Foreign architects made a great contribution to the development of concrete and reinforced concrete in architecture. Well-known works in the field of reinforced concrete development of such masters as O. Perret, Le Corbusier, F. L. Wright, O. Niemeyer. Some achievements in the interpretation of reinforced concrete forms have E. Saarinen, K. Tange, M. Yamasaki.

Interesting projects of houses and cities of the future were created by architects of several countries in the 60s - 70s. A very special place in the shaping of modern architecture based on concrete and reinforced concrete is occupied by the work of talented engineers P.L. Nervi and F. Candela, which goes beyond the scope of technology and requires architectural analysis. What was original about the creative searches and finds of foreign architects of the 20th century.

The undoubted contribution of O. Perret was the construction of a residential frame house on the street. Franklin (1903), in which a new design was embodied in new forms. In a fundamentally new way, the Pontier garage building in Paris (1905) was decided, in which horizontal windows were first used and a mesh fence was built. However, the commitment to the classics, the position of its modernization in the use of reinforced concrete, directed the architect’s imagination to search for traditional forms and famous decorativeness (Notre-Dame-du-Rancy in Paris, 1923).

O. Perret considered it necessary to preserve traditional details in the new architecture: cornices, plinths, borders, paving slabs, pavers, flutes, etc. Thus, the original creative position was conservative. Trying to find a new one, he could not abandon the old ideas and even forms. This was manifested in the classical forms of the theater on the Champs Elysees (1913) and in later constructions, for example, an apartment building in Paris (1930), a furniture factory (1935) and buildings reconstructed after the war of Le Havre (1947).

Unlike Perret, his student Le Corbusier and other architects, innovators and rationalists approached reinforced concrete from a completely different perspective. They saw in reinforced concrete material of the future, capable of embodying the ideas of standardization, mass character, assembly, and at the same time, material of new forms and aesthetic ideas. A characteristic feature of Le Corbusier's work is that he first comprehended the laws of space in modern architecture through the essence of reinforced concrete structures. "Having seen the embryo of the" free plan "(the plan freed from the shackles of the wall) in reinforced concrete, I came to architectural polychrome ..."

Having already created in 1914 a project known as Domino, Le Corbusier subsequently formulated his five principles of modern architecture, which are one of his main contributions to 20th century architecture: a free plan, horizontal windows, buildings raised on poles, flat roof-terraces, a free solution of the facade and the rejection of the traditional cornice. "Just as we came to the conclusion that there are no more walls and no more roofs, we naturally come to the formulation of a new heroic, replete with the consequences of the statement: there is no longer a cornice - this is the result of technical evolution that raised such alarm. How enormous are its aesthetic consequences".