Concrete and its possibilities
- Apr 4, 2018
- 2 min read
Studying in an architecture school, one tends to be aware [or you're made aware] of publications made by fellow students and the professors in the school. One of the ways this happens is through the schools own publications which contains essays, thesis statements, interviews and more. I encourage people to read about what is happening now, what is being written today, and listening to what your fellow student body has to say about their interpretations of this world and what surrounds us. Learning does not stop at listening to professors, although that is an important step, it branches beyond what you have to pay for to hear. As future professionals and students of the world, our peers can be our guides and our teachers, and choosing to learn from them can be the difference between designing something that works for you and designing somethings that works for the general population.
One of the essays I read through this publication was about concrete and how its malleability, combined with todays knowledge over computerized design, can be used to our advantage to create new and different textures and moments in time. In the essay Scripting Arcihtecture, Athaniassios Economou and Nader Tehrani explain how "not all types of geometries are possible within given construction domains and not all construction techniques are suitable to solve given formal problems". Exploring the relationship between what is designed and what is ultimately possible comes down to a mathematical understanding and limitations of a material, in this case concrete. Technology has advanced so much in the last couple of years that now we can create new patterns and twists with the help of a algorithm based design programs, allowing our minds and imagination to expand with the numerous possibilities at our reach.
"Computer-controlled design algorithms", as the authors put it, help the human mind understand a proposed design in ways not possible with words nor hand drawn works. This is partly because, as skeptics, humans need to be assured something is going to work, and with this type of technology designers are aided with the knowledge of what is possible and what is isn't for a certain material. By taking the same shape, computerizing it, and varying its position on a plane and its three-dimensional angle, you are able to achieve complex and interesting textures and patterns.
Concrete, in its liquid state, defies "any immediate additive assembly process" as it does not show its final form by itself; it depends solely and completely of the form-work made before hand. Throughout history, concrete has had many different looks and feels due to the widespread difference of the materials, shape, and feel of the form-work used to cast it. As it is such a malleable material in its raw liquid state, concrete can be used to form, or at least be a part of, any components of a final design, structure, or product. It is also used to stand by itself as a decorative or statement piece by being fabricated to work as a screen, to function as blocks or accent pieces in unit construction, to provide different textures such as bushhammer and layered concrete, to be made into complex or non-regular forms such as curves.
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