3 Review(s)

Concrete Ideas: Material to Shape a City explores the ways in which new technologies are changing concrete and the ways in which it is used. Presented in an elegantly boxed package, with tipped-in images and varying types of paper, Concrete Ideas is as tactile as the material whose reputation it seeks to restore. Through a series of montages, drawings and photographs, it visually speculates on concrete's capacity as an urban catalyst, its potential for defining cities and the many ways in which it is being applied in urban renewal. With thoughtful, informed contributions from experts such as Mark West, George Baird, Will Bruder and Charles Waldheim, among others, and specially taken photographs of concrete buildings around the world (although Toronto features heavily as an exemplar of a successful `concrete city'), this book is key reading for all architecture students and practitioners, and offers a seductive argument for the reconsideration and reclamation of this age-old building material, which is - after water - the second most used material in the world.