Seems to me that the typical comparison between european architecture and 'mud huts' is based on a lack of knowledge about european building processes.
So it seems to me that your comment is based on a dire lack of knowledge about how colonialism works. The British straight-up imposed town planning laws that banned using mud to build new houses so that they could build the concrete towns and cities they envisioned - I know precisely what I am talking about.
> It would have also been pretty cutting edge until maybe halfway through the 20th century.
Nah, there have been houses built using concrete blocks since fairly early in the 19th. Using cement in house construction was hardly cutting edge in the 1920s - 1930s.
That's the thing. I don't think that's the case. I think they are a 1900's-earliest, 1930's mainstream kind of thing.
So by the time they became mainstream, the UK was already beginning the second world war, which would mark the end of the time when they were really rich or powerful enough to be an imperial state.
For example, the first concrete built house in the US was built in 1837. Francois Coignet was making significant use of Portland cement as early as the 1850s/1860s.
Even beyond that, I'll ask you yet again - when, exactly, do you think the colonial era I am talking about was? When exactly do you think Britain let go of all its territories in Africa? Come now, this isn't exactly hidden information or difficult to look up.
The question is 'when did Britain lose the kind of involvement you need to get into low-level building regulation?'
Near as I can find, they never had that kind of interest or involvement. Which is why I wanted a source for your claim that they banned traditional building materials.
So my thinking is simple: prior to 1930 is a bit early for concrete blocks to be the logical building material outside of places like New York, and even there, it would be a bit newfangled.
After 1930 is a bit late for the british to be really calling the shots about what gets built and how it gets built, since the period between 1945 and 1960 was characterized by increasing independence and english divestment. Maybe some university buildings?
Anyway, this whole conversation is a bit of a strange digression from your original rather belicose response to my observation that concrete was not by any means the 'European way'. It's my feeling that, aside from some monumental architecture (which it seems nigeria also had) most europeans were also building with brick, wood, plaster and thatch, up until the 19th century.
If you look at a modern timber frame house in the UK, the basic structure would be familiar to a roman architect. The timber structure is laid on brick piles, which are in turn laid on concrete foundations (the only modern addition - victorian houses often wouldn't have these), then a tile roof is fitted on top. It's a ridiculously ancient design.
We are in many ways rediscovering older methods and techniques of building, especially in materials.
Also Consider SuperAdobe [2], which uses nothing but dirt onsite and plastic bags.
1. https://www.dwell.com/article/modern-rammed-earth-homes-723d...
I know in the American southwest adobe construction is popular, but that's about sheer thermal mass moderating the effects of the heat. Small windows also help.
Phase change can get you below zero easily, it certainly works as a poor man's AC. It is incredible how much energy phase change requires compared to just raising the temperature of the medium.
Take architecture, for example. Traditionally pretty much every ethnic group I know of built with mud brick and thatch. During the colonial era - and afterwards, till today really - such building techniques were derided as backwards savagery. Of course the European way of using concrete was "better" and "modern", even though it's a terrible building material for a hot, humid climate. A mud house can keep quite cool in 35°C plus weather with just vents. A concrete house on the other hand traps so much heat at even lower temperatures that we end up needing fans and air conditioners to be comfortable indoors, which of course drives up individuals' carbon footprints and electricity bills.
The ghost of colonialism still lingers decades later in a whole lot of little things like that. So yes, we may be headed towards a net positive future but in my opinion the way to get there requires even further divesting from the colonial era and its ways of thinking (re: the architecture example, there are new schools of builders who explicitly aim to incorporate precolonial building wisdom in their work).