The facade at Nobu Hotel in Shoreditch

by Ben Adams

As something of a concrete obsessive its time to look ahead at the future of our most versatile building material. As electric arc furnaces powered by renewables enable really low carbon concrete we can fall back in love with the material that literally underpins all our buildings.

The reception at Jamestown Road in Camden

GGBS in the short term is a useful cement replacement as a by product of steel making but the future is ultra low carbon concrete, reinforced with ultra low carbon steel and perhaps graphene as that material science develops.

The office space in the Fjord Building

Below is a corner of my kitchen, a concrete worktop undercut to make the top surface elegantly slim and form a finger groove for the chestnut door below. The concrete itself is standard OPC and aggregate, elevated into something special through really careful detail and craft. Perhaps its time to fall in love with concrete all over again.