| Evening Standard, 27/3/02, Rowan Moore Hardcore! Concrete’s Rise from Utility to Luxury THERE was a time when concrete was reviled. There was a time when it was held responsible for vandalism, juvenile delinquency, poverty and the decline in traditional values. Linked to such equally deadly terms as "functionalist", "modern" and "tower block", it short-circuited architectural criticism. The moment the word appeared, you knew whichever building it adhered to was bad. There was a time when you would no more have held an exhibition of concrete than of plasticised human corpses. Well, times have changed. The Barbican and National Theatre are listed as buildings of architectural and historical importance. And an exhibition has opened, called Hardcore!, that is a determined attempt to make concrete glamorous. Its title is sexy, if a touch defiant. Look, it says, concrete is not lust the stuff of pee-streaked underpasses. It can make the serene walls of the minimalist Japanese architect Tadao Ando, or the dome of the Pantheon In Rome, a building with serious claims to be the greatest of all time. Concrete makes mighty viaducts, or the vivacious sun-drenched architecture of Brasilia, where government buildings come as close to dancing the samba as you are ever likely to see. Some architects put coloured stone chippings into concrete to make it as rich as fruit cake; others silk-screen renaissance nudes onto its surface. It gets made into sinuous lounge furniture by the sort of designers who are routinely described as achingly hip, and not because their chairs make your hips ache. The truth is that concrete is the Shakespeare of building materials, capable of giving form to every aspect of human nature from the noble to the sordid. It can be Thersites, ugly and spreading misery, or like Le Corbusier’s flawed concrete monuments, have the doomed nobility of Coriolanus. It is less good at being the fragile heroine, but it can make stairs of balletic grace. Hardcore! sets about its task with verve and wit, with domestic mises-en--scenes and wall displays of the many different patterns concrete can make. Curated by Scarlet Projects and designed by the bright young architects Block, the show fights bravely against the institutional gloom of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Its only problem is that it is too small. The RIBA is now more interested In selling coffee than celebrating architecture. This heroic subject is squeezed between the ample banquettes of a place that used to be London’s most Important architectural gallery, but is now a café. So expect to be intrigued rather than enthralled. Until May25. RIBA, 66 Portland Place, W1
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