Concrete One of the major building materials, (along with wood, steel, stone and brick), that can be used to make large and small elements, from parking garages, to coffee tables.

Concrete is a construction material composed of cement (typically Portland cement) as well as other cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag, cement, aggregate,(generally a coarse aggregate such as gravel, limestone or granite, plus a fine aggregate such as sand), water, and chemical admixtures that can affect the character of the concrete. The word concrete comes from the Latin word "concretus", which means "hardened" or "hard".

Concrete solidifies and hardens after mixing with water and placement due to a chemical process known as hydration. The water reacts with the cement, which bonds the other components together, eventually creating a stone-like material.

Pouring concrete into formwork made of plywood sheets. Note the steel reinforcing, rebar. Rebar are marked in increments of 1/8”. A number ‘4’ rebar is 4/8” in diameter. A number 12 rebar is 12/8”, or 1 1/2” in diameter.

Concrete walls with the formwork removed.

Small scale backyard concrete pour into plywood forms.

Plywood formwork ready for concrete pouring.

A small rolling seat, with a concrete slab as sitting surface.

Large scale concrete pour using an overhead crane to place a large bucket of wet concrete.

A concrete floor slab being finished using a ‘screed’, a tool used to level and begin smoothing the concrete.

A prefabricated train station shelter. The following images show the overall and the individual parts that makeup this structure.

You can see how thin the shell of concrete is. Careful design and fabrication make this level of delicacy possible.

The ‘Askew’ table by Oso Industries osoindustries.com

Concrete reception desk by Uniqrete, Co Laois, Ireland.

Concrete bed and bathtub by Compact Concrete

Concrete table and chair by Gary Simpson of Kaldari, Laguna Beach, CA.

Concrete garden furniture.

A concrete counter top a small scale ‘slab’

Concrete Pod by architect Kazuya Morita

"Concrete-pod" is made from fiber reinforced concrete, which is the mixture of white cement and light-weight aggregate and glass fiber. The diameter and the height of "Concrete-pod" is 1700mm each, thickness of shell is only 15mm.