Concrete Architecture - Hardcover

Croft, Catherine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1586854607 ISBN 13: 9781586854607

Publisher: Gibbs Smith, 2004

Synopsis

No longer the material of choice for just factories and industrial buildings, concrete is now fashionable and chic, adorning shops, restaurants, homes, and landscapes with its desirable, tactile surfaces. This reversal of fortune can be attributed to its use in luxurious homes and the discovery that concrete can provide stimulating or soothing environments for a range of leisure activities. Organized around the themes of Home, Work, Play, and Landscape, all the examples chosen celebrate the intrinsic qualities of concrete and how they work to make the places in which we live, work, and play and to shape the wider landscape that surrounds us. A range of projects from around the world includes a private house in Osaka by Tadao Ando, Canary Wharf Underground Station in London by Foster and Partners, the Museum of Asian Art in Paris by Henri and Bruno Gaudin, and recent work by Morphosis and Antoine Predock in the United States.

About this title

About the Author

Catherine Croft is Director of the Twentieth Century Society and is a regular contributor to a number of architectural journals, including Building Design. She lives in the United Kingdom.

From the Inside Flap

A favorite subject of fashionable style magazines, concrete is becoming ubiquitous in shops, restaurants, and even homes. It is a fabulous material that can be used in a huge range of techniques and situations. Its color, texture, and constituents vary, it maybe cheaply mass produced or meticulously crafted, and new developments and increased understanding of its possibilities are inspiring contemporary architects and designers. What is concrete? What is its history? How is concrete used? What are the most recent developments in methods and materials? Why has concrete become so fashionable? This book delves into the answers to these questions, and also showcases recent architectural projects that use concrete for a wide variety of building types. Concrete Architecture celebrates the intrinsic qualities of concrete and how it shapes the places where we live, work, and play, as well as the landscape that surrounds us. The range of projects includes the Pulitzer Foundation fro the Arts in Missouri by Tadao Ando Architects & Associates; Canary Wharf Undergound Station in London by Foster & Partners and Roland Paoletti; the Diamond Ranch High School in California by Morphosis; the Tokiwadai House in Tokyo by Naoko Hirakura Architect and Associates; and more than forty other examples of concrete architecture from around the world. Catherine Croft creatively examines concrete as a modern material and generator of previously impossible construction techniques, and showcases a material that has come into its own in the twenty-first century.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

House
Sevilla de la Nueva, Spain, 2000
Estudio Alberto Campo Baeza
This house stands on rugged terrain with views north to the distant Sierra de Gredos mountains. It is a hostile environment, with little vegetation. Rather than try to tame the setting, Campo Baeza has produced an elemental solution emphasizing the barren beauty of the place and hinting at the innovation and excitement of a basic homestead, a pioneering venture in a newly found land.
But this is no primitive shack. A platform makes the steep site traversable and provides a magnificent viewpoint, as well as somewhere to sit on or shelter under. A glazed structure on top gives protection from wind, and a carved-out space beneath serves as a refuge from winter cold and summer heat.
'I needed to express the stereotonic character of the basement piece,' explains Campo Baenza. 'The podium should declare its continuity with the earth, like a cave.' He decided that concrete was the best aesthetic solution, as well as being the cheapest and structurally the most straightforward. He likes concrete because 'it gives great unity. It is strong. It is silent.' He compares working with concrete to 'creating the earth'.

Edition details

• Publisher: Gibbs Smith
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1586854607
• ISBN 13: 9781586854607
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224