Abstract ideas made concrete
The Iron Curtain, or at least its most visible symbol, was not metal. Berlin’s Antifaschistischer Schutzwall (Anti-Fascist Protection Wall) was concrete. Its ugliness of form and function seemed to many proof of the evils inherent in this ancient building material. But for every hideous Berliner Mauer, you have a glorious Roman Pantheon. The dome of Hadrian’s incomparable temple is, after nearly two millennia, the largest unreinforced concrete structure in the world. In our own era, concrete has allowed the best architects to do their best work. Witness Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp chapel. And who would argue against Denys Lasdun’s National Theatre as the best late-20th-century British building?
