Contemporary Concrete Buildings

Concrete? That characterless stuff of parking lots or Communist tower blocks, right? Well, yes. And no. Concrete is actually a name applied to a remarkably wide range of building substances, and, when properly handled, is one of the noble materials of contemporary architecture. A kind of “liquid stone” at the outset, it is malleable, durable, and capable of prodigious feats of engineering.

This Bibliotheca Universalis edition highlights the best work done in concrete of recent years. It includes such stars as Zaha Hadid, Herzog & de Meuron, and Steven Holl, but also surprising new architects like the Russians SPEECH and artists such as James Turrell, who turned the famous concrete spiral of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim in New York into the setting of one of his most remarkable pieces.

The author

Philip Jodidio studied art history and economics at Harvard, and edited Connaissance des Arts for over 20 years. His TASCHEN books include the Architecture Now! series and monographs on Tadao Ando, Santiago Calatrava, Renzo Piano, Jean Nouvel, Shigeru Ban, Richard Meier, Zaha Hadid, and soon Norman Foster.

Contemporary Concrete Buildings