CONCRETELY

Welcome and Goodbye to Concrete

2011-12-31T03:38:00.001-08:00

Welcome to Concrete

The town called Concrete, Washington, USA got its name from a large cement company. I sometimes use the photo of the cement silos in the beginning of lectures - it says it all: Welcome to Concrete.

According to the town's wikipedia entry the population was 705 souls in 2010 and the town just had its hundred-year anniversary. It is quite amusing how two towns were created on each side of the river by the founding of two large Portland Cement plants - one of the towns was called Cement City. The two towns grew together [a little concrete pun: Concrescere in Latin, let's call it the composite city] and got the fitting name Concrete.

[Welcome To Concrete, a photo by VaultBoy13 on Flickr.]

Goodbye to Traditional Concrete

In Arizona, a new sheriff came to town in 2004. The designer-concreters at Gore Design Company really meant it when they started a new business. Below is their 'obituary' to traditional concrete (not the town, I assure you):

["Traditional concrete died in 2004" via]

Obituary

Traditional Concrete

27 BC to 2004 AD

"Concrete, as it has been known for more than 2000 years, died in early 2004. Born during the Roman Empire, Traditional Concrete thrived as aqueducts, sidewalks and lawn gnomes.

Traditional Concrete, however, met its death at the hands of an unknown assailant sometime during the night in early 2004. Multiple bullet casings were found at the scene and based on the small amount of residual evidence forensic experts believe this could have been the work of a professional.

[Police investigation the crime scene where traditional concrete died, via]

Police are currently interviewing witnesses but due to the ongoing investigation cannot comment on specifics of the case. A Phoenix detective, speaking on the condition of anonymity, has indicated that Police have a strong suspicion that Gore Design Co. may have played a part in the assassination. A tremendous paradigm shift occurred in their work shortly after Traditional Concrete’s death, raising eyebrows of both investigators and designers.

Traditional Concrete is survived by it’s better-looking stronger son, GFRC (Glass-Fiber Reinforced Concrete). GFRC resides in Gore Design Co.’s Tempe, Arizona studio furthering suspicions of involvement of the rogue concrete artisan firm. Any information regarding this case should be reported to the authorities immediately." Via Gore Designs' Website

[In charge with a smoking gun - Eames meets gfr concrete (and ink) check out great images and design here]

Welcome and goodbye for now.

Yours (corny) Concretely

Floating Concrete- Weaving Shores

2011-12-21T12:37:00.000-08:00

Weaving Shores Kissing Buoy is a studio project from the course Formworks at Columbia University that I introduced here.

[Concept of floating concrete buys in Weaving Shores Kissing Buoy, via]

The project is a concrete buoy that becomes part of a woven landscape on the shore of the East River in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. It responses to the workshop brief to produce 1 and 2 part molds and design a concrete element system that incorporates the specific elements and mode of construction.

[Concrete Prototype, Weaving Shores Kissing Buoy, via]

The concept and the production of a concrete element that floats and interlocks into a 'woven,' walkable, and physically flexible system is a great way to get many parameters at play during the course.

The presentation is also inspirational because of the introduction to reference works and technologies.

[Weaving Shores Kissing Buoy, via]

The idea of fabricating concrete shores is not really that intriguing to me. Giving it a second thought, the need to respond to the rising seas on our warm Globe calls for drastic measures to create adaptable shores. The project also suggests a combination of human recreation and an artificial 'aquatic habitat.'

[Reef Balls, artificial concrete reefs, via]

One of the project's references is work by the Reef Ball Foundation, which is a simple concrete forming method to produce artificial reefs. The aim is to create an aquatic habitat for the animals and plants who become homeless due to drastic methods of fishing. The concrete reef also works to protect existing natural reefs.

Weaving Shore Kissing Buoy by students: Aisha Alsager, Joanne Hayek, Anne Wei, and Bernadette Ma.

Formworks at Columbia

2011-12-21T12:00:00.000-08:00

Formworks is a course taught at GSAPP, Columbia by my new formwork friend Joshua Draper (yes, it is a very cool last name these days, what?).

[JAJI Noise Continuum, via]

Since 2008 the studio class has hybridized methods of casting with digital fabrication

"The ambition is to challenge the repetitive nature of casting and formwork by developing a parametric, dynamic formworks system and produce a series of precast elements using that system.

Organized around a series of short but intense assignments, students are introduced to 1 and 2 part molds, silicone casting, vacuforming, rotational molding and a variety of casting materials. Students respond with their own system which takes these techniques and systems of organization, assembly and fabrication further." Via

[JAJI is a project that investigates the role of the milling direction(s) in creating form and surface pattern. via]

JAJI project by students: Jennifer Chang, Aaron Berman, Juan Fransisco Saldarriaga, and Idan Naor.

See presentations of work by the Formworks classes:
formworksfa11.blogspot.com
formworksspr11.blogspot.com
formworksfa10.blogspot.com
formworksspr10.blogspot.com
formworksfa09.blogspot.com
formworksspr09.blogspot.com
formworksfa08.blogspot.com
formworkssum08.blogspot.com

Flex Form by Allison Adderley

2011-12-21T11:03:00.000-08:00

Building Matters is a blog compiled around the wonderful experimental thesis work of permanent, flexible formwork of Allison Adderley, architecture student at the University of Buffalo in the state of New York.

[Flex Form via]

"Typically, formwork is understood as a temporary building element, often being discarded and seen only as a construction tool, rarely a component of the final design. This proposal explores the opportunity of employing formwork as a permanent building element, thus incorporating the formal elements inherent in building within the final form itself," Adderley states

[A very 'textile' formwork principle for a permanent formwork principle, "Flex Form" via]

Some of Adderley's formwork principles are permanent, and some 'just' leaves a permanent, formal consequence of the construction principles behind the formwork structure. I share this interest with Adderley in practices of molding and the relation between the mold and that which is molded. Basically, what I like to call 'formwork tectonics.'

Adderley introduces her abstract and theoretical references, Gottfried Semper, Kenneth Frampton, and Gework Hartoonian, and how she uses these theories. In this sense, find inspiration in the blog as a nice way to present rigorous, experimental and poetic work.

Semper's theories of the transformation of textile principles to methods of 'weaving' and 'dressing' facades are evident in the above experiment.

There is also a nice gallery of photos from a visit to the laboratory of CAST at the University of Manitoba. Adderley is obviously inspired by the work at CAST but has found her own way of investigating the roles of the fabric in formwork for concrete.

[Formwork detail, Series3 - Permanent Fabric (Suspension) via]

[Casting Series3 - Permanent Fabric (Suspension) via]

A goal in the abstract is to end the thesis work with a full scale cast, so more appears to come on the blog.

Allison, I hope to see you at the ICFF2012 (World's Second International Conference of Fabric Formwork) in Bath, (UK) June 2012 :)

The textile block - Lloyd Wright vs 3d printing

2011-09-25T02:39:00.000-07:00

Here is what concrete could be - or is - if you include the ever expanding group cement based composites to your conception of 'concrete'. And better get used the look because 3d printing has never been cheaper and more available with this new fusible mix. SeatSlug is the first 3d Printed Bench at a Low Cost / Rael San Fratello Architects.

[Image of the G.M Millard House aka La Miniatura, the first of a series of houses where Wright explores the textile block. Via Coletta Design Blog.]

It is also quite the take on the 'textile block', the concrete unit developed by Frank Lloyd Wright for La Miniatura and a series of houses where he explored this notion of a 'machine produced concrete block', perfect like an industrially produced fabric. This particular notion of 'textile concrete' also has quite new perspectives for architecture in the light of the 3d printed project. The 'textile surface' of the SeatSlug is comprised of 230 individual pieces. The textile elements printed for the bench makes me wonder into which form Lloyd Wright's La Miniatura would have been 'printed' today?

Below is via stumpleupon
The cement based polymer has a compression strength of 4700 pounds but cost up to 90% less than conventional fusible powders. Rapid 3d printing technologies have been traditionally used to create relatively expensive prototypes for industrial design or more recently small scale objects with low cost devices.

The promise of 3d printing for usable mass consumed objects seem to have been just around the corner for nearly a decade now. A new formulation cement-based polymer developed by Rael San Fratello Architects in partnership with the University of Washington and University of California Berkeley replaces more expensive powder mediums for large scale objects. The prototype SeatSlug bench is a demonstration project of the potential of the material and 3d printing process to make sophisticated large pieces using low cost, non repetitive objects. The bench is comprised of 230 individual pieces, each developed as a unique shape.

The SeatSlug is based on the shape of the recently discovered flabellina goddardi sea slug and surface inspired by karakusamon patterns, traditional Japanese designs. The unique shape is both functional and collectable with its provocative massing and highly polished finish, possibly with an eye to be built individually for higher end furniture stores or galleries. The manufacture of large scale merchandise as low cost printed objects with hand assembly near the end user addresses the issues of scale and cost of high quality products, which are often not available to market due to restraints in supply and demand.

Via stumpleupon

Stitching concrete

2011-08-10T05:27:00.000-07:00

[Concrete Canvas is formed, stitched and watered - and you get a concrete stool. Via]

Furniture and especially chairs have a great scale to test new (or old) material principles at a manageable size and weight and stripped down to essential production details that mean much if not everything to the concept and tectonics of the piece. I enjoy as well how the stool has a recognizable function, the socalled affordance, that make you immediately judge even images based on your own bodily experience.

By now several concrete design pieces have made it to your Concretely blog - [just search 'chair' on this blog to check out a few]. German designer Florian Schmid's stool seem particularly tactile and the production principle is wonderfully easy to grasp.

Below project is via this post on Designboom.
"German designer Florian Schmid has developed 'stitching concrete', a project which has been influenced by the contrasts of the material Concrete Canvas.
Concrete cloth is a flexible cement impregnated fabric that hardens on hydration to form a thin, durable water proof and fire proof concrete layer. it combines the softness and warmth of fabric with the stability of cold, hard concrete.

[It looks like felt but it's concrete. Via]

[A rig supports the textile structure as it is formed, sewn, watered and finally cured to be a concrete textile stool. Image via]

To create each stool, Schmid has built a special wooden rack that is used as a mould in which he forms the concrete canvas around it.
The device gives hold to the material during the watering and drying process in which the exposed seams are sewn together with either blue, red or yellow string providing extra stability and reinforcements. Once the stool is hardened, it can be removed from the mould, which always remains the same, but can be adjusted according to the different heights, lengths and widths of the objects."

I think I'll drape and sew myself a concrete summer cabin one of these days ;)
Concrete Canvas is introduced in my blog post 'Shake, drape and bake' here

Thanks, Diederik for sending the link

Skating superparks and swimming pools

2011-07-19T14:26:00.000-07:00

[Scroll through the images below to get to a cool movie I just came across -
A hint: this image is from California Is a Place]

This post features skaters, or rather two quite different concrete landscapes...

Last month a really large skatepark opened in the public Copenhagen park called Fælledparken. - the project was carried out as collaboration between Copenhagen Skatepark and the city of Copenhagen.

Besides watching the talented skaters who finally have a serious place to do their stuff, your concretely blogger must admire the craftsmanship involved in concreting the smooth concrete landscape.

[Image from Fælledparken Skate Park,
Photo: Lasse Kofod from this site]

[From the construction of the Fælledparken Skatepark. Photo from Copenhagen Skatepark]

[poster for the opening of the skatepark]

The blue surface painted on the poster above clearly resembles the water of a gigantic swimming pool. The short movie "The Cannonball" has beautifully gray images of empty swimming pools in Californian suburbia as the venues for a group of skaters who may be among the few who see an opportunity in the financial crisis of the recent years, which have caused foreclosures - and lots of empty pools for these pool skaters to 'surf' in Fresno, California. The concrete reality here is, of course that the empty pools are such clear symbols of the situation; loans that were taken (and offered, of course), as well as just plain overspending. - sigh...

[Image of skater by the pool... so to speak, from the California is a Place blog]

Through the skaters, the movie brings an interesting optics on the recession and on the foreclosure monster as the directors call it on the web site for a whole series of Californian stories - and on this eye for discovering concrete landscaping for four little wheels.

The movie was directed, produced, and shot by Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari.
Without further ado - do watch the movie.

Blog reports processes of fabric forming

2011-07-19T06:03:00.000-07:00

I just came across this fine blog by architecture student Richard Bush that collects reflections and and procedures of a group student project about fabric formed concrete at ESALA (Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture).

[Image of the filled fabric formwork. Image from the blog]

[See the 2 minute video of the entire construction process of a fabric formed concrete structure]

As the blogger Richard Bush has written:
"In the context of our unit’s title Distructive Technology: Material Immaterial – the discussion that formed a critical part of our design process, that now only exists as notes and sketches, represents an immaterial property of a material concrete structure. In the process we have developed a language, a code, to work with this material and discuss its process and potential wtih other people. We have developed an understanding between material and immaterial."

[Image of tailored fabric formwork ready for hanging. Image from the blog]

One of the supervisors of the 5 week student projects at University of Edinburgh is Professor Remo Pedreschi who has edited this great book about fabric formwork along with Alan Chandler.

The first book about Fabric Formwork

2011-07-19T05:40:00.000-07:00

I just posted the news of an upcoming book that features fabric formwork. I realize that I ought to share with you this book, the first book about Fabric formwork for concrete, I believe; and that is the title as well, "Fabric Formwork" (2007).

[The cover of "Fabric Formwork" by Chandler & Pedreschi, (eds.). Image from RIBA Bookshop]

The book, published by RIBA Publishing, is not the first publication that features concrete structure cast in fabrics - books about Felix Candela or Christopher Alexander has shell structures cast on suspended burlap. This book I believe however to be the first dedicated to the subject of fabric forming - and it is the first to collect reflections upon the contemporary research in the use of modern textile technologies and concrete.

The book consists of six essays about different aspects of fabric forming, from research methodologies, technical aspects, how to apply an aesthetics of concrete cast in textile as well as a discussion of the possible future of fabric formed concrete in construction.

[Image of 'Wall One', the result of a workshop project done at University of East London and discussed in the book. The image is from a great blog post collecting projects with 'Fluid Aggregates' by Katie Yash]

Despite lots of wonderful images and sketches, this is not your usual coffee table book. - just the fact that one of the more theoretical essays is entitled the Beautiful, the Sublime and the Ugly, which is an attempt to embrace the aesthetic appreciation between extremes in formal and structural expressions in concrete cast in textiles.

The editors of Fabric Formwork are prize winning researcher - Remo Pedreschi of the University of Edinburgh, and Alan Chandler of the University of East London.
The two have collaborated on research projects into fabric formwork and following the publication of the book back in 2007, Chandler & Pedreschi received the RIBA President’s Awards for Research 2008.

Fabric formed concrete chair in print

2011-07-19T04:42:00.000-07:00

It's summer and I'm trying to finish writing my thesis on fabric formwork - it's hard work - but something look forward to while working is the launch of a design book that features my Ambiguous concrete chair.

The cover of DIY Furniture, image from the publisher

"DIY Furniture: A Step-by-Step Guide" is edited by Christopher Stuart. Chris has worked hard in getting all the designs together and to finish the book - I'm proud to be included and i can't wait to see the result.

The publisher Laurence King Publishing writes about the book:

"Featuring 30 designs by leading designer-makers from around the world DIY Furniture shows you how to use simple techniques to make stunning designer furniture from scratch.

Along with designs for seating and storage, the book also features projects for making your own bed, wardrobe, lighting and garden furniture. Each project features hand-drawn diagrams with short, easy-to-follow instructions on how to build the piece.

All the projects can be easily assembled using common materials to be found at the local hardware store, allowing the reader to create unique designer pieces at a fraction of the normal cost. Brief biographies of all the featured designers are included at the end of the book"

The chair will be among 30 designs that you can make yourself - I bet the concrete chair will be the heaviest of them all.

The Ambiguous Chair - se more images here

Detail of Ambiguous Chair cast in fabric formwork.

Please, do share with me if you get inspired to make your own fabric formed concrete furniture.
Info about the publication:
Paperback
270 illustrations
144 pages
245 x 210 mm
ISBN 978 1 85669 742 2
£17.95
Published by Laurence King Publishing, October 2011

Lecture by Mark West

2011-07-12T05:10:00.000-07:00

Mark West is the founder of the Center for Architectural Structures and Technology (CAST) at the University of Manitoba, Canada.
West is a pioneer of contemporary research into fabric formed concrete; recently he gave a lecture at ETH, Zürich hosted by the Block reseach group. Thanks to PhD-scholar and engineer Diederik Veenendaal who has sent me the link to the lecture on You Tube.

Above is the link to Mark West's lecture at ETH

Weaving galore

2011-05-08T03:08:00.000-07:00

As a remark to the post about the machine park at Swedish School of Textiles, a friend forwarded a link of cutting edge use of weaving, namely the automated weaving of auto parts made from carbon-fibre and plastic.

As technology blogger, Sandrine Ceurstemont explains in this NewScientist post:

"It's a sports car few people will be able to get their hands on. In production since last December, only 500 Lexus LFAs will be produced and they were already sold out in early June 2010. But it's not just its top speed of 325 kilometres per hour that's attracting buyers. The car is being used as a test bed for newly-designed parts made from carbon fibre and plastic."

Of interest here, of course – is the key technology used, namely the high-tech circular loom, guided by lasers, that can weave 3D objects – (see the video link above).

Compared to steel or aluminium, carbon fibres make the car stronger and lighter but producing these components is much more time-consuming: only one car is currently being assembled per day.

3D-Woven sails
At a larger scale robotic weaving - or laminating is more the technique, I guess - is used for custom made three dimensional sails for racing boats. (See video link below by North Sails)

[Video of the weaving process of 3dl technology]

Woven architecture?]
When will this technology be used in architectural applications as woven load-bearing structures?? So spectacular - and seemingly achievable (at a 'certain cost'). In the concrete optics of this blog perspectives of producing high strength, low weight structures out of carbon would affect the way concrete structures are reinforced.

Textile concrete at Aachen
A cross disciplinary research project called Textil Beton (textile concrete) at the University of Aachen combines research in textile production technologies with reinforcement technologies of carbon fibres. The project was initiated in 1999 and running until 2012.

The abstract for the part-project Textile production, process and machine development is: For a sufficient and cost-effective reinforcement, a defined positioning of the fibers is necessary. Thus, a geometrically defined design of the textiles, both 2D and 3D, is required. Aim of this project is the development and investigation of processes, which allow a textile production of non-corrosive reinforcements. Fibers used are alkali resistant glass, carbon and aramide. Finally the investigation of integrated 3D textiles are focused in this project.

[Diamond lattice, prototype of textile reinforced concrete structure, from 'Insu-Shell']

For now, it seems as if the technology has mostly been developed for matting reinforcement that is flexible in two directions. The thin, non-corrisive reinforcement has been tested in repairing thin concrete shell structures. The technology seem ideal for this purpose because of the minimal required thickness of a protective layer of concrete.

I'm looking forward to more spatially woven reinforcement structures that combine the precision weaving of the Lexus robot with the knowledge of reinforcing concrete. They might be out there already.

Thank you, Jacob for forwarding the video link in the first place.

Computational Composites

2011-04-18T07:17:00.000-07:00

To continue from my previous post from the happy day in Borås, I must introduce to you, Anna Valgårda.

I was invited to the Swedish School of Textiles by Anna Valgårda who has her background in computer science and did her PhD project about the computer as a material. - as a post-doc at Borås she's also the head of the research school in practice based textile research.

Anna introduces her interest at her web site

I study the computer as a material for design. Computers, however, have no expression in and by themselves so in order to study and work with them I develop various "computational composites." The vision is that we through understanding the materiality of computers at some point will be able to work with computers in the same way we work with other more traditional materials like textile, glass, or wood. Current experiments evolve around textiles exploring the possibilities in the various structures of textiles.

[Recurring Patterns piece, from Anna Valgårda's web site]

Anna writes about the ongoing project that were just exhibited at Salon de Mobile:

These prototypes are part of a larger project in the Smart Textile Design Lab at the Swedish School of Textile where we explore how to use programmable textile expressions in furniture design. What does it entail to design with expressions that change in context over time? What can these recurring patterns do to the use of furniture? What new kinds of furniture can we imagine?

Textile Tectonics

2011-04-18T07:15:00.000-07:00

I great while ago I was fortunately invited to lecture at the Borås University, Swedish School of Textiles. The focus of my talk was obviously to be upon the textile aspects of research into fabric formwork for concrete structures.

It's no secret that most ongoing research into fabric forming deal with the forming principles and not so much developing textiles. - but, wow, was a visit to the 'machine park' at the university was overwhelming. It brings layers and layers upon the potentials of Textile Performance into fabric formwork. I'm sorry not to dwell into those aspects and share with you - for now, I'll share some images of machines.

Scroll through the images to get to a little treat of machine poetics:

[Weave]

[3d Knitting machine]

[A computer is aligned with each thread to go into the knit]

[Metal knits at Borås School of Textiles]

[Tube of metal knit at Borås School of Textiles]

[Knit at Borås School of Textiles]

['Section' of knit at Borås School of Textiles]

[Spatial knitting at Borås School of Textiles]

Since you made it here, it's time for a little treat - a movie the depicts the machine poetics of weaving. Thanks to the blogger at textilesmithing who did a post about fabric formwork - and for posting the link to the video...

[Valsa das Máquinas, Paramount Têxteis from grafikonstruct on Vimeo.]

I was invited to Borås by Anna Valgårda who has her background in computer science and did her PhD project about the computer as a material. - as a post-doc at Borås she's also the head of the research school in practice based textile research. I've dedicated a post to introduce Anna here.

Concrete Benches cast in fabric

2011-03-24T01:38:00.000-07:00

Wow, what a while it's been since my last post - well, as for now I've just finished a great workshop with 80 (yes, 80) first year students of architecture and architectural engineering. In a week's time the students had to design and produce a concrete bench: This included designing the formwork principles and building the formwork. Finally the students had to pour the pieces of around 300 liters each (750 kgs of concrete), and finally - strip the formwork and reveal the concrete evidence of the experiments...

[Students pouring the fabric formed concrete bench - and getting advice from the concrete sponsor, Unicon]

Here's an older post with some images of references to benches.

No blow outs
The pieces of this year's workshop weren't super tall - the tallest formwork was 140 cm high. Out of 12 pieces and 4 cubic meters of concrete, we had no blow outs - yipee - this wasn't really the case last year. Formwork pieces were all 2 meters high - and only one student piece survived in its initial state... read more about last years workshop here.

The Clover
Below are some images of the Clover Bench. More info to follow. Enjoy!

['Trekløver', the Clover. Fabric formed concrete bench. Student work at TEK1]

Do I need to say that the focus was on fabric formwork?

Besides being the subject of my research, fabric formwork has great potentials for introducing concrete to students of mostly no previous experience to either pouring or building formwork - in fact building anything yet :)

Formwork tectonics

First of all, building with light weight fabric lets you produce quite large structures just because the weight of the formwork structure is kept down.

More importantly (says the teacher) there's a structural hierarchy in building fabric formwork - an apparent material dialogue to be considered. The material dialogue is between the concrete and the three elements that the formwork is made out of: the frame holding the fabric, the fabric itself, and a restraining method to keep the fabric in tension and control bulges during the pour.

Formal consequence

When the concrete is poured as an almost ruthless matter the formwork is really put to the test. All choices made during the construction of the formwork results in a direct formal consequence on the form and surface of the concrete.

[Fabric form for the 'Clover' - without the inner form, Student work]

Formwork statics is quite an interesting subject - designing formwork structures the students get a grasp of pure tectonics. Quite simple structural principles may result in striking concrete forms :)

[The funky inner form for the Clover. Students used scrap vinyl flooring to create a smooth surface inside the bench. Student work]

Credits to the members of the Clover team who built the formwork shown above: Alva Altgård, Symra Joner Andbo, Helga Hallgrimsdottir, Rasmus von Wurstemberger Nielsen, Marie Rugholm Nielsen, Andreas Klestrup Hansen. Students study at RDAFA or DTU

The workshop was part of a course held by the Institute of Technology and co-teachers were Johannes Rauff Greisen and Finn Bach

Thesis work on fabric formed concrete columns

2011-01-06T09:06:00.000-08:00

Here's the abstract for a recently finished Master of science thesis by Farhood Delijani, University of Manitoba. Farhood posted a link to share on the Fabric Formwork Facebook group that you are so welcome to join.

The title of the thesis is: The Evaluation of Changes in Concrete Properties Due to Fabric Formwork

The work confirmed that fabric formwork is structurally safe alternative for forming reinforced concrete columns. The abstract found here goes like this:

"Fabric as a flexible formwork for concrete is an alternative giving builders, engineers, and architects the ability to form virtually any shape. This technique produces a superb concrete surface quality which requires no further touch up or finishing. Woven polyole-fin fabrics are recommended for this application.

A permeable woven fabric allows excess water from the concrete mix to bleed through the mold wall, and therefore reduce the water-cement ratio of the concrete mix. Due to the reduction in water-cement ratio, higher compressive strength in fabric formed concrete may be achieved, as also suggested by earlier research.

The current research study was conducted to investigate and document the changes in concrete strength and overall quality due to use of commercially available woven polyolefin fabrics. Use of fabric formwork will contribute to decreased construction cost, construction waste, and greenhouse gas emissions.

Two sets of tests were conducted as a part of this research study including comparison of compressive strength of fabric formed versus PVC formed concrete cylinders and comparison of be-haviour of the fabric formed reinforced columns versus cardboard formed reinforced concrete columns. Variables in this research were limited to two types of fabric with dif-ferent permeability (Geotex 104F and Geotex 315ST) and two types of concrete; concrete made with conventional Portland cement and no flyash herein called normal concrete (NC) and concrete with 30 percent flyash in its mix design (FAC).

The laboratory results revealed that fabric Geotex 315ST is an ideal geotextile for forming concrete. It was also found that the effects of fabric formwork on concrete quality in a large member are limited mostly to the surface zone and the core of the concrete remains the same as a conventionally formed concrete.

Even though fabric formed cylinder tests showed an average of 15% increase in compressive strength of the concrete samples, compressive strength of the reinforced columns did not dramatically change when com-pared to the companion cardboard formed control columns.

This research confirmed that fabric formwork is structurally safe alternative for forming reinforced concrete columns."

Congratulations to Farhood on his degree! It will be interesting to see if the fabric forming community will see more interesting work from him in the future.

Fabric formed concrete benches

2011-01-06T08:05:00.000-08:00

As a direct continuation of the previous post on an upcoming concrete workshop in which students will design and produce benches, here's another couple of examples. Bench could be read as just another word for span - it's just a matter of scale, whether the span holds a person or a floor, right?

[Image of fabric formed beam - could be used as bench, by CAST at University of Manitoba, Canada]

Fabric formed beam - or bench
Above image is cast as a beam of 22 metres. - I've sat on it, so you could use it as a bench, I guess - What's interesting about this piece when it comes to producing a long span is the fact that it was cast in just two flat sheets of fabric!
The beam is actually quite old and the good people at CAST (very firgurative abreviation for Centre for Architectural Structures and Technology at the University of Manitoba).
Do read more about the pioneering work at CAST and professor Mark West here.

[Image of Buenos Aires concrete bench by Grupo Bondi, 2010]

[Detail of concrete bench with aluminium clamp tube, photo from Grupo Bondi]

Fabric formed furniture
The pieces of furniture by the Argentinian Grupo Bondi definitely look familiar. (see the post on the Ambiguous Chair here). The guys have been working with flexible molds for some years and, opposed to the research pieces done elsewhere, there's actually price tags on most items.

The bench weighs 145 kgs. The concrete mattress sits on iron legs and will fool you with the apparent upholstered bulges. Previous work could be shells? The cushion below is only 39 kgs according to the designers.

[Concrete furniture by Grupo Bondi]

I bet that those pieces must have been cast in fabrics or similar flexible formwork. Do check out the web site for more design ideas cast in flexible formwork and products to order.

The stunning shell solution
I need to show you a more recent project from CAST. Ronnie Araya works there as an assistant Professor and did these beautiful thin shells that also have some spin off work for furniture. - the overall interest is architectural structures - but, as mentioned befor - working with technologies at a furniture scale is an interesting starting point - and something that is more likely to sooner have a life outside the studio than large load bearing structures.
I wrote more about this piece in this previous post

[Image of rigid fabric formwork and the cast shell - I think this is a scale model in plaster. Image courtesy of CAST]

[Image of full scale PVC-coated mold ready to be cast with GFRC, Glass Fibre Reinforced Concrete, Photo from CAST].

Read more about the stunning shell work at CAST here. The words is that the studio is doing a project with shells like these - so I guess work does get out of the lab! Can't wait to see it!

Concrete benches

2011-01-06T07:39:00.000-08:00

These days I'm preparring a workshop for a large group of architecture and architectural engineering students. The materials given are concrete (but of course), fabric, plywood and laths. The assignment will be to designg and construct a bench. Several issues goes into this assignment - there's the functional and aesthetic part of designing a bench in concrete - and then there's a focus on the choice and use of materials if the aim is light weight, or spectacularly sculpted, there'll be some advanced geometries to figure out.

Well - much fun is awaiting for an intense workshop!! I found some images of concrete benches - and some made without concrete that might work as inspiration.

There's a point to make with regards to the choice of materials: namely, where and how is precision desired and obtained via clamps or the design of restraining devises - and where is the fabric allowed to work its ways and deflect under the load of concrete. - Another question is how to deal with the transition of the formwork to the uncovered surface.

[Detail render of the 2007 Urban Nebula bench by Zaha Hadid. Photos from ZH's blog]

[Image of production of concrete elements for the 2007 Urban Nebula bench by Zaha Hadid. Photos from ZH's blog]

Light weight structures

[Image of pleat table from Arktura ]

[Coral bench by Arkitura]

Above images are all but heavy - and they are not cast in concrete but by laser cut metal. A concrete mind would imagine these these algorithmically generated patterns cast in high strength fibre reinforced concrete - and soon after scale the fellow to something a lot larger - Otherwise you might use a big cookie cutter and stamp your flat sheet of Eternit (fibre reinforced concrete mostly used for cladding) and make a perforated version of the award winning 'Dune' concrete chair below by Rainer Mutsch.

[The production of the Dune lounge chair at Eternit. Read more about it at this older post.

Post to be continued - now

This post was actually much more elaborated but my computer is having an off day and deleted most of it (sigh) - so - this post continues right away for some examples cast in fabrics - click here when ready.

Erwin Hauer's screen walls

2010-12-21T03:01:00.000-08:00

When I was in New York last month I almost walked into some concrete that looked very familiar. The panel above a high basement entry to an office building had Erwin Hauer written all over it.

[Image of concrete panel near 177 E 77st in NYC. The address is quite near the American Museum of Natural History where I had just been staring at the collection of amazing dioramas, Photo: Anne-Mette Manelius]

The surface isn't quite as continuous as the name of Continua screen series indicate - but it clearly shows how the elements are produced. Below is an image of a screen with a lot smoother surface - could it be milled instead of poured?

"Continuity and potential infinity have been at the very center of my sculpture from early on,” wrote retired Yale professor Erwin Hauer in Continua, 2004

[Photo by Ajmal Aqtash]

http://www.erwinhauer.com/ informs us on the bio of Erwin Hauer:

"Austrian born sculptor, began, in the 50’s, to explore infinite continuous surfaces. From these, perforated modular structures developed that lent themselves to architectural usage. He continued to develop these patented designs along with the technology to produce them, and installed the modular, light diffusing walls in buildings throughout the United States and seven other countries. These designs are listed in Domus 1928-1999 among the quintessential works of modernism. His sculptures are in numerous museums and collections. At the invitation of Josef Albers, Hauer joined the Yale Faculty in 1957 and taught there until 1990. He continues to work as independent sculptor, and also as a designer in partnership with Enrique Rosado, in Bethany, Connecticut. In 2004, as Princeton Architectural Press published Erwin Hauer : Continua architectural walls and screens,"

[Photos taken by Ajmal Aqtash during a rare studio visit in May 07′.

You can see more from that visit on the CORE.profiles' flickr page]

I just wanted to share this fellow with anyone who isn't yet aware of this formal genious.

What's really interesting here, is how the technologal development has revitalized Hauer's work.

The man is quite the old-school sculptor and made intricate forms by hand. A new partnership has made it possible to produce the screen in more modern ways. A partnership since 2003 between the old sculptor Mr. Hauer himself and Enrique Rosado, a former student of Hauer, who has developed the complex geometries for the Continua screen work elements.

"A professor at the Yale School of Architecture for more than three decades, Hauer's geometrically complex screens, mainly cast in durable masonry materials, but now also in wood fibers produced through digitally controlled milling machines, thanks to Rosado, can be found in New York, Miami, Montreal, Mexico City and Caracas, Venezuela." Citation from article in All Business.com

Back in the day formwork was made intricately by hand to cast in plaster or concrete- now you can print the interwoven, double curved screen elements in materials like aluminium. Or just mill the screens in mdf and other materials.

The web site list their materials in the faq section:

" Our designs are made with the following materials: Milled wood composite (mdf) Milled stone (limestone, etc) Cast gypsum (hydrostone) Cast grey or white Portland cement. New designs may be available in cast resin, aluminium and stainless."

[Photo taken by Ajmal Aqtash]

And why this post - to be honest, this morning I was reading the Semperian analysis by good-old Kenneth Frampton of good-old Jørn Utzon's Bagsværd Church in "Studies in Tectonic Culture" p291.

There's a porous screen wall behind the altar of the church- and that had me going - I need vacation - yet, procrastination as it may seem - the Hauer screen walls definitely seem worth a Semperian analysis itself.

See some more images at the core.form-ula blog post on Hauer or even better at their Flickr site from a rare visit to the Hauer workshop.

[Hauer’s first commission, before he left for the U.S. in 1955, was a light-diffusing screen for a church in Vienna, for which he cast the modules in the ruins of a nearby bombed-out building. Image from http://www.metropolismag.com/ slideshow linked to below]

Here's a link to some other great images from a 2006 article in Metropolis Magazine on Hauer.

Adapa - more flexible formwork

2010-12-15T05:37:00.000-08:00

I just came across Adapa, a brand new company started by two recently graduated Danish engineers on the basis of their thesis work (-that's what I've heard, anyway).

The guys have developed an adaptable formwork method using they good old pin-art principle, gotten themselves a client, and are underways towards a patent on their method.

Way to go - below are a few images from their web site - they will be guys to watch!

[Rendering of concrete shelter for Danish National Park Mols Bjerge]

[Rendering of the back side of the shelter showing signs of biological growth]

[Kinetic mould]

About the Kinetic Mould
From the website we know:
"The concept of the flexible mould to make it economical sound to produce double curvature surface elements in different material directly from CAD software. The flexible mould can within minutes position it self to any possible shape which makes it ideal for high volume industrial production."

[The flexible mould process from design to construction]

About uses
"The flexible mould seeks to satisfy the growing market for free form surfaces which typically is a very expensive surface to construct" besides the aim is to "promote more advanced as well as interesting architecture thereby leaving behind the concept of flat tedious surfaces in architecture."

Pin art what?
The pin-art principle I referred to in the beginning of the post may ring a bell if you see this image below.

-or this movie of a performance on a large pinart frame at a kids' museum in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, USA

Lecturing at the Danish Architecture Centre

2010-11-29T01:26:00.000-08:00

If you're in Copenhagen, do come by the Danish Architecture Centre next Wednesday Dec 8th, 2010.

Along with two great speakers I've been invited to talk about building materials of the future - which of course in my case would be fabric formwork.

[Detail from fabric formed concrete chair - the Ambiguous Chair]

The talks are in Danish, I'm afraid - but feature three different approaches to working with material futures - besides my own which is the low tech approach yet new combination of materials known for millennia, two other architects are these:

Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen who was just appointed Professor at the RDAFA, is the head of CITA and a leading figure in the practice lead discourse of digital practice.

Kasper Guldager Jørgensen is head of development at Danish Architecture studio 3XN. He's really into features of emerging material technologies and how to embed them in the architectural practice of the firm.

Smokin' Concrete Hotpants

2010-11-26T07:31:00.000-08:00

Swedish innovator and company Butong has added another project to the portfolio since Cancer City that I wrote about here. The translucent character of the technology is exploited in a project executed with White Architects.

[Two smoke machines regularily emit smoke which help to catch the light in the air. The result is a 3,5 meter high sculpture that may remind of a pair of glittering disco pants, a starry gate or a space-age Stone Henge]

Titled ‘Hot Pants Smokin’, referring to the song by James Brown, this sculpture of concrete and light was executed by White Arkitekter and Butong for the biannual Uppsala Lighting Festival (a.k.a. Allt Ljus på Uppsala).

[‘This is a lighting festival. But as architects we wanted to explore form and material containing light, rather than focusing on the lighting equipment’, says Jacob Melin]

The architects inform us on the project:
"Uppsala is situated in northern Europe, as far north as Alaska or Greenland. Through the dark month of november this glimmering structure stands in one of the busiest shopping streets of the swedish city.

‘This is a lighting festival. But as architects we wanted to explore form and material containing light, rather than focusing on the lighting equipment’, says Jacob Melin.

‘We wanted to make a mysterious and archaic object, in some ways contrasting to the commercial and mundane part of the city where it stands’.

How the Hotpants were made:

The material used is translucent concrete from Butong, mounted into 48 unique frames of thin steel profile.

This low-tech BIM-project was developed working with physical models using steel rods joined by small magnetic balls.

The rods were then numbered and measured, and L-profiles were cut ten times their lengths and welded into triangles.

Each sheet of butong was cut into shape with a knife in it’s wet state before being fixed in place in its frame.

The filled triangles were then welded together into five boxes, lights were installed and finally the structure was screwed together on the site.

Daniel Ljung took care of the design of the lighting and Philips sponsored with luminaires.

Smoke on the dance floor

Two smoke machines regularily emit smoke which help to catch the light in the air. The result is a 3,5 meter high sculpture that may remind of a pair of glittering disco pants, a starry gate or a space-age Stone Henge. It is placed in a pedestrian street, and it’s legs seem to be caught in the middle of a step.

Architecture can be interactive without buttons to press. Some choose to walk through, while others circle. Kids stop to peek inside, or pierce new and bigger holes in the structure where the concrete is paper-thin, letting more light out from the inside.

‘We choose to leave the crusts without protective layer, letting the sculpture transform throughout the month’, says Lars Höglund.

CONTRIBUTORS AND INFO:

Architect: Jacob Melin of White arkitekter
Construction and co-design: Lars Höglund and J-C Violleau of Butong
Location: S:t Persgatan, Uppsala, Sweden.
Lighting: Daniel Ljung
Event: Uppsala Lighting Festival 2010
Client: Uppsala City and Uppsala Kommun
Photographs: Per Lundström
links:
www.butong.se
www.white.se
www.alltljuspauppsala.se

Fabric formwork - and Concretely in print

2010-11-26T06:50:00.000-08:00

The editor-in-chief of the Danish Concrete trade magazine called "Beton", Jan Broch Nielsen, is always very supportive in covering the workshops that I do. A full two pages made it to the latest issue of the magazine, #4- 2010

[The cover of the 4/2010 of Danish Concrete Trade magazine "Beton" (Concrete), image from website]

The headline of the article introduces this very blog to the readers of the magazine. Readers, to a high degree, work in the concrete industry on plants, or on construction sites as concrete workers, engineers etc. - If the article actually brings forth a new reader - welcome :)

The article mentions Butong as an example of the content of the blog. The post about Butong is here. And here's a more recent project.

[Image from fabric formwork workshop, Photo by: Balazs Jelinek]

Material culture workshop
Two thirds of the article is about the student workshop held with European architecture students in August, 2010, in the Danish island of Bornholm. I wrote about the pour day here.

Above image from the Erasmus summer school illustrates the article. The image shows to groups of students finishing the fabric formwork before the big pour that same morning. Unfortunately, the photographer wasn't credited. Balazs Jelinek took the picture.

Fabric Formwork in World Architecture Magazine

2010-11-21T13:02:00.000-08:00

Just a little show off :) Here's a link to a publication that I wrote an article to.

[The front cover of World Architecture]

The Danish architect office schmidt hammer lassen Architects is part of my thesis work about fabric formwork for concrete. When the Chinese architecture magazine World Architecture did a special issue about the office I contributed with an article about sustainable aspects of fabric forming.

The SHL website informs:
"The theme is Sustainable Development through Holistic Design. -

The special issue of World Architecture focuses on how schmidt hammer lassen architects practises sustainable design. The featured projects in different scales, from macro to micro perspective, are for example Ecobay Masterplan in Tallinn, Estonia; Tian Yi Town Masterplan in Wuxi, China; Wuhan Great Lake Project in Hubei, China; The Crystal in Copenhagen, Denmark; City of Westminster College in London, U.K.; and Groendalsvej Zero-Energy Office Building in Aarhus, Denmark. schmidt hammer lassen architects has worked in China since 2003 and now has more than 10 completed projects.

With contributions from Chinese, Danish, British, and Swedish experts, scholars and architects, this special issue offers a broad introduction to the design philosophy and architecture of schmidt hammer lassen architects."

and
"World Architecture is China’s leading architectural magazine with a circulation of 30,000. The magazine, which was established in 1980, is sponsored by Tsinghua University."

Eternit chairs explores production

2010-11-17T02:34:00.000-08:00

I enjoy the curious look by Rainer Mutsch into the production facilities at Viennese composite concrete company Eternit. Eternit is the commercial name for fibre reinforced concrete normally used as flat facade panels.

Rainer Mutsch (1977) is the recent designer who've added to the range of design products produced along with the weather boards.

[Image of the three modular types in the Dune series, from Mutsch's website]

Mutsch informs on the background:

When I saw the very first Eternit – machine, I was amazed: 20 metres long, more than 100 years old and by now of course upgraded with high-tech computers, the very heart of the machine is still the cast-metal construction built back in 1905. This impressive device survived 2 world wars and is until today producing a material which is sold worldwide.

[Image from the production, photo from Dezeen]

[Image of Dune chair during production, Photo from Dezeen]

[The shell and the mold, photo from Dezeen]

[Video of the production process]

Loop Chair - the forefather
If you think the design looks familiar you probably recall the forefather of Eternit Chairs - Mutsch's design is indeed inspired by Swiss Willy Guhl who designed the iconic 1954 Loop Chair - still in production by Eternit.

[Image of Loop Chair, by Willy Guhl, 1954]

Mutsch quotes Guhl (1915-2004) who said:
“there is no ‚good’ or ‚bad’ material, what makes the difference is its right and adequate use.”

Cracked Concrete Garden

2010-10-14T01:30:00.000-07:00

It's a really gray Thursday morning and I just came to think of this fine garden design project done by San Francisco landscape architects Conger Moss Guillard.

[Images of little tough plants growing in the concrete cracks. Photos from CMG website]

The company writes about the project:
"The Crack Garden is a hostile takeover of a concrete urban backyard by imposing a series of jackhammer “cracks.” Inspired by the tenacious plants that pioneer the tiny cracks of the urban landscape, the formal rows of this garden create order amongst the random and mixed planting of herbs, vegetables, strange flowers and rogue weeds"

[More images of the cracked concrete garden. Photos from CMG website]

There's a beautiful oxymoron within the entire idea of a Concrete Garden. The project, direct in its approach, appeals to me in the stated inspiration by the appearance of a strong sprout managing to root itself in a little crack of concrete.

I couldn't help thinking of the drug when I came across Crack Garden. I guess, that garden might be more disturbing.

Harsh beauty of worn concrete
The strong contrast of the worn concrete and the fresh plants enhance the beauty in each other. Lovely! - Because, yes, I do find that worn concrete contain a great beauty!

[Image from the harbor of Trondheim - part of the Atlantic Wall, photo by yours truly]

Remind myself to post more images of the Atlantic Wall, the coastal fortification cast by the Nazis in a whole lotta concrete that remain very present all along the western European coast.

Here's a link to a guide to (concrete) war tourism of the west coasts of Denmark and Norway

Dutch Prefab Case Studies

2010-10-11T06:42:00.000-07:00

While I'm at it here's another link from my Summer School Concretum Compendium introduced here.
It's still an anonymous author from the Academy of Architecture, Amsterdam,

[Image of concrete surface from Case study presented on BureauBakker's web site]

Prefab Case Studies was or is an initiative into exploring prefab concrete which received the Dutch Building awards 2009 in the category Services & Communication.

Here's the link to a slide show of works described further below.
And here's a little movie

'jury commentary Dutch Building Awards 2009:  

Creative with concrete! That's how the jury describes this entry. As they should. The Prefab Concrete Casestudies unveil the building material's potential. Exchange of knowledge among designers and manufacturers proofs that concrete is much more than tough, gray and simply straightforward. The casestudies offer room for imagination and lead to a formal language that this industry normally is not able to, or does not want to speak. This opportunity for creativity is beneficial for the industry as a whole. According to the jury the integral manner in which the initiators handle the open dialogue and knowledge exchange is unique.'

Bureau Bakker describes the initiative here:
'The initiative for the Prefab Concrete Casestudies originates from striving towards a more intense, exploring and fruitful communication between manufacturers of prefab concrete and designers. The Casestudies are organized in such a way as to focus this communication on the development of the product – prefab concrete. As such an innovative approach of design, application and manufacturing becomes the main issue.'

Fascinations and ambitions
and continues:
'The Casestudies are seemingly focused on research and development of concrete. The invitation to the designers seems to be very clear about that. Even more than pure product development the Casestudies are foremost an introduction into different cultures. Those of designers and manufacturers. De proposals are often so extreme that within the very short time span of a Casestudy there can only be a first and extremely important step towards a serious product innovation. Nevertheless promising prototypes are being further researched and developed.

The core of the Prefab Concrete Casestudies as presented by the initiators is to discover each others fascinations, ambitions and potential. The potential of concrete. The fascinations for the material by designers as well as the industry. And the ambitions for aesthetics, manufacturing and innovation.'

[Image from the website - featuring Concrete Design Competition, photo: Maarten Veerman]

What is Bureau Bakker?

Siebe Bakker is the architect by training who's behind Bureau Bakker - I've come across the office before because he is involved in the Concrete Design Competition - another site worth exploring for inspiration into concrete futures!!.

Baukje Trenning's art in concrete

2010-10-11T04:46:00.000-07:00

As a preparation to the Erasmus Summer School 'Concretum', students of eight European Architecture Schools made a marvelous compendium of concrete innovations from their respective countries.

I just browsed through it again and pursued some web links in the printed booklet (of 200 pages).

Without further ado, I'm passing on the link to you - aging as it is - the portfolio collected in 2007 of Amsterdam based artist Baukje Trenning (B. 1969) is still a great source of alternative concrete surfaces used in the urban landscape.

Here's the portfolio as a pdf

[Image collection from Baukje Tenning's web site]

The author who provided the link doesn't appear in my compendium, but it's from the section produced by the students of the Academy of Architecture, Amsterdam

Particule stool

2010-09-17T03:11:00.000-07:00

[Adrien Rovero: Particule Stool]

Just something I should get back to - the stool is not even concrete - but it's just the way the parts are produced in parts that you can transport flat and stack - and then assemble, could be transferred to fabric formwork - possibly to uses of Concrete Canvas, which I wrote about here.

The stool by Swiss designer Adrien Rovero, is made of compressed and moulded wood chips, the technology borrowed from the wood pallet industry. Light-weight, sigh :)

[Stool parts]

Master of plaster - Rachel Whiteread

2010-09-17T02:54:00.000-07:00

For some reason I just recently looked further into the amazing, solid world of Rachel Whiteread.
In the beginning of the 1990s she basically cast all the voids she could find - empty houses, inflated mattresses, the space under furnitures, behind book shelves, you name it.

Of course what she did, tells stories of what those spaces are about and adds narrative aspects to casting into molds. It's about time that I add a few images and some words someone else has written:

[Rachel Whiteread: Untitled (Chairs) 2001]

Untitled (Stairs)2001 - from Tate Advent Calendar

"Chosen by Jo Fells - "I first saw this in a show in Edinburgh, it reminded me of how I love to sit on the stairs and used to play under the stairs in the broom cupboard - Whiteread's work gets me thinking about spaces we don't often consider, under the chair, the bed, the texture of the walls, the space under the stairs. For me that's what art is about - a trigger to make you see the world through new eyes."

Jo Fells, Museum of London

object: 3750 x 220 x 5800 mm

sculpture

T07939"

[Rachel Whiteread: House, 1993]

About House, Whiteread's most famous piece - For Damon Hyldreth, he sees,

“…a reversal of an enclosing, comforting, dwelling, a place of repose and comfort, a symbol of domestic hopes and dreams. What was left was a monument to one’s most private moments but with the privacy stripped bare and petrified. “House” monumentalized the past in a subversive manner, instead of allowing for a connection to and retrieval of the past, “House” subverted the warm cozy memories of home.”

I found the quote in a longer post about the cast house spaces on the Imoralist blog here.

[Spaces between book shelves, Plaster - the dye on the back of cheap paperbacks has transferred into the plaster, it seems]

["One Hundred Spaces", Recin casts of spaces under chairs]

Wikipedia informs us:

For the Sensation exhibition in 1997, Whiteread exhibited Untitled (One Hundred Spaces), a series of resin casts of the space underneath chairs. This work can be seen as a descendant of Bruce Nauman's concrete cast of the area under his chair of 1965.

The critical response included:

"like a field of large glace sweets, it is her most spectacular, and benign installation to date [...] Monuments to domesticity, they are like solidified jellies, opalescent ice-cubes, or bars of soap — lavender, rose, spearmint, lilac. They look like a regulated graveyard or a series of futuristic standing stones with a passing resemblance to television sets."^[7]

— Andrew Lambirth, The Spectator, October 12, 1996.

[Rachel Whiteread, Untitled (Air Bed II) 1992

Polyurethane rubber. Object: 1220 x 1970 x 230 mm,sculpture. Tate ]

The Tate site tells us more more:

"Whiteread's sculptures are casts of carefully chosen objects, most of which bear the traces of human use. She most often casts the 'negative' spaces around these objects, which then become the 'positive' form of the sculpture. Often the objects recall poignant events; her recent group of bed casts can be associated with sleep, illness and dying. This work adds another dimension to the group of bed casts, with its combination of solid sculptural form and associations of air-filled fragility. Here, the mould containing the air mattress during the casting process has become part of the work, enclosing the Lilo within its box-like shape.

(From the display caption August 2004)"
It was this last piece that I was reminded of, when I came across concrete furniture cast in pvc inflatables, namely furniture by designers Tejo Remy & René Veenhuizen.

[Chair and bench cast in pvc]

A blog post on Dezeen informs us on the process of casting :"a series of furniture that appears to be made of inflated fabric, but actually is made from poured concrete. Remy & Veenhuizen cast each prototype as a single piece in individual molds created from waterproof PVC or plastic sheeting. Once assembled, the molds are placed upside down and concrete is poured into the feet. The legs are steel reinforced and the concrete itself contains small metal fibers that add stability. Within two days the works are solid enough for the mold to be cut off; and, within two weeks, the furniture is completely dry.

The pieces were exhibited in the designers' first solo exhibition in the spring of 2010 at Industry Gallery

Shake, drape and bake - Concrete Canvas

2010-09-17T01:45:00.000-07:00

[Concrete cloth is a concrete impregnated canvas, which you drape in shape you want - and then add water]

Following the post on a fabric formed side-table, I was reminded of Concrete Canvas - A textile impregnated with dry concrete mix - you shape the heavy canvas - and add water to activate the chemical binding process of the cement.

Like the Shake and Bake cake mix, you just add water

The clever idea was started for an idea of creating emergency shelters that would work as seen below.

Today the company have created a civil line of use and a military one.

To erect the shelters, the inner liner is inflated via an electric fan. As the liner expands it lifts the concrete cloth into the Nissen hut shape, which is pegged out and the canvas is then hydrated with water or seawater. In 1 hour the structure is self-supporting and in 24 hours it’s ready to use

[Concrete Canvas is used by the British Army - concrete draped sandbags work well as protection against bullets]

I guess the fact that the military has started using Concrete Canvas is the proof of the great idea - I'm looking forward to seeing some more architectural and poetic uses of this 'shake, drape and bake' concept.

Concrete Canvas has been awarded several prizes - I think the company have received the Red Dot Award Last year the company received the Medium Material Award from Material Connexion.

Here's some text from the inauguration in November 2009:

"The award recognizes materials juried into the company’s Materials Library within the past year that demonstrate outstanding technological innovation and the potential to make a significant contribution to the advancement of design, industry, society and economy.

“The MEDIUM Award for Material of the Year is an opportunity to celebrate the extraordinary breadth and scope of materials innovation today,” says George M. Beylerian, Founder & CEO of Material ConneXion. “The winner is distinguished not only for its technical ability, but for its capacity to make a lasting impact on our lives.”

"With the simple addition of water, Concrete Cloth makes it possible to create safe, durable, non-combustible structures for a wide range of commercial, military and humanitarian uses,"

said Dr. Andrew H. Dent, Vice President, Library & Materials Research at Material ConneXion.

"This innovation is especially remarkable for enabling the construction of rapidly deployable shelter and food storage structures in disaster relief situations," Dent added.

Fabric formed concrete side-table

2010-09-17T01:27:00.000-07:00

[MASS |||| by Janwillem van Maele]

Here's an introduction to the production of a fabric formed concrete design piece, the thesis work of Janwillem van Maele at De Hogeschool West-Vaanderen. The feeding of the DWG file to an automatic stitching of the fabric mold is the part to have in mind here - the pour is done by filling the form with dry concrete mix and then watering the form afterwards (see below images that tell the story well).

Van Maele writes this (as communicated on the Dezeen Blog) The MASS |||| is a concrete sidetable with the following production process: "I started with a DWG file for the right shape of the legs. That file can be entered in an industrial embroidery machine. This is automatically sewn."

The pictures below go mostly without saying - in the bottom of the post is a reference to a product that uses a similar technique at a larger scale.

[Sand- I think it must be to tension the fabric and maintain the shape in place, that extra load is added]

[Water added to the filled fabric form. The water drenches the form and activates the cement inside]

[Kit of parts to create the fabric formed concrete side-table]

[The DWG drawing of the unfolded fabric formwork]

[Tailored fabric formwork]

[Formwork before it's hung and filled]

[Reinforcement bars were pushed into the form when filled. I'm surprised if the concrete mix doesn't have fibres as well]

At a larger scale

The 'watering technique' resembles, in a smaller scale the ingenious product Concrete Canvas, which I just did a post on here:

[Concrete cloth is a concrete impregnated canvas, which you drape in shape you want - and then add water]

Materials used for the side-table:

Color Pigment, Staple, Iron Reinforcement, Mixer, Staples, Yarn, Tape, Water,Industrial embroidery machine, 15-layer crosswise glued birch veneer, shuttering plate, Portland cement, Computer, Textile, White sand, Cork

Butong - flexible, perforated concrete

2010-09-01T07:29:00.000-07:00

[When crayfish aren't happy at the habitat you've got - remake the 'city plan' - hence the name: Cancer City]

Swedish architects VisionDivision have collaborated with Butong on their recent project Cancer City, an underwater habitat for cray fish - with the luxurious feature of embedded LED lighting to ease catching the crayfish by night.

Butong seems to be a brand new company and patent for a 'concrete based material' as the company write on their website. Another term to use might be the also very broad ECC (Engineered Cementious Composite) which just implies that the material contains cement.

It seems like both the concrete properties and the formwork technology are very flexible in deed. The surfaces look draped.

Read more about Cancer City here.
Scroll down to view other applications of Butong's own products.

[Embedded functions in the Cancer City]

[Section of the habitat]

[Cancer city before put in the river]

[Crayfish hunting in the LED illuminated underwater concrete landscape]

The architects write about the special concrete they used:
"The choice of material was crucial for the success of the project.
The construction obviously should be water resistance, the city should be strong enough to carry some full grown persons or animals walking on it, the city should also provide shelter to the crayfishes and the construction should not be too heavy since it should be moved to a remote place where no machines can go. The choice of material became "Butong"; a lightweight slightly transparent concrete invented by the firm with the same name.

Butong is only two centimeters in depth without any metal reinforcement that can rust and the mould could be bendable after casting,

which enabled us to make an undulated landscape of concrete without having to build time consuming casting forms. Another attribute with Butong is that it includes calcite; a substance that attracts crayfishes."

[Lamp design by Butong: Bright Night will hit Swedish stores soon (and hard ;)]

[Panel design: Buttong-Pattern]

[Panel design using Butong]

Thin, perforated concrete
I especially enjoy the combination of the concrete and formwork technologies to perforated panel designs. They remind me of beautiful traditional islamic shutters. Besides the effects of transparency and the surface design, using this kind of filigree concrete for solar filtering, you obtain a thermal effect from the concrete mass.

The mass cools down at night and helps keeping the interior cool during the day of blazing sun.

[Fragment of a lattice window shutter, Lahore, Pakistan, 15th century. From www.lindenmuseum.de ]

I just looked these shutters up - they're called moucharabiehs - how could I forget ;)

From the Louvre Museum website:

"Summers can be exceedingly hot in Islamic lands; consequently, from an early date

openings in buildings were partially closed by means of open-work coverings made from stone, stucco, ceramic, or wood.

These coverings were commonly known as claustra after the Romans, and subsequently came to be called moucharabiehs in the Arab world and jali in India."

[Window screen (jali), floral and lattice design India, c. 1630-1650 or first half of the 17th century Red sandstone, openwork and engraved decoration, Louvre]

Material Culture - World press

2010-08-27T03:06:00.000-07:00

[Bornholms Tidende: "Hard concrete in new soft frames"]

Yesterday the workshop made it to an entire page in the regional newspaper Bornholm Tidende (Bornholm Journal). A wonderful piece of reporting that really makes the reader feel on site with the concrete pour the day before. I'm quoted about the wonders of fabric forming, and the local concrete truck driver, Flemming, is featured big time as well. It's just big, local news - and my mother will be very proud of the exposure.

I'm sure the article has been read by a lot of people - the next page was the football section with big news on the local teams.

A few days ago, another article featured the workshop as well - yay.

[Bornholms Tidende: "Kan beton være blødt"]

Material Culture - Pour day

2010-08-25T07:31:00.000-07:00

[Image of a team after successful pour of one of their fabric formed concrete shell elements]

Just finished an exciting pour day in the Erasmus workshop I also wrote about here. The four formwork pieces constructed by students were filled with concrete from our sponsor, the local concrete factory.

Below are a few images from the stormy, yet sunny day.

[Team working on a 5 meter long fabric formed concrete wall. Only 5 cm at the most narrow point made pouring directly out of the truck impossible - in stead the wall was poured by hand]

[Image of fabric formed concrete wall after the pour. The turf pieces on top are from the lawn. Their function is to weigh down folded down fabric flaps on the top from flying away...]

[Team working down reinforcement into their concrete bridge, poured on site - the fabric formwork was constructed in sections off site and moved to the site]

[This an image of the last group's concept model - a 'wood shelter' in which the wood forms the interior space cast directly into the fabric form. Wedges placed between the logs makes it easier to remove the wood after the pour - or when it is to be used]

Material Culture - fabric formwork workshop

2010-08-24T03:38:00.000-07:00

I've been busy the past week with an Erasmus summer school in the 'Material Culture' series, which has included workshops dealing with catalan vaults (Barcelona); bricks (Netherlands); wood (Norway) and stone masonry (Ireland). In Denmark the choice of a 'cultural' material was concrete - and I have been fortunate to be part of the planning of a workshop dealing with fabric formed concrete structures.

Tomorrow is the big pour day - and everything is wonderfully hectic and many things still to be resolved in the making - quite in the nature of the workshops. That you learn a lot of the material nature as you go along and do things.

The image above is from a crit. One team has the site of a ditch and is assigned to make a crossing. The installation is wonderful, discussing the spatial qualities to be obtained by placing objects that affords crossing and invites for actually inhabiting a space.

Of course we've done a lot of pouring as well - more pictures to come.

Best regards from Bornholm

Concrete mattresses and curtains

2010-08-06T06:22:00.000-07:00

Here's a few pictures and a link to remind myself to look further into the product of Pro-Dive Marine Services. The company has some really specialized flexible concrete products for the off-shore use and underwater pours. They work in conjunction with FoundOcean ("FoundOcean is the leading subsea and offshore grouting specialist for the global energy construction industries" - now you know).

[Massiv Mesh by Pro-Dive Marine Services]

Massiv Mesh

We learn from the web site about the company's Massiv Mesh that it is a flexible, concrete mattress consisting of hexagonal concrete elements linked together with high strength non-degradable polypropylene rope.

[Flexiweight by Pro-Dive Marine Services]

And about Flexiweight:

"Flexiweight is a concrete mattress consisting of hexagonal section bars, reinforced with steel and linked by polypropylene rope. Flexiweight is flexible, robust, designed for ease of installation and available in a range of sizes and concrete densities.

Flexiweight has an established track record for such applications as Stabilization, Crossovers, Trawlboard, Cable protection and Scour prevention."

[Fabric formwork - underwater mattresses]

About their version of fabric formwork we learn:

"Engineering fabric formwork offers a considerable range of possibilities to the offshore industry. In addition to the standard pipeline supports, specially designed fabric formwork is supplied for specific requirements, including:

Mattresses for load distribution
Pipeline crossings
Riser supports
Anti-scour systems
Fabric seals for structural work in platforms

These varied systems have been used in water depths of 340 meters; deeper waters are within the scope of the plant."

Concrete curtain

I really like the huge concrete meshes, which greatly outsizes this little but intriguing concrete curtain by the Viennese Architectural Design office Mumex, as seen on Materia:

Sergio Musmeci's funky concrete bridge

2010-07-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

While at the library at the RDAFA and browsing Paolo Portoghesi's book Nature and Architecture, I bumbed into a picture of the Basento viaduct in Potenza, Italy, by Italian structural engineer Sergio Musmeci (1926-81) whom I had never heard of - shame on me

Portoghesi's book is full of references and comparisons between natural and built structures - the image of the bridge (1967-69) really caught my attention because of its striking sculptural and modern appearance and obvious organic, efficient-looking design.

"Graduated in Rome with a degree in Civil Engineering (1948) and Aeronautical Engineering (1953), Sergio Musmeci (Rome, 1926-1981) is considered one of the most daring structural engineers of the 20th century. The years of his training in the offices of Riccardo Morandi and Pier Luigi Nervi had a significant influence on his work and personal interests; in 1953 he began working with Zenaide Zanini, a collaboration that would last the rest of his life. Professor at the Faculty of Architecture in Rome, he is the author of scientific publications on structures with minimum absolute weight and other topics related to the investigation of forms derived from incomplete structural solutions."

From the biography on the The Sergio Musmeci and Zenaide Zanini Archive at MAXXI_National museum of 21st century arts, Rome web page:

[Image of a neoprene model of the Basento bridge by Sergio Musmeci]

[Image of the structural principles for the bridge]

Bloggers at core.form-ula write: "Sergio Musmeci’s very cultured and refined activity is the answer to those who believe that the studies concerning the relationship between architecture and mathematics are much too theoretical. Musmeci is one of the most daring and transgress engineers born in the twentieth century; he was master equally of music, astronomy, aeronautics, mathematics, and philosophy, all of which informed his structures, whose shape was determined by the spatial distribution of static actions. Musmeci thought that he could reach the expression of “modernity” through science. He is the designer of a project for the bridge on the Strait of Messina that has been only recently understood and appreciated, more than twenty years after its conception."

[I think this must be a sketch of the bridge over the Strait of Messina: a single-span bridge with an unsupported length of 3 km]

Below are a number of images of the bridge in Potenza and it's design. I'll have to dig a bit into the work of this fellow - hopefully more to come!

[Image of railroad tracks under the bridge - I wouldn't mind experiencing the bridge sitting in a train going through in the Italian countryside... ]

[Image of random guy with camera on - or in the bridge structure - just for scale]

Forms and surfaces cast in fabric formwork

2010-07-02T03:00:00.000-07:00

I used the nice sunny weather to take some concrete samples - and one of the Ambiguous Chairs, which I have written about here - outside for a bit of documentation.

I never actually managed to take any photos of the chair before so this was about time.

[Image of fabric formed concrete chair by yours truly Anne-Mette Manelius. Photo by Rikke Grendal]

[Surface detail of fabric formed chair]]

Below are a few surface samples I cast a while ago during a workshop I taught but never got around to document. The samples are cast in rigid formwork with fabric treatments - my favorite is the flowery one first one below because subtle changes in the light - or the position of the viewer - makes a huge difference in the experience of the concrete surface.

[Image of concrete surface with embedded silver fibres]

[Image of the same flowery concrete surface - in a different light the surface appears more neutral]

[Image of concrete surface with embedded fibres from fabrics]

[Image of concrete surface with embedded sequins...]

[Another image of concrete surface with embedded sequins...]

Fun as it would be to have a drag queen concrete surface (I mean - a concrete surface with thousands of colorful sequins) - one might as well paint the surface after the pour...

Grompies - lycra and plaster

2010-06-14T06:46:00.000-07:00

Here's another student project in which flexible membranes are used as formwork for a pour. I picked it up while browsing the Dezeen Blog.

The project is called Grompies and is done by Brendon Carlin and fellow students at the Architectural Association Design Research Laboratory. The structure is stitched and suspended lycra filled with plaster.

[Image of Grompies by students at AA, image from www.dezeen.com]

Materia.nl writes: "With due recognition to the work of Antonio Gaudi, Frei Otto and Felix Candela, among others. A virtual pattern is generated on the computer through behavioral rule sets which play out with no finite time limits. A moment is observed in the looping of those behaviors in virtual space, and captured. The resulting pattern is translated by hand and sewing machine into a stitched pattern on lycra by printing and tracing its form. The stitched sheets of lycra are fixed to wooden frames constructed of scrap material. A plaster, water mix is poured into the tightly stitched lycra pattern and left to set."

[Image of Grompies by students at AA, image from www.dezeen.com]

As the image above shows the Grompies aren't large. The intricacy of the stitched and suspended plaster structures do make them an interesting addition to the concrete discourse of fabric forming and structural and formal investigations using catenary curves in general.

- The whole digital aspect is another most relevant matter in which the computer generated and simulated designs meet physical realities during the pour and relationships between material properties are explored as well. Read more about explorations of material relations in a post here.

FattyShell - concrete coral in flexible formwork

2010-06-14T06:14:00.000-07:00

Before I forget - here's a link to a post on Dezeen Blog about a concrete structure cast in flexible formwork that resembles the porous, organic structure of a coral reef.

[Image of FattyShell (v.01) by Kyle Sturgeon, Chris Holzwart and Kelly Raczkowski, image from www.Dezeen.com]

The project is by Masters of Architecture students at the University of Michigan.

The work is great - so little formwork material for such a complex and light weight structure. The students cast in a rubber membrane cnc cut and stitched together. I'm pretty sure that they could have cast in several fabrics had they chosen to. the elasticity of rubber might have intreagued the team or maybe the choice of material was caused by limits of the cnc cutter?

[Image of FattyShell (v.01) under construction, image from www.Dezeen.com]

[Image of FattyShell (v.01) under construction, image from www.Dezeen.com.]

The blog post informs us: "Fiber reinforced high cement based concrete is prepared in 12 batches at 265 lbs (3,200 lbs at completion). lifts occur at 3 hour intervals. At each lift, concrete is sculpted, transferred, or blocked from its gravitational destination in order to reinforce weaker moments in the shell’s composition.

[Image of FattyShell (v.01) with the formwork partly off, image from www.Dezeen.com]

Concrete and laces

2010-05-19T05:19:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to a very fine project by Japanese Kochi Architects.
Below images are from the renovation of an existing industrial space into an office space for Hu-La Creative (2005).
I really love how the delicacy of the lace meets the rough, worn concrete - the two senses of materiality contrast and enhance each other. Precision, precision, precision - fx in the fitted electrical fittings (or what that's called) really add to the degree of exclusivity of this conceptually flippant yet poetic project.

[Images: lace fixed to the existing concrete wall. Images from www.kkas.net]

The company who moved into the space is Hula Creative - who might be this company. Wedding photographers... so - laces are a part of a continuous theme here...

Workshop in June

2010-04-07T09:56:00.000-07:00

Just a quick link to a workshop I plan to take part in this June.

[Participants at last year's workshop -The white is actually translucent PP fabric - pretty amazing to work with!! Photo by Yestermorrow]

Yestermorrow Design Build School hosts the workshop which is the second fabric formwork event there in collaboration with local Norwich University and builder Sandy Lawton of Arro Design. You can see photos from the first one here.

[Yours truly in Vermont, The white is actually translucent PP fabric - pretty amazing to work with!! Photo from the workshop at Yestermorrow]

The web site writes:
"Around the globe, from cutting-edge research in universities and institutes, to contractors and architects working in the field, fabric forming is a significant new force in concrete construction that allows for highly efficient, thermally massive, durable and sustainable structures. This class, presented in consort with the Norwich University School of Architecture, will bring together some of the world’s leading innovators in the field to share techniques and strategies. Students will form and pour a series of innovative concrete architectural components, with a focus on wall forming, as well as more advanced column and beam construction. Participants will also tour local architecture projects that use fabric form work and examine case studies to learn about the science and art of building with concrete.

Earn college credit through UVM: This course is available for credit through the University of Vermont (CDAE 95, 2 credits). In-state tuition is $828, plus a non-refundable $300 program fee to Yestermorrow."

[The finished wall in Vermont]

Enchanted concrete trees

2010-03-29T06:59:00.000-07:00

This is a second post inspired by the portfolio of Ryan B Coover's Workpod9 studio

[Image of Coover's portable tripod formwork, Photo by Ryan B. Coover]

Concrete Flesh
At the Concrete Flesh workshop in Gothenburg in November, my team build a similar structure to hold our column formwork. We did have a similar blow out and a lazy dysfunctional column as a result.
Our aim was to explore was how little material it would take to exploid the fluid origins of wet concrete
The formwork consisted of spandex and a glassfibre mesh of the sort you put on walls - not much tensile strength to put it mildly. We both tore the mesh for the spandex to bulge out - and added coned clamps to perforate the column.

[Image: the fabric formed concrete piece was securely hung in a crane before we dared deforming it.
Photo by Frederik Petersen]

The tripod was built to support the weight of the heavily perforated cast. This did work somewhat except for the fact that the formwork expanded and got longer and longer during the pour...
The constraining liner didn't do its job and the clamps were so big that they didn't allow much concrete to pass through and thus ended up acting as hinges

Concrete skin and bones
Reservations could go to the actual structural behavior of the column - in fact column wouldn't really be the term to use because the concrete structure is hardly able to carry it's own weight. The piece explored the workshop themes regarding concrete flesh and concrete skin - completely leaving the analogy to the structural bones out of the picture.
.

[The stripped concrete piece. It looks like a sick or enchanted, old tree - quite organic indeed.
Photo by Frederik Petersen]

Sensual and bizarre - cast in flexible formwork

2010-03-29T06:44:00.000-07:00

I just came across the website of architect Ryan B. Coover. He has some beautiful pictures of his experiments with fabric formwork which reminds me of work I wish to share.

[Image: Constraining system with strings and tubes (top); membrane and holes for columns (middle); Cast surface and columns seen from below (bottom), Photos by Ryan B. Coover]

Coover's images show a system to cast a voluptuous ceiling and fabric formed columns in the same pour.
It looks like images of plaster models made at CAST maybe from Coover's time doing research or studies there.

Hands on at CAST
The approach to research at CAST is 100 % hands on in producing plaster models at a scale 1:4 and then do full scale in concrete.

[The workshop at CAST with hundreds of plaster models everywhere. Photo by CAST]

If it works in plaster
Where others would say: don't try it in concrete if it doesn't work in a scale model in plaster - West has the approach which states: if it works in plaster it will not fail when cast at full scale.
So with this preaching in mind the principles shown in Coover's images should easily transfer to concrete. In fact the images above resembles facades by spanish architect Miguel Fisac.
The work of Miguel Fisac is well-known at CAST

The principle shown in the first image is a horizontal panel cast into a frame with a suspended membrane.
The flexible membrane will 'accept' imprints by objects placed below such as tubes, strings or dowels

[Image:concrete facade cast in flexible formwork of Centro social de las Hermanas Hospitalarias, Architect Miguel Fisac, Photo by Javier Azurmendi]

P-Wall and self-organization

Another architect who's been inspired by Fisac is San Fransisco based Andrew Kudless.

Kudless has explored the inter related consequences of two flexible materials: a plaster composite and a flexible membrane. He calls it self-organization of material under force

Self-organization is a theme in Kudless' work in general at his studio Material Systems or Matsys: "Matsys is a design studio that explores the emergent relationships between architecture, engineering, biology, and computation" from Matsys.

Wall at MoMA in San Fransisco

His latest piece shown below (2009) is part of a series of socalled P-walls (P for plaster?) starting in 2006 I believe. P-wall was commisioned by the Museum of Modern Art, SF and is exhibited permanently at MoMA in San Fransisco

[Image: P-Wall at SFMoMA by Andrew Kudless(2009), Photo from Kudless website]

[Image: P-Wall by Andrew Kudless consists of 150 plaster panels cast in nylon fabric over wooden dowls, Photo from www.matsysdesign.com]

Cement-Audio series

2010-03-28T10:00:00.000-07:00

While procrastinating other matters I bumped into this alternative use for concrete by Dutch designer Guus Oosterbaan who acutually lives in my backyard (small town Valby neighbors Copenhagen).

[Image: Rock radio by Guus Oosterbaan, Photo by the designer ]

I did know that loud speaker afficionados use concrete as a very solid and heavy foundation in order to - well - get greater sound - I think I get it - but still didn't quite understand all of the Wiki article on loud speaker enclosures... ZZZZ.- or bother, I guess.

Ugly stereo or really bored?
Oosterbaan has explored concrete in his fun 'audio-cement-series' for one or more of the following reasons: Because he was bored (the post is tagged with "things you can do when you are really bored"); because he loves concrete; or because his radio was really ugly?

At first Oosterbaan cast the radio into a box like structure:
"a thick layer of cement shields the radio from actually receiving radio waves. With my "Now it doesn't work anyway" philosophy, I took a big hammer and created this Flintstones look, and the radio works!" from Oosterbaan's blog.

[Image: The back of Rock radio/ by Guus Oosterbaan, Photo by the designer ]

Brick game
Another 'cement-audio' project is Oosterbaan's concrete Pong console or Brick Game as he calls it. The project has a DIY post here.

[Image of Pong console embedded in concrete. Photo by Guus Oosterbaan]

Cement-Audio without cement

While browsing Guus' blog for the last (?) of the experiments in his cement-audio series - I only found the Brick game mentioned above - I did find an audio-audio project and realized that
he and I have more in common than just the fascination for concrete - we have the same small stereo which still sticks out of the book case because it's actually really long

The designer fixed this nuisance by building an extra frame to attach to the book case - Warning - below is not cast in concrete :-)

[Image: Oosterbaan customized his book case for his (and my) small yet deep stereo. Photo by Guus Oosterbaan]

Composite columns or bastard formwork

2010-03-24T14:21:00.000-07:00

While teaching last week’s crazy student workshop I had the chance to test a principle as part of a series of investigations on what I call composite - or bastard formwork... The idea is that combining fabric with materials of other properties offers perspectives regarding concrete form, surface and production.

The fabric is used as the constraining system and the piece I made is a 2m high set of columns
An aim of the experiment was to use a minimum of materials which doesn't explicity add formal or surface qualities to the concrete structure.

[Yours truly, Anne-Mette Manelius proudly posing with the bastard formwork after the pour. Photo: Mette Madsen/Pihl]

[Yours truly working at stripping the formwork - everything didn't go all easy-peasy. Photo: Signe Ulfeldt]

[My lovely assistant, Signe and I with the piece - a very little fellow next to the student works - but he's mine]

One of my favorites among the student works is this lovely piece - the students call it Wall de Mort - haha.

Wall de Mort - or the amazing concrete quilt

2010-03-18T12:24:00.000-07:00

[Image: Concrete surface cast in fabric formwork braced in a cheap garden fence. Student work. Photo: A-M Manelius]

A wonderful concrete piece was stripped just before I went home after yet an intense workshop pour day described in the previous post. The students called it Wall de Mort in their report - I wonder if they had a tough time?

The plastic, shiny surface really cheats the eye - both on camera and on site the concrete surface really doesn't look like concrete but as if the fabric is still there.
Here are a few shots from the piece cast in fabric and braced by a cheap garden fence. The formwork system is so simple that it deserves publishing -

[Detail of formwork before the pour]

[Image of students during the pour - Rasmus uses a shovel to compact the concrete from the outside. Photos from the workshop]

[Image: The fabric formwork bulging after the pour. Photo: Tenna Beck]

It's truly fantastic that such little use of material can produce a structure like this!!
To keep the form from bulging out the constraining fence on each side of the form was tied together with metal wire in a system of carefully placed ties. A simple variation created a really cool pattern on the surface of the concrete.

[Image: The fabric formwork and bracing fence. The pattern comes from excess water/cement paste gone through the woven fabric during the pour]

[Students working on the stripped fabric formed concrete. Photo: A-M Manelius]

[Image of fabric formed concrete slab. Rasmus removing metal wire which held the form together. Imprints from garden fence. Photo: A-M Manelius]

[Little streams of cement paste found their way through the fabric landscape sandwiched between two pieces of plywood at the bottom of the formwork]

After the pour(s)

2010-03-18T11:49:00.000-07:00

Phew - running big a workshop is a lot of work and a lot of fun!! It's almost the end of a crazy couple of weeks teaching 2nd semester architecture students at the workshop I introduced here.
The ambitions were big - formwork was to be designed and build for a concrete slab cast vertically and 2 meters in height

[Image from pour day one. 10 pieces ready to stand the test. Photo from student report]

[Image of fabric formwotk produced by students for a 2 meter high, S-shaped wall. Photo: A-M Manelius]

Two full days and four afternoons
Everyone really got into the task. The time limit was four afternoons and two full days at a workshop where the students produced the formwork. The spatial limit was that the formwork when transported could fit within the plan of one EU-pallet of 80x120 cm. This way the formwork could be moved easily.

On Monday we transported the formwork to the quay behind the Royal DK Art Academy, School of Architecture - Tuesday was pour day

[Image of fabric formed concrete wall. Traces of the EPS blockouts are visible. Photo: A-M Manelius]

Learning by blow outs
The pour was long - 3 hours - due to the fact that more than half of 10 forms actually blew... Quite spectacular, indeed!! All of the blowouts were in the bottom corner connections of the forms where the pressure was the highest. Being only 2nd semester, the students have limited structural knowledge - and with limited time at our hands, the teaching staff had very little time for each group to actually get around all the critical points- Concrete was ruthless!

4.5 cubic meters of concrete
At the end - most groups were ready to fill the forms again after fixing the weak points - at this point, however, we were out of concrete - a few of the forms 'ate it all up'. Today we got the chance to pour the rest - so on top of the 3 cubic meters delivered on Tuesday [3000 liters or 7,5 tons of concrete] another 1.5 arrived today.

The night before Xmas
We managed to fill all but one form today (the last one died again half way up) - and again use all the concrete - there was just enough.
A few groups could strip their forms filled on Tuesday - the rest will be revealed tomorrow - it's just like Xmas!!

Printing in stead of pouring

2010-03-13T04:43:00.000-08:00

A few years back I attended a conference on advanced architectural structures and flexibel moulds at TU Eindhoven. A lot of interesting research projects and build structures were presented which were all well structured and academically well known- and then there was Enrico Dini - an Italian entrepreneur, designer and inventor who showed us, very passionately the long road to develop a 3d printer for printing buildings - rapid prototyping becomes rapid building.

The perspectives for 3d printing structures are obvious when when compared to the procedure of constructing formwork, pouring the concrete followed by throwing the formwork away...

[Image of a structure printed in sand and an inorganic binder - the material doesn't use cement and resembles sandstone]

" D_shape technology makes it possible to 3D print 6 by 6 by 1m parts. These parts could either be shipped to the construction site or the entire building could be 3D printed on location. The parts made by D_shape resemble 'sandstone.' They are comparable in strength to reinforced concrete and the ingredients are the binding material and any type of sand. D_Shape's materials cost more than regular concrete but much less manpower is needed for construction. No scaffolding needs to be constructed so overall building cost should be lower than traditional building methods.

The system works with a rigging that is suspended over the buildable part (you can see it at the top of the first image[below. A-M]). The system deposits the sand and then the inorganic binding ink. No water is necessary. Because the two components meet outside the nozzle, the machine does not clog up and can keep up its accuracy of 25 DPI. Enrico and D_Shape are currently talking to lots of construction & engineering companies and architects about their technology." from Shapeways.

[Image of the 3d printing machine developed by Enrico Dini, photo from Blueprint Mag.]

The images shown above Dini also presented at his presentation - they are photos of a structure to sit in a roundabout in Pisa. The technique alone will be really interesting to follow. Large is great of course - but I do see a more quickly applied use in fx intricate filligree structured screens for wonderfully transparent facades.

[Enrico Dini and architect Andrea Morgante's sculpture: Radiolaria ]

A similar technology is Contour Crafting - here the technique is printing concrete another composite material which, however needs cement. The web site hasn't changed since I don't know when - so I have no idea of where this project is going except for what's expressed here - of course it has to do with funding.

[Image of the principle in Contour Crafting]

Article about Fabric formwork in Concrete Decor

2010-03-10T14:30:00.000-08:00

I haven't really written much about fabric formwork in general... fortunately the North American forum Concrete Decor has decided to publish an article introducing the technology to its readers. I've supplied info and an image to the piece but I'm actually still not really sure who or what is behind Concrete Decor - but once on the site you can search for suppliers and techniques - so I guess it's like the Yellow Pages for business within decorative concrete. Read the article here.

The article features most of the researchers and builders I know of who have done research and built using fabric forming tecniques - it even introduces my 'ambiguous chairs'. Among the featured researchers is CAST, my first and largest source of inspiration in this field. Center of Architectural Structures and Technology which the abbreviation stands for has an extensively informed website here.

[Image: Concrete columns cast in fabric formwork, Photo by CAST]

[Image: Detail of a fabric formed wall designed by Japanese architect Kenzo Unno who has deviced building methods called "Unno Reinforced Concrete." Photo by Mark West]

Fabric formed concrete sinks

I am not very familiar with fabric formwork used for design objects. The application of flexible moulds for slender but small scale structures seems to hold many perspectives. An interesting example is Gore Design Co based in Arizona, USA, which has developed techniques for forming GFRC sinks that seem really cool.

[Image: sink cast in fabric formed moulds, photo from GoreDesign Co]

Ambiguous chairs - a surprice encounter with concrete

2010-03-05T07:10:00.000-08:00

In order to generate discussion of the architectural perspectives of a new building method it seems crucial, constantly to expound on aesthetical as well as technological and structural aspects which are balanced in an integrated architectural practice.

Facing concrete's image - If nobody likes the idea, never mind how clever the technology.

Besides these issues, the social notion of concrete can be seen as a barrier for initiating a discussion of the implementation of a new concrete technology: Concrete is the most used building material in the world - yet still the cultural image of concrete is really challenged in this part of the world and concrete surfaces are thus seldomly left exposed.

[Anne-Mette in the fabric formed concrete chair /photo by Johannes Rauff Greisen]

The following is a summary of my paper I presented at the Structural Membranes conference in Stuttgart last October – the session on flexible moulds was small but fun amongst a lot of more heavy engineering papers. My part presented a sort of a social experiment done as part of my thesis work on fabric formwork for concrete.

[Detail of fabric with large washers and bolts]

Below is a detail of the concrete surface cast in the fabric above.

[Detail of concrete surface cast in fabric]

A surprise encounter with concrete
So – since fabric formwork already has ambiguity within the term I decided to create a piece of furniture with the same ambiguity. The specific experiment is the design and production of two fabric formed chairs. The exploration includes presenting to the observer physical objects of a familiar function and scale, but containing ambiguities of the materiality, construction and affordance.

Optical appearance vs haptic perception
The mentioned ambiguities concern optical appearance vs. the haptic perception and information which comes when touching the object and from the act of sitting down. Using fabrics for furniture and thus getting some associations right that come with the function of a chair: Fabric, patterned surface structure and a bulging surface are all associated with the notion of an upholstered chair such as the Chesterfield.

Upholstery fabrics for casting furniture
It seemed a natural choice to use upholstery fabrics for casting a chair in fabric formed concrete. Architecture students at University of Edinburgh have studied the aesthetic surfaces of concrete cast in a number of conventional fabrics bought at the local fabrics store, including both very thin and cheap materials and more sturdy fabrics for upholstery. It was the intention of using upholstery fabric that the pattern from the fabric would transfer to the concrete surface making the appearance of the chair even more ambiguous to the observer.

[Detail of concrete surface cast in fabric]

An observer remarked: “I looked at the chair and in my head I knew it was concrete and couldn’t understand that it wasn’t fabric. Then when I sat on it, in my head I knew it would be hard but I was still surprised to find that the chair wasn’t as soft as it looked.”

Since this conference I attended another one, in Aachen, entitled Constucting Knowledge. I presented a poster in which I further elaborated on the work with this chair and propose it as a physical summary of my literature studies.

Constraint and connexion - fabric formwork workshop

2010-03-05T03:11:00.000-08:00

These days I’m preparing a workshop for 80 students of architecture to produce fabric formwork and cast vertical wall elements on campus at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture.

The workshop is a hands-on break during a 4 week intense course on building technology at 2nd semester.

[Images: students at the fabric formwork workshop at last year's course]

Parallel workshops focus on other major building materials of architectural tectonics: Brick, wood and metal.

Fellow teachers are Finn Bach, who’s an experienced structural engineer and Associate Professor at the Royal Academy and Johannes Rauff Greisen who’s doing an industrial PhD about automatic production of formwork for concrete.

[Images: workshop 2009 / the 'Seal' composite fabric/rigid formwork]

The workshop is a forum in which the students question material relations and their consequences for concrete form and surfaces.

[Images: workshop 2009 / fabric formed concrete]

Constraint and connection
The assignment has an overall theme of constraint and connection. The materials used are flexible fabrics, rigid or not so rigid boards and blanks - and then pouring heavy concrete, of course. Constraints can be understood literally as the means to hold the formwork together and how formwork clamps or constraining frames influence the outcome of the pour. Connection can be understood as the physical connection with a neighbouring element but of course also architecturally.

Vertical elements
We’ll have 10-12 groups and they will each produce a vertical element of 2 metres and 1,2 with which has to meet the another group’s element on one or both ends. This should encourage the students to consider how to work freely between connection points and interfaces between building components.
We will both have architecture students and architectural engineering students from DTU, Danish Technical University.

[Image: concrete surface cast in fabric formwork by students at last years workshop]

Light frefab formwork in stead of heavy prefab concrete
Formwork will be produced at DTU and then transported to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture where a big concrete truck will deliver concrete and cast all the vertical slabs on site… very exiting indeed. There’s a point to be made about prefabrication here –The most widely used building elements in Denmark are prefabricated concrete elements. They are heavy and ‘dumb’ – light weight formwork can be prepared in a workshop and easily moved to the site.

The images here are from the workshop last year and here's a link to an article about the workshop.

Feel free to join us during the pour Tuesday March 16th 2010 - and click the TEK1 tag below to read more about the outcome.

Concrete funnels, shells and arches

2010-02-17T14:31:00.000-08:00

[Image: model of Stuttgart 21 station by Ingenhoven Architects]

The competition for a new station in Stuttgart for high speed trains was won by Ingenhoven Architects all the way back in 1997 or so. The project is still not happening or really officially cancelled and thus won't make it to the proposed 2013 completion.

[Image: Cover of 'Flydende sten' (Liquid Stone) a state of the art for concrete technologies and Architecture published by the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2007 and written by Anne-Mette Manelius, myself]

I initially looked at the structure while working at a publication about architectural perspectives for concrete and every now and then wonders if it will be... I come to think about it whenever I come across projects of the slightest similarity, such as Yamamoto in my last post. The project is a more than 400 metres spanding thin shell structure with an urban square park upon and the station platforms below the shell. The project features big, funnel shaped columns which open up and become windows at the roof level to provide natural light and ventilation. Below they narrow down to stand on the platform.

Numerous historical and political issues has impacted the delay of the decision making about the project. Read more about the polemic here. The winning project was designed in collaboration with Stuttgart based engineer Frei Otto. The design was intended as a minimal surface structure and based on the hanging chain model or reversed suspension model developed by Otto.

Apparently the project was changed by the architect without Otto's influence - reversing the initial principles of the suspended shape into a project which acts in compression and thus quite impossible to built... That's what I hear, anyway - and this could be an even heavier reason to why the Stuttgart 21 might not get built.

[Image: Suspension model for form finding of the arches for the new train station in Stuttgart, Germany, 2000 (Christoph Ingenhoven and Partner, Frei Otto, Büro Happold, Leonhardt and Andrae)]

Two other, actually built projects are Japanese. The Namics Techno Core is a structure by Riken Yamamoto which I just wrote about here. And Toyo Ito's fantastic Tama Art University Library

[Namics Techno Core by Riken Yamamoto/ Photo by Koichi Satake]

[Images above: Facade and interior of Tama Art University Library by Toyo Ito, Photos by Ishiguro Photographic Institute]

Fabulous Japanese prefab

2010-02-17T12:51:00.000-08:00

[Image: Top two floors of Namics Techno Core by Riken Yamamoto/ Photo by Koichi Satake]

Last week Riken Yamamoto won the competition to design a billion-dollar mixed use complex at the Zürich Airport called the Circle. I only recently came across Riken Yamamoto's work when, namely the Namics Techno Core (Oct 2008)- it strikes me for several reasons. First of all the lightness of the organic mushroom like structure which seems to grow from the enclosed ground level. This leads to the second reason: the clear division of functions between the ultra clean lab spaces on ground level and the completely open 2nd and 3rd floors.

[Image: Employee and visitors' level and roof garden of Namics Techno Core by Riken Yamamoto/ Photo by Koichi Satake]

The last reason is the always astonishing Japanese accuracy in building - The structure was completed in mere 13 months and is made from prefabricated concrete elements by the contracting Taisei Corporation. Arup Japan did the structural engineering. Actually the JA 76 Yearbook 2009 states that it is a steel frame structure in which case the concrete is cladding - and still outstanding. Sigh!
It does, however make sense to work with the structure as a continuous surface - a shell structure with very narrow load bearing points. I've seen renderings from the architect of this structural system as a high rise - which brings a 1954 competition entry by Jørn Utzon to mind, the Langelinie Pavilion in Copenhagen. Where the Yamamoto project stacks clusters of funnels of varying top diameters and needle thin bottoms, really quite similar to Frank Lloyd Wright's Johnson Wax Building (1936), Utzon's project is a tower with a core and glass facadea floating down the edges of the stacked plates as one big water fountain.

[Image: Clusters of lily-pad columns outside the Johnson Wax Building by Frank Lloyd Wright, 1936 ]

[Image: concept model of the Langelinje pavillion by Jørn Utzon, 1954]

[Image: perspective sketch of the interior of the Langelinje pavillion by Jørn Utzon, 1954. The window detail is close to identical to the solution at Namics]

As is my experience with many Asian architects I have a difficult time to get much from a Google search. So, here's a link to a nice and reflected blog post which refers to a Riken Yamamoto lecture and a few more, nice projects.

And here's a link to the next post with a few more lily-columns and suspended concrete surfaces.

Concrete Flesh Workshop, part I

2009-11-17T16:29:00.000-08:00

I’m on my way to Gothenburg, Sweden, to attend the largest and most ambitious workshop on fabric formwork that I’ve been aware of so far during my interest in fabric formwork. Invited researching architects and structural engineers and 100 students from schools in Scandinavia and England will attend the two week workshop at Chalmers entitled Concrete Flesh.

The more I think about the better I like the term – even if I can’t discuss it with anyone at my office at the contractor’s and keep a somewhat serious appearance – (it’s hard anyway being an architect in those hallways). As the subthemes below indicates, Flesh is related to the structure of the body - seperating the containing and protective skin from the structural bones. Flesh is like matter itself; and from Biblical references discusses becoming of Architecture and its--- resurrection - well...

Unfortunately I couldn't locate an online program to link to but basically the theme is devided into four parallel explorations:

Flesh and Skin - explorations of the concrete surface;
Flesh and Bones - reinforcement and pre tensioning, fibre reinforcement, etc;
Flesh and Creation: the cast vs the designed form, on casting impossible forms in possible formwork;
Flesh and Resurrection: cradle to cradle perspectives tested through reusing concrete.

Tomorrow is the first day of the workshop and will feature lecturers from the School of Architecture at the University of Manitoba, Canada whom I'm very excited to hear and meet again: Mark West, CAST; Nat Chard, Dean; and Nada Subotincic.

[Natalija Subotincic, Freud at the Dining Table – Incarnate Tendencies, plexiglass and bone]

I know that Nada has been working with themes on Flesh and bone. Another reference about bones is my old hero Miguel Fisac whose Bone Beams will be featured among these pages soon!

I'll better pack - off to Sweden in the morning. Come to think of it - it's written nowhere that the workshop will include a single piece of fabric... but, hey - Mr West will be there - I'm pretty sure Ms Fabric will too!!

Johan's Book of Space

2009-11-16T15:55:00.000-08:00

[Image: cartoon by Jimenez Lai]

At the end of his presentation at Constructing Knowledge Jimenez Lai describes a project or ambition to leave the frames out of his cartoons and let the pages become actual architectural sections – I'm looking forward to seeing future works coming from Lai.

[Image: Book of space, 2009, Johan Hybschmann]

The image of the frame as the section made me think of a project of architect, Johan Hybschmann who graduated from the Bartlett in London this summer of 2009. In his thesis project the section is a frame, well actually a lasercut perspective image. Hybschmann created an entire book with images lasercut in each page forming a spatial representation of the single, highly choreographed 90-minute shot that is Alexander Sokurov's film Russian Ark. I'd love to see the work irl, it's introduced beautifully here.

Johan once offered me to use the alias Louis Beton (Beton means concrete) which he came up with. Obviously a pun on a certain producer of high end bags. The name also suggests an ambiguity or bastard features that comes when mixing a brand name of a highly exclusive image with that of concrete - the most mondane building material of them all - bound with a cultural image as heavy as - well yeah...

Jimenez Lai - cartoon as a weapon of choice

2009-11-16T15:27:00.000-08:00

[IMAGE: TOWER OF BABEL - CENTRAL PARK EXTRUDED, 12 KM]

Jimenez Lai’s presentation at the Constructing Knowledge conference was the very last one but entertaining and thought provoking. Jimenez borrows his title (this and that) from Victor Hugo who claims that Architecture is dead and was killed by the printing press. Jimenez Lai is fighting the aparent uncoolness of architecture outside the academies and claims the cool. Using the power of ideology and narrative methodology, Jimenez draws architectural narratives in graphic novels with sceneries of direct references to architecture theory of fx Rem Koolhaas in this story – the tower of Babel (Delirious New York) in which Central Park is extruded to the limits of the stratosphere.

[Image above: Cartoon by Jimenez Lai]

[Image: Phalanstery Module (2008) designed by Jimenez Lai, Photo by Scott Mayoral ]

Another project is derived from travelling in space for generations in order to get to distant planets where the human race can live...When weightless in space Jimenez considers how plan and sections must constantly change. Jimenez has built a physical model for a capsule for weightlessness during which the object and/or user will rotate and all elevations of an object become plans. As such, all surfaces can be inhabited. The pavillon turns 360 degrees in one hour. Here's Jimenez web site Bureau Spectacular.

Imagine a House - the movie

2009-11-16T15:02:00.000-08:00

[IMAGE: STILL FROM IMAGINE A HOUSE BY JOANNA ZAWIEJA, 2007]

Joanna Zawieja is a Polish/Swedish architect whose contribution to the conference was a movie screening and a poster about the movie. The 14 minute long movie Imagine a house - investigating narratives of domesticity (2007) was Joanna’s thesis project from the KTH.

Joanna writes this about her movie: “Taking the emergence of the bourgeois interiors in the 19th century and its image-based condition as a starting point, this video looks into the making of the modern home during the early days of British industrialisation. An empty house in East London is the scene.
A story of Victorian domesticity is played out in the house where fallen women are trained in the art of homemaking and working class men are taught political consciousness.
By dissolving the distinction between building and storytelling Imagine a House presents an act of rebuilding, where the story told by each repetition slowly transforms the abandoned house.” From www.joannazawieja.com

The movie is beautiful and a nice patchwork of Joanna's voice telling historic facts from her research on the place; bustling sounds from the street; images model shots and stop motion animations. All put together as an intricate weave of before and now.

View the nice movie here in Quick time

Venturi Effect - acquisition of Architectural Knowledge in situ

2009-11-16T14:18:00.000-08:00

[IMAGE: CHURCH OF THE AUTOSTRADA. PHOTO BY 'Doctor Casino', FLICKR]

The poster at Constructing Knowledge by New York based architect and teacher at New Jersey Institute of Technology Matt Burgermaster discusses a not so simple footnote in the 1977 2nd edition of Robert Venturi’s seminal book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture:

“I have visited Giovanni Michelucci’s Church of the Autostrada since writing these words, and I now realize it is an extremely beautiful and effective building. I am therefore sorry I made this unsympathetic comparison” p. 19.

In the book two churches by Alvar Aalto and Giovanni Michelucci are compared, categorized and judged. The first appointed attributes of ‘complexity’ and ‘contradiction’ as being positive, the latter presented as an anti-thesis. The footnote makes it obvious that Venturi had visited Michelucci’s church only for the first time between the two editions of the book. The experience of the church made him change a major point in the book.

Burgermaster writes: “This essay appropriates Venturi’s revision as evidence of a significant, but often overlooked aspect of how architectural knowledge is constructed, evaluated, represented, and distributed. It focuses on the acquisition of knowledge in situ as a disciplinary practice that has historically used observation-based methods of research to evidence its claims but has rarely recognized the subjectivity in the representation of this evidence.”

Constructing Knowledge, part II

2009-11-03T11:14:00.000-08:00

The hard part in participating at a conference on Knowledge is of course that the question of Knowledge gets addressed to myself – how do I generate knowledge, what is it, at which part of my work does it ‘arrive’. Yikes – not that easy – but the question of knowledge is a framework to look and reflect on my production during the thesis work until now.

3 knowledge generators
Hmm – I have three references to look at from the past six months: a workshop with 60 first year students at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture; the chairs experiment described here; and the full scale cast in Vermont introduced here and here. This post will get into the 'chairs' because, in a way the chairs experiment is a sort of physical summary of previous literature studies. Literature, objects, images and lectures on the topic of fabric forming all remain theoretical. Only by testing techniques and adding some personal thoughts on details or function do I or anyone generate knowledge – I know –
you can describe the techniques and the feeling and even show it – not until you actually try it do you get an idea of what this could lead to - sort of like kissing.

Except, and thank you Rikke-Julie for that note - when it comes to the knowledge of kissing, that’s a pretty straight forward goal to pursue, you pretty much know what you’re searching for. When it comes to the architectural exploration of a completely new technology it really doesn’t seem all that simple. What is simple is that the continuous exploration of form and matter – more than just access to sources of descriptive knowledge and reflection and more than experience alone, creates something – let’s call it knowledge – great, so this is what all designers and artists do and have done forever.

Reactions
An extra point of entry comes when the physical object exists with all the layers of reflection and acquired knowledge hidden behind the actual presence of something… it calls for a reaction from others than the maker – reactions, associations, references, discussion, more knowledge – and only because it exists. This shared knowledge is created by an actor network I guess – this is a theoretical approach to the world that I’m still not sure of how to use or if I really want to use but in these lines it does make sense.

[IMAGE: DISCUSSION ON CONCRETE AND SUCH
ON THE BASIS OF A PHYSICAL OBJECT]

Experimental tectonic practice
A sort of finish in this weaving post is that this might just be the beginning – experimental tectonic practice which is the method of my thesis work - is all about generating knowledge. And like getting the knowledge of kissing, practice is fun!

Constructing Knowledge, part I

2009-11-03T10:56:00.000-08:00

I’m on my way to a conference in Aachen, Germany with the broad title Constructing Knowledge. The conference is a celebration of the inaugural (first) issue of a new peer reviewed architectural journal – CANDIDE. Journal for Architectural Knowledge. The name is taken from a fictional character of Voltaire, Candide who travelled on an eager but often disappointed search for knowledge. For now, I'm yet eager and really quite excited about the journal – and the fact that the theme is knowledge and not research; this has the potential of really opening up for a wide range of interesting entries, methods and media which again could generate a wide audience amongst architects and others interested in the field.

What is knowledge in architecture?
So – the opening conference has the title Constructing Knowledge and some open question regarding what is knowledge in architecture and architectural production – what is research by design (or should I say knowledge?); “Do we search for or generate architectural knowledge?”; and not least: “Why should architects write when what they do best is design?” with subtitles: “Architecture, fiction and other stories” and “The digital turn after the ‘end of history’” the black box is open.

Knowledge and fabric forming
The next post will be on knowledge and fabric forming. I'm presenting a poster at the conference and out of four main topics my contribution has been labeled under three of them already - by the organizers that is - I'm not sure myself either to which part of the Knowledge Construction the practice of experimental tectonics belongs.

Fabric formwork on Facebook

2009-10-25T08:33:00.000-07:00

[image: fabric formed concrete wall cast at a workshop at Yestermorrow design/build School in August 2009, Photo by A-M]

I've just created a Fabric Formwork group on Facebook - it's about time -

One Gaudí beam and fabric formed shells

2009-10-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

At the recent Structural Membranes conference in Stuttgart, Ronnie Araya presented a paper on the current research at CAST. This summer Ronnie and his crew have produced a number of shell structures in a sort of composite formwork created by tensioned sheets of fabrics and padded frc. The methods are low tech and fairly simple; the structures are effective in using only a minimum of materials to obtain structural properties; and the images of the structures are just beautiful.

[image: formwork and cast shell structure in fibre reinforced conrete (frc) done at CAST, Winnipeg, Manitoba, photo by CAST]

I spent this past weekend in Barcelona and got the chance to visit Casa Batlló by Antoni Gaudí. A lot can be said about the structures produced from the mind set of the brilliant Catalan architect, however, I want to point out the immediate ressemblance with the work done at CAST. I know Gaudí is a huge source of inspiration af knowledge to CAST; references I've come across have been concentrating on the design work using hanging chain models and catenary curves.

The image below shows a beam or possibly just a shell covering the details of the top of the skylight - more on that later - When I saw this part of the structure I was stunned at the close ressemblance to the works Ronnie had presented only weeks before. The actual construction methods are pretty different as far as I'm informed. Gaudí used brick and plaster to a great extend in this house - I'm pretty sure that the simplicity of the CAST methods (using technical textiles and frc) deviced a century after Batlló would inspire the old master - both certainly inspire me.

[image: Beam across the atrium in Casa Batlló, Barcelona, photo: Anne-Mette Manelius]

Fabric formwork in the NYTimes Magazine

2009-10-14T09:46:00.000-07:00

[Image: The concrete wall reveiled.

The white building in the back is the Yestermorrow Design/Build School]
Yestermorrow is a socalled Design/Build school in rural Vermont, USA. I was there recently attending a workshop casting full scale fabric formed concrete walls - while working a photographer from the TMagazine was there to shoot for an article on the place - and so I and the piece that we were working on ended up among the illustrations. The article is an overall picture of the school which they name 'the Bauhaus of Birkenstock nation' - and nothing on fabric forming - sigh - the magazine will just have to make an exclusive piece on FF another time - I'm sure another great pun will come from that ...

Hello concrete world

2009-10-14T08:44:00.000-07:00

[Image: detail of the concrete surface of a concrete chair cast in fabric formwork]

So - here it is - my first blog post - basically stating that it and I exists in this concrete world.
Posts and links will be about concrete and architecture - due to a PhD project that I'm doing right now on the architectural perspectives in the use of fabrics as formwork for casting concrete. A recent post on the blog of the research center where I do my research is here. It's a post on what I call ambiguous chairs -