Concrete Architecture: Tone, Texture, Form Hardcover – 1 May 2001

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Despite the strident opinions of some reviews, this is an excellent book on contemporary concrete architecture. Now, let me mention this is an international collection of buildings made of concrete, and North Americans tend to reserve their most hateful venom towards this type of architecture. If you don't like this type of material and prefer something else, then perhaps you should look elsewhere. Certainly there are some buildings with a more severe formal language represented in the book, built with the highest standards currently available, including a sustainable agenda, but there are others represented also, like that of Miralles Pinos, architects who are always pursuing more sensuous qualities of space. It's a book about architecture, yes, but one also devoted to showing a full range of expression for this type of material. Birkhauser continues to produce excellent publications of real architecture, architecture that lasts, makes places, has meaning and represents a higher standard than just about anything found on this side of the Atlantic. I don't think anyone truly informed about the subject could defend our vinyl sided suburban nightmare over the European legacy of architecture, and our proud ignorance on the subject is made sadly evident by our flimsy landscape; Birkhauser is making this cultural divide all too clear.If you know something about the subject and value solid, beautiful, concrete architecture, like that of Louis Kahn (a now deceased American who made real architecture), Tadao Ando, or newcomers like Pezo von Ellrichshausen, all great architects who could see the value of building with a material that lasts, and made buildings that will last long after the pulp board, unsustainable, kitschy fantasies of abandoned suburbia collapses into oblivion, then please--give this book a look. Thanks.

If your a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright, Sarah Susanka, and Malcolm Wells then this overpriced book will disappoint you. It shows a bunch (22) of cold, lifeless modern concrete buildings. For me books put out by the Portland Cement Association are much better at a fraction of the cost. If your into Concrete Architecture then add it to your library only if you can pick it up somewhere for 1/4 it's price.