In the decades after 1945, cement and concrete became the lingua franca of reconstruction, development, and state-building across the globe. This panel argues that concrete was central to Post-War state projects since the material offered a durable medium through which governments and their partners attempted to organise resources and expertise to shape physical space. By tracing concrete’s variations across geographical regions, the panel shows how the same material carried different political agendas and gave rise to different productions of space.

Across our cases, three recurring themes connect concrete to Post-War state-building. First, standardisation and technical authority: codes, manuals, and expert jurisdiction processes of building concrete structures established and strengthened what counted as “rational” construction. Second, industrialisation and prefabrication: concrete’s promise of speed and repetition made it attractive to governments pursuing mass housing and institutional expansion, while raising questions about local knowledge, climate, craft, and everyday use. Third, resource and environmental regimes: concrete’s dependencies on steel, timber and bamboo bound reconstruction to extraction, scarcity, and long-run ecological effects.

Li’s paper examines the international transmission of building knowledge in the East German (GDR) development aid in Ghana and Zanzibar in the 1950s–1970s. Through a comparative reading of manuals and building practices, Li shows how socialist aid paired “soft” infrastructures such as technical codes and training with “hard” infrastructures such as prefabricated slabs. The paper highlights the reciprocal process of architectural diplomacy, countering the narrative of one-directional socialist modernization.

Chen’s paper turns to rural Jiangsu from 1961 into the 1980s, when concrete was promoted as a “sustainable” substitute for timber. Drawing on architectural publications and fieldwork, Chen traces how prefabricated designs were initially rejected, then adapted and localised by architects, builders, and artisans. The paper identifies the paradox that material solutions framed as ecological remedies could later underpin ecological vulnerability.

Chithelen’s paper compares bamboo-reinforced concrete experiments in India and the People’s Republic of China, 1945–1965. Both states pursued bamboo as an answer to steel shortages and ambitious construction goals, but they divert in face of different timer situations. By tracing research agendas and forestry policies, the paper shows how “localising” reinforced concrete reorganised relationships among people, bamboo, wood, and industrial materials.

Bao’s paper looks at the British context. Taking Denys Lasdun’s University of London Redevelopment Scheme in Bloomsbury as a case study, this paper is set against higher-education expansion following the 1963 Robbins Report. It shows how the process of building a concrete structure connects higher education governance and controversies over architectural style. The result was an unusually delayed and contested reconstruction project in the historic core of the capital of the United Kingdom.

From the metropole of the receding British Empire to the newly independent nations in Asia and Africa, the meanings of concrete traversed through socialist internationalism, postcolonial state-building, environmental challenges and welfare-state planning. Together, these papers bring the materiality back in and explore the multitudes of meanings associated with concrete across the globe.