Concrete Architecture - Hardcover

Croft, Catherine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1586854607 ISBN 13: 9781586854607

Publisher: Gibbs Smith, 2004

Synopsis

No longer the material of choice for just factories and industrial buildings, concrete is now fashionable and chic, adorning shops, restaurants, homes, and landscapes with its desirable, tactile surfaces. This reversal of fortune can be attributed to its use in luxurious homes and the discovery that concrete can provide stimulating or soothing environments for a range of leisure activities. Organized around the themes of Home, Work, Play, and Landscape, all the examples chosen celebrate the intrinsic qualities of concrete and how they work to make the places in which we live, work, and play and to shape the wider landscape that surrounds us. A range of projects from around the world includes a private house in Osaka by Tadao Ando, Canary Wharf Underground Station in London by Foster and Partners, the Museum of Asian Art in Paris by Henri and Bruno Gaudin, and recent work by Morphosis and Antoine Predock in the United States.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

A favorite subject of fashionable style magazines, concrete is becoming ubiquitous in shops, restaurants, and even homes. It is a fabulous material that can be used in a huge range of techniques and situations. Its color, texture, and constituents vary, it maybe cheaply mass produced or meticulously crafted, and new developments and increased understanding of its possibilities are inspiring contemporary architects and designers.What is concrete? What is its history? How is concrete used? What are the most recent developments in methods and materials? Why has concrete become so fashionable? This book delves into the answers to these questions, and also showcases recent architectural projects that use concrete for a wide variety of building types.Concrete Architecture celebrates the intrinsic qualities of concrete and how it shapes the places where we live, work, and play, as well as the landscape that surrounds us. The range of projects includes the Pulitzer Foundation fro the Arts in Missouri by Tadao Ando Architects & Associates; Canary Wharf Undergound Station in London by Foster & Partners and Roland Paoletti; the Diamond Ranch High School in California by Morphosis; the Tokiwadai House in Tokyo by Naoko Hirakura Architect and Associates; and more than forty other examples of concrete architecture from around the world.Catherine Croft creatively examines concrete as a modern material and generator of previously impossible construction techniques, and showcases a material that has come into its own in the twenty-first century.

Edition details

• Publisher: Gibbs Smith
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1586854607
• ISBN 13: 9781586854607
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240