Concrete

Name: Concrete
Brand: Bloomsbury Publishing (AUS)
Price: 31.99 AUD
Availability: PreOrder

By: Dr. Stephen Parnell

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Paperback | 17 September 2026

At a Glance

Format
Paperback

Dimensions(cm)
16.5 x 12.1

Paperback

$31.99

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Available: 17th September 2026

Preorder. Will ship when available.

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 â" dogmatic, ugly, and as miserably grey as English drizzle.

Stephen Parnellâs Concrete is an apologia of concrete, second only to water as the worldâs 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 concreteâs 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.

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