Concrete and Culture: A Material History

Description

Almost three tons of concrete are produced each year for every person on the planet; only water is consumed more per head of population. Now used almost universally in modern construction, concrete polarizes opinion: provoking intense loathing and fervent passion in others. Concrete and Culture breaks new ground by charting concrete's effects on culture since its reinvention in the modern period, examining the ways it has changed our understanding of nature, of time and of materiality. This book discusses architects' responses to and uses of concrete while also taking into account the role it has played in politics, literature, cinema and labour relations, as well as in present day arguments about sustainability.

Adrian Forty is professor emeritus of architectural history at the Bartlett, University College London. His books include Objects of Desire: Design and Society since 1750 and Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture.

"Fascinating. . . . Forty shows in arresting detail that constructing in reinforced concrete was no less industrialized, with the companies that had patented reinforced concrete systems, and their desk-bound engineers, orchestrating events on faraway sites."-- "Times Literary Supplement" "Forty offers a historical account of how concrete has played a part in humans' relationship to their physical surroundings and the global consequences. By taking into account the role concrete has played in areas like politics, literature, cinema, and sustainability, he gives readers a new viewpoint about this material."-- "Choice" "This book fully succeeds in portraying the most emblematic material of modern culture. Concrete is seemingly condemned to transformations, easily slipping into the role of timber or stone, with no clear identity of its own. With his engaging scholarship, Adrian Forty takes us beyond the merely concrete, showing a material that does not fit into pre-cast categories, as a projection screen of Japanese, Brazilian or Swiss identities, of fears and pleasures, a source of dislike and fascination since its invention."-- "Akos Moravanszky, ETH Zurich" "This erudite, insightful and wide-ranging study takes the field of material history in new directions. By focusing on concrete--the ubiquitous marker of modernity--we are taken through a labyrinth of intersecting cultural and political developments that range across architecture, cinema, photography, planning, and a host of other fields."-- "Matthew Gandy, University College London" "Forty admits that he initially saw Concrete and Culture as an 'entertainment', an enjoyable project that allowed him to travel globally, but that he ended up grappling with a set of problems that were both intellectually difficult and full of rich cultural associations. Taking on a topic that has for the most part--until very recently--been the subject of technical literature, he again shows us a new way of looking at modernity, via one of its most characteristic material manifestations." -- "Oxford Art Journal"