Events

Book Signing: Concrete Ideas:Material to Shape a City

25 JANUARY 2012

Concrete Ideas: Material to Shape a City is about possibilities in concrete architecture. It visually speculates, through a series of montages, drawings and photographs, about concrete architecture’s capacity as an urban catalyst, its potential for defining cities and for virtuosity in urban renewal. It asks; given the now mainstream nanotechnologies that transform the performance of materials at the molecular level without fundamentally changing the material aesthetic, can we anticipate and provoke a change in its inherent authority, perception and aesthetic culture? It represents a series of recognizable brutalist examples from around the world to be read alongside contemporary ‘new concrete’ constructions, to ultimately render their ‘generation’ undistinguishable. The work uses the case of Toronto with its predominant 60s and 70s brutalist stock, and unique minus 30° to plus 30° Canadian climate, to test these speculations with building projects that challenge the limits of concrete performance. With contributions from architects and thinkers such as Mark West, George Baird, Will Bruder, and Charles Waldheim, among others, Concrete Ideas offers a seductive argument for the reconsideration of this age-old building material as supple, light, and instrumental in the re-presentation of existing concrete ‘citizens’.