Contribute to more beautiful cities

Concrete is a material for creation that turns the most extraordinary architectural audacity into reality. It can take unique shapes, mould into delicate structures and a variety of textures and colors, while providing a high level of performance.

Lafarge's innovation has resulted in a wide range of concretes forming a pallet of attractive and inspirational solutions:

• Our ultra-high performance fiber-reinforced concretes (Ductal®), our "haute couture" concretes, which combine outstanding performance and exceptional strength with great slenderness, allowing breathtakingly original designs.
• Our Artevia® decorative concretes range embellish buildings and public spaces publics with colors and textures.
• Our self-placing and self-leveling concretes (Agilia®) allow technical and aesthetic prowesses, while offering a particularly smooth finish... and remarkably quick and effortless application!

Such solutions enable architects to design and create distinctive buildings, to make functional amenities like hospitals, airports and stadiums architecturally special, and to preserve architectural heritage.

All this creativity helps to make each city a unique, desirable and a pleasant place to live in!

In Spain, Lafarge was involved in building terminal 4 at Madrid-Barajas airport. This majestic gateway into the Spanish capital was designed by architect Richard Rogers, who shaped the concrete into particularly bold forms and bright colors!

Landing in Madrid at Terminal 4 of Barajas Airport is first and foremost a powerful esthetic experience. Not surprisingly, this elegant 1.2 kilometer long building, with a wave-shaped roof, towering gigantic brightly colored pillars and wide windows, designed by the celebrated British architect Richard Rogers, has won a number of international prizes.

The terminal was inaugurated in 2006 following 60 months of work, which included the terminal itself, its satellite (TS4), roads, tunnels and two parking lots! Lafarge was at the forefront of this extraordinary project. We provided the cement and aggregates and produced concrete on-site with six mobile plants:

• traditional concrete,
• high-strength concrete,
• self-leveling, self-compacting concrete (primarily for the pillars of the hall).

The new terminal has doubled the capacity of Madrid-Barajas from 35 million to 70 million passengers per year, making it now one of the busiest in Europe. It is positioned as the main hub for traffic between Europe and South America. Travelers can also enjoy a large shopping center with leisure and business facilities, as well as a fast connection to the city center with a new metro station and numerous bus lines.

All of which will attract still more visitors and tourists to the city of Madrid!

In Iraqi Kurdistan, Lafarge is playing a part in the preservation of Erbil, one of the most ancient cities in history, founded around 8,000 years ago. A vast project is under way that will make it possible to open the citadel to the public and to repopulate it. It will eventually be classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Constructed approximately 8,000 years ago, Erbil is one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited settlements. The capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, it is home to around one and a half million people. The citadel that overlooks the city stretches over more than 10 hectares and it abounds in architectural remains of rare splendor, with vestiges of periods of Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Greek and Arabic occupation.

Today, though, it is in poor condition. An enormous restoration operation has been launched, with a triple objective:

• preserving the historical heritage of the city,
• opening this exceptional site to the public and to tourists by providing it with hotels, cafés and art galleries,
• welcoming new populations.

Lafarge is working with the local authorities, UNESCO and the French Institute for the Near East in Iraq. In addition to making a financial contribution, we are taking responsibility for the renovation of several houses located inside the citadel. We are also supplying cement and contributing our expertise in reconstruction, in compliance with UNESCO standards in view of the future classification of the citadel as a World Heritage Site.

Erbil will then be ready to share its riches for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years to come!