
Concrete
Stephen Parnell(Author)
Bloomsbury Academic (Publisher)
Will be published approx. on 17. September 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
192 pages
978-1-5013-8370-0 (ISBN)
Description
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
Concrete has an image problem. Portrayed as boring, cheap, and thoughtless, it is often considered synonymous with bad architecture. For many, concrete is architecture gone wrong - dogmatic, ugly, and as miserably grey as English drizzle.
Stephen Parnell's Concrete is an apologia of concrete, second only to water as the world's most consumed material. From the personal, intimate scale of jewelry to the monumental scale of Brutalist architecture, Parnell explores the personality of concrete and how it is embedded and embodied in everyday and familiar objects. He revels in concrete's ambiguity and contradictory qualities, from its sensitivity to the tiniest imprint to its immense compressive strength in hydroelectric dams, and traces how concrete is both the ultimate unaesthetic material as well as the quintessential building block of modernity.
Concrete has an image problem. Portrayed as boring, cheap, and thoughtless, it is often considered synonymous with bad architecture. For many, concrete is architecture gone wrong - dogmatic, ugly, and as miserably grey as English drizzle.
Stephen Parnell's Concrete is an apologia of concrete, second only to water as the world's most consumed material. From the personal, intimate scale of jewelry to the monumental scale of Brutalist architecture, Parnell explores the personality of concrete and how it is embedded and embodied in everyday and familiar objects. He revels in concrete's ambiguity and contradictory qualities, from its sensitivity to the tiniest imprint to its immense compressive strength in hydroelectric dams, and traces how concrete is both the ultimate unaesthetic material as well as the quintessential building block of modernity.
Reviews / Votes
Concrete has been accused of crimes from vulgarity to enabling the climate crisis. Parnell has assembled an excellent, nuanced case for its defence, arguing incisively for a richer understanding of this most divisive and paradoxical of substances, but also for both it and its creators to urgently change their ways. * Tom Dyckhoff, Writer, Historian, Broadcaster, UK *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Illustrations
18 bw illus
Dimensions
Height: 165 mm
Width: 121 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
454 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5013-8370-0 (9781501383700)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Stephen Parnell is an independent architectural writer and historian of modern architecture. He has been an architect, academic, and editor-in-chief of the Royal Institute of British Architects' Journal of Architecture.
Content
1. Introduction
2. Structure
3. Space
4. Surface
5. Solid
6. Society
7. Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Index
2. Structure
3. Space
4. Surface
5. Solid
6. Society
7. Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Index