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Concrete : Object Lessons - Matt Addis

Concrete

Read by: Matt Addis

Author: Dr. Stephen Parnell

At a Glance

Format
Digital Audiobook

Duration
04:36:50

Published: 13th August 2026

Digital Audiobook

$32.00

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Bloomsbury presents Concrete by Stephen Parnell, read by Matt Addis.

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 - dogmatic, ugly, and as miserably grey as English drizzle.

Stephen Parnell's Concrete is an apologia of concrete, second only to water as the world's 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 concrete's 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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You Can Find This Audiobook In

Non-Fiction Literature, Poetry & Plays History & Criticism of Literature Literary Theory Philosophy Philosophy & Aesthetics Arts & Entertainment Architecture Architectural Structure & Design Engineering & Technology Mechanical Engineering & Materials Materials Science

Civil Engineering Building Construction & Materials History of Architecture

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