Raw Concrete

Reviews / Votes

Part history, part aesthetic autobiography, wholly engaging and liable to convince those procrastinators sitting (uncomfortably) on the concrete fence. Barnabas Calder brings us tales of the unexpected and breathes life into what some night call one of the unloveliest of building materials ... illuminating and spirited. * Monocle * This celebration of all things concrete will please both its aficionados and those who find it hard to love ... Calder's distinctive approach is a combination of scholarliness with personal association ... An engaging and accessible guide for those drawn towards these ex-monstrosities. * Observer * Calder provides the ideal eye-opening introduction for the curious general reader. It deserves a large audience ... This is a charmingly personal book, authoritatively knowledgeable and spikily argumentative. * Literary Review * The best introduction to this most exciting and visceral period of British architecture - a learned and passionate book. A compelling and evocative read, one that is meticulously researched, and filled with insight and passion. Through Barnabas Calder's personal narrative we gain a deep understanding and appreciation of a tough subject. A fascinating odyssey through Britain's Brutalist landscape. The journey is sometimes breathtaking, but always insightful and informed. By its end, we understand the complexity, skill, and vision, as well as the politics, that created the buildings he explores in such loving detail. Barnabas Calder is a self-outed lover of concrete, a man who doesn't visit buildings but makes "pilgrimages". He holds back on neither his praise for the objects of his passion, nor his wrath against those who threaten them. Buy this excellent book, read it and go out and hug your nearest lofty edifice in concrete and glass! This engrossing book by a fellow self-confessed concrete lover is both a witty travelogue and memoir and the clear-sighted history of Brutalist buildings. Barnabas Calder relishes the craftsmanship, the financial back stories, and the aims and ambitions of a diverse generation of architects, whose works deserve our sympathy. It's not a history book ... It's chatty, anecdotal and thoroughly entertaining ... My advice? Read the book, load up your mobile with some rock 'n' roll and Calder's online photos, and go hug some concrete. * Times Higher Education * Calder wants to make an argument about the greatness of Brutalism as an architectural style. He writes beautifully. * London Review of Books * Eclectic and readable. * Observer 'Architecture Books of the Year' * Impressively well-written... Calder writes with the opinionated self-assurance of the young Ruskin. Compelling reading... thrilling... excellent. * RIBA Journal * This is a strongly-argued and at times refreshingly polemical book, one guaranteed to change your opinion of an ambitious and much-maligned architectural style that, like it or not, has had a profound effect on our built environment. * The National * Calder's book is the very antithesis of the recent glut of coffee-table-style, #brutalism, which focus primarily on appearance. By adopting a personal perspective, he humanises what is often demonised as an alienating material. * Blueprint Magazine * An excellent - and highly readable - guide ... If you're interested in Brutalism as architecture and construction practice, if you're interested in its meaning and its context, buy this book. * Municipal Dreams * He writes beautifully. * London Review of Books * In the historian Barnabas Calder's marvellous Raw Concrete, he tries to persuade us to love the architecture of the 1960s. Not just wonderfully well-researched and beautifully well-written, it's also the story of a conversion, as Calder himself comes to value buildings he, too, once disliked.