[Deaf Smith]

Do not forget the house sized foundations for the wind turbines.
They will be there forever.

[BipolarBob]

[GSWarrior]

The answer lies within the pages of The Fountainhead.

[Da Coyote]

Gasp, depends upon the definition of “beauty”.
There are a few (very few) concrete structures that do not induce nausea.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

"Beauty" -- ugliest building material ever! It belongs in prestressed floors and bridge abutments.

Here is concrete "Brutalism" at its finest going up in Chicago right now as a grand testament to our greatest and most egotistical president ever...

Wiki -->

One of the earliest reinforced concrete buildings constructed in the United States was the Pacific Coast Borax Company's refinery in Alameda, California, designed by Ernest L. Ransome and built in 1893. It was the first to use ribbed floor construction as well as concrete columns.

It should have stayed a structural material in floors and columns then covered with something beautiful.

[Magnum44]

Concrete makes it so much easier to hide the bodies....

[Steely Tom]

I’ve noticed that all those “Brut” poured-concrete buildings that I associate with my youth have not aged well.

Rust stains, cracks, foggy windows, painted-over graffiti, bird droppings, don’t look good on geometric planes at weird angles and big, blocky cantilevered masses.

The classic-style buildings seem to wear the decades and centuries much better. Their dignity doesn’t seem as easily stained, for some reason.

[sauropod]

.

[Larry Lucido]

Two clement pourers walk into rebar...

[Sacajaweau]

The Italians got it right...good for one thing....front stoops.

[Retain Mike]

Great article, but I will have to take it in stages.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

Nothing beats the beauty of East German GDR state apartment blocks. Socialism at its finest.

[xoxox]

The answer is not the cost of labor.

Oh, I beg to differ. The cost of artisanry is incaculable, as is that of good taste and common sense.

[Rurudyne]

Yep, it was Brutalism, among others. The soul crushing design style that flourished amid these soul crushing times.

[Codeflier]

Very interesting. Thanks for posting!

[Fiji Hill]

My favorite high-rise in Los Angeles was the Richfield Building, which featured ornate artwork and gardens. It was topped with a tall derrick. I wish they had preserved it, as they did the Chrysler Building in NYC, but they scrapped it in 1969 and replaced it with the simple, austere and ugly Arco Towers, which look like two giant cubes.

[Paal Gulli]

Probably the most famous concrete building on the planet, the Roman Pantheon.

To prevent the walls (and the dome) collapsing under their own weight, they used lighter and lighter aggregate the higher the walls got. At the base they used a limestone called travertine. The aggregate in the top level is volcanic pumice, which weighs about the same a popped popcorn.

At upper left, you can see brickwork arches incorporated into the walls, which they used to transfer the load onto reinforced columns so the concrete beneath the arches could be less robust.

Built in 609 AD, it remains the largest unsupported concrete dome on earth.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Because Socialist hate beauty.

[DFG]

[mikey_hates_everything]

If you suffer from depression, stay away from Montreal in the winter. You may not make it out alive.