The Nürburgring is a 150,000 person capacity motorsports complex located in the town of Nürburg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It features a Grand Prix race track built in 1984, and a much longer Nordschleife "North loop" track which was built in the 1920s around the village and medieval castle of Nürburg in the Eifel mountains. Jackie Stewart nicknamed the old track "The Green Hell".
Descending from the modernist movement, Brutalism is said to be a reaction against the nostalgia of architecture in the 1940s. Derived from the Swedish phrase nybrutalism, the term "New Brutalism" was first used by British architects Alison and Peter Smithson for their pioneering approach to design. The style was further popularized in a 1955 essay by architectural critic Reyner Banham, who also associated the movement with the French phrases béton brut "raw concrete" and art brut "raw art". The style, as developed by architects such as the Smithsons and Hungarian-born Ernő Goldfinger, was partly foreshadowed by the work of other architects such as French-Swiss Le Corbusier, Estonian-American Louis Kahn, and Finnish Alvar Aalto. In Great Britain, Brutalism was featured in the design of utilitarian, low-cost social housing influenced by socialist principles, and soon spread to other regions across the world, including Asia, North America, and the Soviet Bloc. Brutalist designs became most commonly used in the design of institutional buildings, such as universities, libraries, courts, and city halls. The popularity of the movement began to decline in the late 1970s, with some associating the style with urban decay and totalitarianism.
The European Union (EU) is a political and economic union of 27 member states that are located primarily in Europe. Its members have a combined area of 4,233,255.3 km2 and an estimated total population of about 447 million. The EU has developed an internal single market through a standardised system of laws that apply in all member states in those matters, and only those matters, where members have agreed to act as one. EU policies aim to ensure the free movement of people, goods, services and capital within the internal market; enact legislation in justice and home affairs; and maintain common policies on trade agriculture, fisheries and regional development. For travel within the Schengen Area, passport controls have been abolished. A monetary union was established in 1999, coming into full force in 2002, and is composed of 19 EU member states which use the euro currency. The EU has often been described as a sui generis political entity. The EU and European citizenship were established when the Maastricht Treaty came into force in 1993. The EU traces its origins to the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC), established, respectively, by the 1951 Treaty of Paris and 1957 Treaty of Rome. The original members of what came to be known as the European Communities were the Inner Six: Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany. The Communities and their successors have grown in size by the accession of new member states and in power by the addition of policy areas to their remit. The latest major amendment to the constitutional basis of the EU, the Treaty of Lisbon, came into force in 2009. On 31 January 2020, the United Kingdom became the first member state to leave the EU. Following a 2016 referendum, the UK signified its intention to leave and negotiated a withdrawal agreement. The UK is in a transitional phase until at least 31 December 2020, during which it remains subject to EU law and part of the EU single market and customs union. Before this, three territories of member states had left the EU or its forerunners, these being French Algeria (in 1962, upon independence), Greenland (in 1985, following a referendum) and Saint Barthélemy (in 2012).
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