Build with Strength video: Concrete offers fresh take on familiar New York skyline

New York — Build with Strength, a coalition of the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association, released a new video examining the innovative use of concrete in New York City’s modern architecture to add strength to the world’s most famous skyline and durability to all five boroughs. 

“When you have cities like New York, with 11 million people, concrete is the best way to build,” said Jonathan Arnold, President and CEO of the Arnold Development Group in the video.  “Because when you compare it to the alternatives – steel or possibly high-rises made out of wood – you have several properties in concrete that you cannot replicate in other materials.”

Adding to the iconic concrete canyons that have kept New York City standing tall for generations are new structures that demonstrate the varied capabilities of building with concrete.

Keeping durability and resiliency in mind, the five boroughs differed in their approach: Queens built with vision in utilizing 22,000 square feet of exposed concrete at the Queens Library at Hunters Point to create a storybook view, the Bronx built with innovation for the masterpiece Bronx Museum of Arts, Staten Island built with sustainability in mind when they constructed an energy efficient and airtight Net Zero School with a concrete exterior, Brooklyn incorporated value in adding 52-stories of concrete affordable housing units at 250 Ashland Place, and Manhattan built with strength by pouring 150,000 cubic yards of concrete for One World Trade Center, one of the world’s safest and tallest new structures.

“Concrete has provided the backbone to allow the world’s top architects and designers to reach for the heavens in the Big Apple for more than a century,” said Kevin Lawlor, a spokesperson for Build with Strength. “As we progress in the modern era, concrete continues to provide the creative flexibility necessary for the next generation of architects and designers to develop the ingenious buildings that will dominate the New York City skyline for the decades and centuries to come.”

The video comes on the heels of the recent release of a poll (https://buildwithstrength.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Superstorm-Sandy-Poll-Summary.pdf) of registered New York voters, which found ninety-eight percent support and fifty-nine percent strongly support changes to construction codes.