Archipicture At Das Parkhotel in Ottensheim, Austria, guests sleep on beds inside industrial-size pipes. Concrete or its byproducts make up almost a fifth of the waste in the world's landfills.

Concrete often gets a bum rap as the material of choice for drab factories and brutal, anonymous housing complexes. But it's actually quite versatile, used in everything from the monumental Pantheon of ancient Rome to Frank Lloyd Wright's elegant Fallingwater house. In any event, there is no escaping it. About 265 billion cubic feet of concrete are produced annually—that comes out to about 35 cubic feet for every person on the planet.

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Ichiro Sugioka

"Concrete," edited by William Hall ($49.95, Phaidon Press), explores the many forms that this mixture of crushed rock, cement, sand and water can take. Yes, concrete can be cold and imposing—but as the 175 structures in the book attest, it can also be colorful, playful and delicate.

A version of this article appeared September 1, 2012, on page C12 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: ConcreteIdeas.