Concrete was having a bad time in the latter half of the 20th century. Brutalist buildings in the sixties and seventies, though theoretically bold and visionary, were often depressing and unloved in reality. They contributed to an increasingly negative public image of concrete, a material that was seen as cold, grey and inhuman. It was the stuff of which car parks and flyovers were made, the architectural equivalent of giving up.
Something has shifted. A stroll through an important architectural exhibition or a scan through the work of the practices winning the awards that matter is enough to suggest that concrete is back on the agenda. Not with any sort of shyness or embarrassment, and not because it’s cheap. It’s because it does things that no other material can. For Concrete Forest Of Dean, contact https://www.monstermixconcrete.co.uk/concrete-forest-of-dean/
Part of the reason is a deep sense of honesty. As we’ve seen with the cladding scandal, synthetic finishes and everything from glass fibre to glitter, we seem to be addicted to hiding what our buildings are actually made of. There’s something very appealing, then, about a building that tells you exactly what it is. The structure becomes the aesthetic, and the construction is the design.
Another part of the reason is that concrete can do things that other materials can’t. It can be moulded into curves and cantilevers, with surfaces that change as the light catches them. The formwork is the mould, and the mould can be anything you want.
The implications are genuinely extraordinary, especially if you’ve never really thought about it before. Finally, it’s just that enough time has passed. The brutalist buildings that survived long enough have been listed and celebrated. The preservationists are already fighting over them. Concrete, it seems, wasn’t the problem. It’s what we did with it that was.
