"The Breuer building, the former home of the Whitney Museum on New York's Upper East Side, counts as one of the defining buildings of the [brutalist] movement. Completed in 1966, it was designed by Marcel Breuer, who envisioned the structure as an inverted ziggurat [ˈzɪɡəˌræt]." — Alex Greenberger, Art in America, 14 Jan. 2025

ziggurat
noun [ˈzɪɡəˌræt]

A ziggurat is an ancient Mesopotamian temple consisting of a pyramidal structure built in successive stages with outside staircases and a shrine at the top. The word ziggurat is also sometimes used for a similarly shaped structure.

Through French professor of archaeology François Lenormant studies, he became familiar with the Akkadian word (cuneiform inscriptions) for Mesopotamia’s towering, stepped temples: ziqqurratu, which stepped into English as ziggurat.

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