It 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.

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 and reclamation of this age-old building material.• Informed essays by leading academics in the field make this book key reading for all architecture students and practitioners.

• An elegantly boxed package – as tactile as the material whose reputation it seeks to restore.
• Packed with specially taken photographs of concrete buildings around the world
• Includes interviews with experts in their field, Will Bruder, George Elvin and Mark West, who respond to Petricone’s complex questions about the shifting status of concrete in contemporary building
• Prefaced by an illustrated inventory of select, current concrete nanotechnologies,
• Each chapter presents the city-building active agents implicit in abstraction, operation, insertion, section, and speculation as they pertain to concrete in its existing as well as projected form.

Pina Petricone is an associate professor of architecture at the University of Toronto, where she has held the position of Director of the Master of Architecture Program since 2008.

It 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.

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 and reclamation of this age-old building material.• Informed essays by leading academics in the field make this book key reading for all architecture students and practitioners.

• An elegantly boxed package – as tactile as the material whose reputation it seeks to restore.
• Packed with specially taken photographs of concrete buildings around the world
• Includes interviews with experts in their field, Will Bruder, George Elvin and Mark West, who respond to Petricone’s complex questions about the shifting status of concrete in contemporary building
• Prefaced by an illustrated inventory of select, current concrete nanotechnologies,
• Each chapter presents the city-building active agents implicit in abstraction, operation, insertion, section, and speculation as they pertain to concrete in its existing as well as projected form.

Pina Petricone is an associate professor of architecture at the University of Toronto, where she has held the position of Director of the Master of Architecture Program since 2008.