A recent report found that cement production accounts for up to 8% of all CO2 emissions worldwide, while concrete waste likely makes up as much as one-fourth of all landfill.

After a generation in the doghouse, when concrete behemoths regularly topped surveys of buildings most hated by the public, the material has become more fashionable than ever вЂ“ at a time when its catastrophic environmental impacts are finally being noticed. Only a tiny fraction of the worldвЂ™s concrete production is used in architecture, and yet it is architects who have done more than anyone else to shape the popular imagination of the material, for better and worse. It exudes optimism and generosity to some, violence and misery to others. It is also the material most closely associated with the social problems that accompanied the decline in industry, lack of maintenance and inner city decay. It is the liquid rock of socialism, the stuff of emphatic nation-building and thrilling sculptural monuments to bygone ambitions. It is the material that most embodies the era of the welfare state, a time when the public sector-built housing, schools, hospitals and theatres on a majestic scale. It is gritty, urban and uncompromising, it stands with a geological heft, forming soaring cliff-faces and plunging gullies, cave-like undercrofts and muscular flyovers. The qualities that attract people to concrete are the very same characteristics that have always repelled others. How did this humble mixture of cement and sand, for decades maligned as the scourge of our cities, become the ultimate lifestyle concept, used to sell everything from luxury apartments to club nights?

Naked pool alamy stock photo