08-31-2010, 04:06 PM
Reinhard, I'm not sure completely, but I think concrete tilt up (the term we use for what you call "shoebox") buildings were first used in the late 1940's or early 1950's. If tilt up construction wasn't used that early, they would have had poured concrete walls that look very much like tilt up.
I just read about tilt up construction on Wikipedia. The first tilt ups were built in the US in 1905, but the construction method really caught on after WW2 with the development of cement mixing trucks that allowed the walls to be poured on site.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/tilt_up">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/tilt_up</a><!-- m -->
I just read about tilt up construction on Wikipedia. The first tilt ups were built in the US in 1905, but the construction method really caught on after WW2 with the development of cement mixing trucks that allowed the walls to be poured on site.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/tilt_up">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/tilt_up</a><!-- m -->