It’s not just what you do...The pleas of the cement industry have largely gone unheeded. No advertising slogan, no matter how catchy, has managed to really change people’s prejudices against concrete. The reasons for its poor reputation are deeply rooted. For one, it has to do with the type of building made out of this material – quays, dams, silos and factories generally don’t excite the public imagination. Right up until the late 1930s in fact, concrete was not allowed to show its true nature; it was hidden away behind brick facing, render and even granite blocks. A habit that reached its peak when the Ruff brothers clad their congress hall in Nuremberg with pale red granite, and Karl Meitinger dressed bunkers in Munich in neoclassical style. Apart from a few shining examples (Anatol Baudot’s 1904 church in Montmartre, Max Berg’s 1911 Centenary Hall in Breslau and Ernst Otto Oßwald’s 1927 Tagblattturm in Stuttgart), much lauded by the architectural community, exposed concrete was by no means common, nor even acceptable to the general public. Traditional methods were considered far superior.