rocket complete with flying buttresses. Built somewhat against the wishes of the architects, who were keen for a lower level housing scheme due to the poor conditions of the site, the finished tower never really stood a chance. Still, it had its moment in pop culture as well: in 1970 it featured in a TV advert for Tudor Crisps, beating Get Carter to the screen. Like all three of these buildings, the Dunston Rocket, as it was known, was a complicated structure that became run down through – you guessed it – lack of maintenance. Result: three irreplaceable buildings gone.

Were the architects to blame? With Derwent Tower, perhaps, in creating a building where they had little faith it could work on the given site. But Trinity Square and the Tricorn Centre were great buildings, wilfully vandalized by their owners’ lack of pride in them. I imagine ghosts of the residents of the Dunstan Rocket still pacing the sky where their flats had once stood. If you look carefully shadows from disco dancers at the Tricorn can still be glimpsed from the corner of your eye. And shoppers from Trinity Square will forever be holding up that polyester dress or taking a drag from a cigarette on the edge of the car park.

One of the saddest and most senseless losses was John Madin’s Birmingham Central Library (1969–74). The city has become expert at demolishing libraries. The neoclassical version from 1862 was damaged by fire, and its Renaissance-style replacement, opened in 1882, was knocked down, the books and archives moved to Madin’s building, which has since been superseded too. The frilly new one, opened in 2013, was de-staffed almost as soon as it was finished due to City Council funding cuts. As with previous demolitions, I feel there was little purpose to the destruction, other than to reflect the restless city’s insecurity and damaged self-image.

Madin’s library was a reverse ziggurat, broader at the top than at the base, much like the design of Boston City Hall, in the US. As an aside, if you fancy checking out another great example of the form try the State Government Offices in Geelong, Australia (1978–79) by Buchan Laird & Bawden – here’s a reverse ziggurat wrapped in concrete ribbon. A gift box.

Birmingham Central Library, with its large internal courtyard to throw light through the reference library wing, was the city’s finest brutalist building, and for the prolific Mr Madin perhaps his greatest architectural achievement. Beautifully functional, easy to access and navigate, with plenty of room for the many different collections, it was a joy to browse, read, write and mooch about in. The building had initially been part of a much bigger plan by Madin for a new civic centre to be constructed in a similar style, most of which was not completed. High-level walkways would have linked the new library to institutes for music, drama and sports, as well as shops, offices, a pub, car park and the bus station, creating a modern landscape on a par with the Barbican in London. In an era of global oil crises and industrial action this costly enterprise was abandoned. Birmingham politicians have long sought to make their mark with building projects, and it seems the work of their immediate predecessors is always vulnerable to being erased. As machines began to dig into the slender façades and heavy concrete structure in early 2016, pictures of the destruction circulated around the globe, to the dismay of architecture fans worldwide.

The Tricorn Centre, Portsmouth, UK.

Architects: Owen Luder and Rodney Gordon.

Another loss was a bespoke high-rise scheme by Basil Spence in Glasgow, back when Ernő Goldfinger’s London blocks were just a doodle on a sketchpad. The Queen Elizabeth Square flats (1958–62) in Hutchensontown in the Gorbals were two tall, slender towers, built in uncompromisingly rough aggregate. Twenty storeys high and housing 200 new homes, they were part of the first wave of post-war redevelopment of Glasgow, replacing the overcrowded and insanitary tenements. Spence’s design had all sorts of romantic affectations, including an idea of it looking like a ship in full sail on washday, when all the sheets would be billowing on the stacked verandas. Initially popular with residents, the blocks were never looked after and quickly fell into a state of vandalism and disrepair. The Queenies, as they were known, became early victims of the post-war backlash against brutalism and were demolished in 1993.

The ghosts of these and many other optimistic, grandiose schemes haunt global culture and local memory. Their brief lives have in some cases been catalogued in great detail, and in others left to evaporate. As younger generations encounter their shadows, their lost mass and their dissipated dreams, they’ll want answers. What happened to these extraordinary structures, and why? The truth is, people profited from their destruction, whether developers, hungry for new sites and projects, or local politicians and councils, keen to make their mark on the world. So if you love a local brutalist building, record as much information on it as you can, share it online, and keep an eye on it. Changes and demolition occur when those in charge believe, or choose to believe, that nobody cares and that they can get away with it. We can help keep these landmark buildings, and many more like them, viable and well looked after through the 21st century.