Tunisian brutalist landmark faces wrecking ball, sparking outcry

Tunisia’s brutalist landmark the Hotel du Lac — a 1970s postcard icon said to have inspired a desert-roving vehicle in “Star Wars” — is being demolished, sparking calls from architects, historians and activists to save it.

Built by Italian architect Raffaele Contigiani in central Tunis, the concrete-and-steel inverted pyramid opened in 1973 during a push to boost post-independence Tunisia’s tourism industry.

Its daring silhouette has since enraptured brutalism and modernist architecture…