Concrete Architecture [Hardcover]

Catherine Croft (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 29, 2004

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.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

CONCRETE ARCHITECTURE LIST OF CONTENTS Introduction p.6 CHAPTER 1 HOME p.24 Bearth and DePlazes Family Home in Flasch SWITZERLAND Estudio Alberto Campo Baeza House, Sevilla de La Nueva SPAIN Naoko Hirakura Architect and Associates Tokiwadai House JAPAN Un Studio/Van Berkel and Bos Mobius House THE NETHERLANDS Kazuhiro Kojima/C+A Space Blocks, Kamishinjo JAPAN Atelier H25/Georges Sandweiler Loft in Sandweiler LUXEMBURG Donovan Hill C House, Brisbane AUSTRALIA William Russell Bacon Street House, London UK Jim Jennings Visiting Artists' Home USA David Hertz Tiltup Slab House USA OIKOS Peter Herrle and Werner Stoll House in Berlin GERMANY CHAPTER 2 WORK Consoni, Rorschach Primary School in Au SWITZERLAND Axel Schultes Architekten Federal Chancellery, Berlin GERMANY Foster and Partners Canary Wharf Station, London UK Kisho Kurokawa Ehime Art and Industry Museum JAPAN Morphosis Diamond Ranch High School, CA USA Miguel Roca School of Arts, Cordoba University ARGENTINA Bernard Tschumi Convention Centre, Rouen FRANCE Hild und K Architekten Paint House Kemeter, Eichstatt Sammeln Landshut GERMANY Herzog & de Meuron Laban Dance Centre, London UK Architectus Mathematics, statistics and Computing Building, Christchurch NEW ZEALAND Anin Jeromin Fitilidis & Partner Look-Up Office GERMANY Javier Garcia Solera Lecture Block 3, Alicante University SPAIN Drescher Kubina Architekten Haus der Architekten, Munich GERMANY Tadao Ando Teatro Armani, Milan ITALY CHAPTER 3 PLAY RCR Arquitectos Bathing Pavilion, Olot SPAIN Remi Marciano Ruffi Sports Complex, Marseilles FRANCE Sn0hetta Fishing Museum, Karmoy NORWAY Page and Park Loch Lomond Visitor Centre, Scotland UK Gigon and Guyer Oskar Reinhart Centre, SWITZERLAND Estudio Cano Lasso La Corna swimming pool SPAIN Tod Williams, Billie Tsien & Associates Museum of American Folk Art, NY USA Tadao Ando Pulitzer Art Collection, St Louis, USA Morger and Delago Art Museum, Vaduz LIECHTENSTEIN Schneider & Schumacher Innside Hotel, Dusseldorf GERMANY CHAPTER 4 LANDSCAPE Sancho-Madridejos Residence/Chapel and hunting pavilion, Ciudad Real SPAIN Rafael Moneo Los Angeles Cathedral USA Carlos Ferrater Barcelona Botantical Gardens SPAIN Allied Works Portland Oregon Maryhill Overlook USA BAAS Architecture Municipal Mortuary, Leon SPAIN Lapena and Torres External staircase, Toledo SPAIN Patel Taylor London Thames Barrier Visitor Centre UK Marco Ciarlo Extension of the cemetery at Borghetto, Santo Spirito ITALY Scott Tallon Walker Oulart Monument Co Wexford, 1999 IRELAND Notes p.230 Project credits p.231 Index p.233 Picture credits and acknowledgements p.240

About the Author

Catherine Croft is Director of the Twentieth Century Society and is a regular contributor to a number of architectural journals, including Building Design. She lives in the United Kingdom.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Gibbs Smith, Publisher; First Edition edition (October 29, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586854607
• ISBN-13: 978-1586854607
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 9.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,200,092 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Concrete Architecture Done Well, January 16, 2009

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Marco Antonio Abarca (Colorado) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Concrete Architecture (Hardcover)

Concrete has been a popular building material only for little more than a hundred years. In this short time, it has become the world wide building material of choice. It is a cheap and easy to work with and comparatively little skill is needed to build with it. In turn, concrete has been used to build some of the most noxious buildings the world has ever known. It has been abused from the shanty towns of the developing world to the high concept buildings of elite architects.

In "Concrete Architecture" journalist Catherine Croft describes the history and development of concrete as a bulding material. Her book highlites the best uses of concrete in homes, business, civic buildings and landscape architecture in the past decade. The photographs are inspirational and her writing is clear and on point. For the forseeable future, concrete will continue to be the dominant building material of our times. It is important for architects and patrons to see how this material is used in the hands of talented architects.