Concrete, edited by William Hall and published by Phaidon, is a collection of large (full-page and double-page) photographs of concrete architecture. It’s a visual portfolio of almost 200 buildings rather than a narrative history of concrete, though it includes an introductory essay by Leonard Koren.
Hall writes in his preface: “Many of the best and most influential buildings of the last century are constructed with concrete”. The book includes plenty of stunning examples, from Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye (“perhaps the quintessential modernist structure”) to the 2,000-year-old Roman Pantheon.
Concrete has been maligned due to its associations with post-War Brutalist architecture, a trend first identified by Rayner Banham in his 1955 Architectural Review article The New Brutalism. But in his essay, Koren argues that Brutalism was a mere blip in concrete’s long history as a versatile building material.
Peter Collins wrote the first history of concrete architecture (though he placed too much emphasis on a single architect, Auguste Perret). Several histories of other building materials have been published recently, including Glass in Architecture (by Michael Wigginton), Brick (by James W.P. Campbell), Architecture in Wood (by Will Pryce), and Corrugated Iron (by Simon Holloway and Adam Mornement).
Hall writes in his preface: “Many of the best and most influential buildings of the last century are constructed with concrete”. The book includes plenty of stunning examples, from Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye (“perhaps the quintessential modernist structure”) to the 2,000-year-old Roman Pantheon.
Concrete has been maligned due to its associations with post-War Brutalist architecture, a trend first identified by Rayner Banham in his 1955 Architectural Review article The New Brutalism. But in his essay, Koren argues that Brutalism was a mere blip in concrete’s long history as a versatile building material.
Peter Collins wrote the first history of concrete architecture (though he placed too much emphasis on a single architect, Auguste Perret). Several histories of other building materials have been published recently, including Glass in Architecture (by Michael Wigginton), Brick (by James W.P. Campbell), Architecture in Wood (by Will Pryce), and Corrugated Iron (by Simon Holloway and Adam Mornement).
