Growing up in the North West of England during the seventies and eighties I have to admit that my earliest associations with concrete were usually accompanied by images of broken glass, badly drawn graffiti and the overwhelming smell of piss.
Skip forward several years and after spending some quality time around London’s South Bank, Barcelona and Blackpool police station I finally got the whole brutalism thing. The fact that in the right hands concrete doesn’t always equate to bad town planning and abandoned shopping trolleys has been proven further for me in this breeze block-eque double publication from Taschen. The sheer versatility and aesthetic capabilities of liquid stone are showcased via an in depth focus on 100 of the world’s most impressive (and recent) concrete creations. To those of you in the architectural know you’ll recognise the works of aha Hadid, Herzog & de Meuron, Steven Holl, SPEECH, Rudy Ricciotti and James Turrell within these modernist and modular pages. I for one will never look at Salford precinct in the same way again. Oh and if you’re a fan of this kind of thing then you should also check out the utterly brilliant Modernist magazine too.
Buy yourself a copy of 100 Contemporary Concrete Buildings HERE.
