Concrete is a perfect material to examine the modern era. It is currently the most common building material worldwide, though it was first discovered and refined in ancient Israel, Egypt and then Rome. It’s cheap and long lasting, can be made into nearly any shape and covers much of our urban landscapes. And while it has long been touted as a kind of utopian material, it also requires enormous amounts of energy and raw materials to produce and ship around the world. It is a material in conflict with itself. Some find its shear weight and heavy presence to be oppressive, while others (myself included), find it beautiful; austere and modern in the best of ways. But what other material can one find in so many systems of oppression? The Berlin Wall, the Israeli West Bank Barrier, the U.S. Border Wall, all use(d) concrete to trap, oppress, deny humans from rights often described as inalienable. Together with asphalt, concrete seals the natural world away from us across the world. With what seems like zero thought, we blanket our planet with it. We slowly convert the only paradise we know into a tomb.
