I never imagined that inherent in the word concrete, a term I often use, there could be so much history, discovery, engineering and construction science, and profound, unrelenting, and seemingly irresolvable controversy. Indeed, the controversy can be very well described as a life and death misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the viability of concrete, both in threatening and mortal circumstances, such as earthquakes and fires, and in normal circumstances, where reinforced concrete is compromised by the crippling effects of steel corrosion and the simple wear, tear, and weakening that comes with age.

It has long been believed that when our ancestors were still wearing animal skins and communicating largely by pointing to things, someone started a sustained and very hot fire on a bed of flat rock. That person, man or woman, noticed that there was a white ash, clumped and brittle at the edges of the fire. Someone stepped on it and complained that the bottom of his foot was in pain. Someone else poured water over the foot to cool it, but instead the water added significantly to the pain. If scatology had been invented at the time, the air would have been filled with it. It was further noticed that whenever pieces of this material that fell from the bottom of the foot were mixed with water, they magically hardened (in a process we call hydration) into something that the Romans would later call caementis, and we call today “concrete.”

It is a good story, as it goes, and indeed a scenario as related above could have happened, but as you will learn in these pages, the fire would need to have reached kiln-level heat to then transform the stone into something called calcium oxide, which, when then mixed with water and the carbon dioxide in air, would have resulted in a very hard and sustainable material. It is in the word sustainable where the importance of Concrete Planet shines.

In today's world we are constructing buildings in which people live, work, do commerce, and are entertained—structures that may last a hundred years. And, we are building memorials to commemorate certain people, like the 9/11 Memorial at the Pentagon in Washington, DC. These buildings may last for a hundred years because they are designed to last a century. And the architects and engineers who build them are proud of the fact that they will last a century. Imagine what the designers of the Roman Pantheon would have said if people told them their building would last just a century, or what the Medici family might have said if Michelangelo told them that Lorenzo's tomb would last for ten whole decades.

Though knowing the shortcomings of steel and concrete, architects continue to create buildings in our modern era by utilizing reinforced concrete, or concrete poured over steel rods that add to the forms' strength. The problem is that, over time, these forms will deteriorate because of natural attacks—not on the concrete, but in the interior steel. Cracks that occur in a structure may be repaired, but not before air, moisture, and many other possible chemicals seep into the form to cause rust. The rust on the steel expands the rod's diameter, destroying the surrounding concrete and debilitating the structure. This was a fact that many engineers and architects until recently refused to admit, or if they did admit it, they seemed to think it did not matter. That it does matter is one of the themes of this extraordinary book.

 

The World Trade Center buildings, before they were constructed and even after the first attack of 1993, were never subjected to a fire-load analysis. And they fell because of the stress on and weakening of the steel caused by the fires. But when it comes to concrete, what architects and engineers do not accept, because of their own self-imposed guidelines, can lead to disaster. Bridges may fall; buildings may collapse. Natural disasters will come and test the level of viable strength. This type of blindness can lead to destruction beyond the devastations that result from the natural disasters, themselves. Just think of the ninety-two children and three nuns killed in Chicago when fire destroyed Our Lady of the Angels school in 1958; or the coal slag mountain that slid down to destroy another school in Aberfan, Wales, in 1966, killing 141 people, including 116 schoolchildren; or the earthquake that occurred in Szechuan in 2008, killing tens of thousands of people, among which were over five thousand children and teens who perished in shoddily built schools. All of these hundreds of children could have survived if some thoughtful person had anticipated the disaster and preplanned a mitigating protocol.

Great tragedies are circumnavigated every day, sometimes by firefighters or police officers who are trained to see unusual circumstances and act quickly to avert a building collapse or the locking of an exit door or a shooting or a killing. There is no controversy in these acts. But controversy always exists when someone calls into question accepted practices within a profession, especially if those practices impact on public safety. Nonetheless, Robert Courland anticipates the dangers of continuing to build as we have built for the last hundred years and more, and he illuminates these problems in a thoughtful and persuasive manner.

An important controversy found within these pages is the idea that concrete has a far longer lifespan when not reinforced by steel rods (called rebar), and that alternative materials for producing rebar should allow the building of structures with a thousand-year lifespan instead of a single century, facts that the author writes about here convincingly.

Humans might know that the universe is theorized to be 14 billion years old or that the Milky Way was formed 8 billion years ago, but the way we feel about ourselves in relation to a 4.5 billion-year-old earth is not much different from the way indigenous people studying a night sky might have felt about themselves anywhere on earth ten thousand years ago. The subject of what can possibly happen on earth is simply too mind-boggling for most of us to handle if we are to continue to be an optimistic race. A Canary Island mountain can fall into the sea off the coast of Africa and create a tsunami that would wash over most buildings in New York City a few hours later. A dam at the gateway to the San Fernando Valley could be torn by an earthquake in California and kill more than a half million people. The fault under New York City could slip and create such destruction that it would take decades to rebuild. (Aside from the politics of construction—it took New York City's leadership more than ten years to rebuild four square city blocks after 9/11, while it took the Chinese less than three years to rebuild an entire region of 2 million people after the Szechuan earthquake of 2008 killed more than seventy thousand.)

We know that natural cataclysms will occur and that we should plan against them. We should make our buildings stronger, of course. Can we say that they have been made as strong as they can be? This is the question we should be thinking about in a more serious manner. There are facts found in the pages of this book that we should not let pass into an obscure scientific history, for remembering them will undoubtedly help ensure a safer future for all on our planet.

We must remember first that earthquakes seldom kill people. It is the environment of falling structures that kills. Concrete Planet suggests ways in which we can make this environment safer. But there is so much more to Courland's book than the safety of buildings. For instance, does anyone think that the bridges being built today are as beautiful as those of the Victorian age? Just a simple aesthetic question, but the answer, at least partly, has to do with changing the use and vitality of concrete. Have you ever thought, as I had not, what concrete had to do with the success of the Roman expansion? Courland has.

I first met Robert Courland when I was determined to write a book, which came to be called San Francisco Is Burning, about the 1906 earthquake. Realizing that I needed to find someone who knows more than just about anyone about earthquakes, in general, and San Francisco's earthquake, in particular, I was advised by several librarians to seek out the author of this book. It was very good advice. A day did not pass during the seven consecutive months I worked with Courland that I did not learn new and fascinating things about the world we live in and the tempestuous earth beneath our feet. One of the first things I learned about the destruction in San Francisco that killed about three thousand people and collapsed or burned over twenty-eight thousand buildings was that some buildings survived collapse while buildings on either side were left flattened to a heap of stone. The answers to such enigmas are to be found in the pages of this book.

I keep remembering insights, as I hope you will, from this fascinating book, that help me recognize the issues of building construction on every street I walk—that many if not most buildings and bridges pose significant design, municipal planning, and expense problems for which there are no easy answers. And where there are solutions, every solution is harder than it sounds. Despite the importance and complexity of the information presented, Concrete Planet is, above all, a truly entertaining read.

—Dennis Smith, New York City