Smokin' Concrete Hotpants

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

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.

Butong - flexible, perforated concrete

[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]