Like it or not, building in Italy means mastering concrete

By CAIN BURDEAU
Associated Press

CONTRADA PETRARO, Sicily (AP) — When Cain Burdeau moved to Sicily from the United States with his family, he moved onto a farm with two crumbling old barns. One was stone and the other concrete. Turning them into living space meant learning some masonry. In particular, how to work with concrete. That wasn’t easy. At first Burdeau found the heavy concrete structures all around him in Sicily to be ugly — especially the ones that were built in the post-World War II boom. Those Brutalist-style buildings have fallen out of favor. But preservationists say they’re worth saving. And Burdeau came to see potential and even beauty in them too.