Concrete Eulogies: How do we mourn concrete?

The season is ending and MPavilion comes down in a few weeks. It’s taken me this long to get out and see it; I’ve missed a few years but I had to see Melbourne’s fanciest bollard. I really wanted to love it, I really did. I have my special connection with MPavilion. I was even prepared to dismiss the intrusive thoughts that snuck in when I saw the proposal last year: it’s kinda got a tone-deaf public voyeur booth aesthetic to it. I’m pretty good at putting aside my own judgements and biases to learn or try something new, but unfortunately, I can’t say reality inspired a better impression.

Like in previous years, I’ve come to MPavilion happy and excited to relax and engage with lovely, thoughtful public space. Tonight is no different—granted, it is 2 a.m., but it’s a lovely night, I’m an owl-type, and our community is working hard for us to enjoy moments of safety at any hour of the day or night. I am so grateful, and I’ll enjoy it while I can.

This time, however, the pavilion made me pause on approach in a different way. It felt exclusive… not unwelcoming, but not welcoming either. It looked lovely, but it looked like another concrete block I wasn’t allowed in. I put that aside though, because you know, it’s a public unlocked pavilion, you can (somewhat) see through it and there are security people around doing their thing, so all good – until I stopped shy of the thin white rope barely visible in the park lights. Yeah alright, it’s 2am, still, I expected a public building reflecting openness and inclusion like the MPavilion programme does. This exquisite box doesn’t reflect that.

In following the rope around the pavilion, I felt more and more disappointed by it. I wanted to love it. But the carbon-porn stretching out next to the pile of event equipment, sectioned off by thin white rope, it just looked like yet another beautiful monument to self-serving denial at best.

This version of concrete is over. There is so much we love about concrete; we’ve been using versions of it around the world for millennia. But this version is over. If this pavilion explored that angle – with the fantastic work and developments in carbon-friendlier concrete alternatives – perhaps I could forgive its alienation tendencies and total oversight of on-site storage. The time for talking is over, too, and architects and designers are tasked with leading and pushing for concrete alternatives. Consciously separating ourselves from what we love is difficult and complex, the grief that comes with that even more so. Just how do we mourn concrete?

We asked this in a recent Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN) Australia meeting. The lively discussion acknowledged concrete’s enduring beauty (if done well and cared for) and popularity, and when we talked about possibilities for divergence and alternatives, the vibe was positively enlivening. At some point during the excited ideas and laughs, our shared and unspoken sadness about the climate emergency surfaced with the comment: let’s hold a funeral for concrete.

Grief is a peculiar thing. It forces us to carry its weight equal to the fading happiness it came from, and too many of us grieve our climate crisis alone and scared. This is no way to heal. We’ve heard it said that funerals are for the living, not the dead, so let’s hold Concrete’s funeral together. It should be beautiful, and it should remember the happiness it gave us. Importantly, it must also celebrate the next version of concrete, the next life, of what we bring after it.

This year’s pavilion feels like the flailing desperate attempts to assert 1900s-era concrete as the most powerful of all materials, the most exclusive, the best. There are lovely moments in the pavilion, and it is handsome. But I think if I were here during the day I’d feel much the same about it, and I think right now, on this late summer night, the security staff are getting the best experience inside it. I’m glad of that.