Concrete Approximations: In Pursuit of Absolute Space

(Hardback)

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Physical Properties

Description

Concrete is ubiquitous but contentious: culturally, environmentally, and often politically. Yet, the architecture it produces across fields of practices remains pertinent to the architectural discipline and its history. Having been incessantly normalized, misused and abused by different stakeholders and agendas, some of its material attributes still remain very much untapped until now.

Liquid Pressure, one of concretes most vigorous properties, is always short-lived and can hardly be contained. Only its counterpart, known as the formwork or false-work in the building industry, is best at influencing and redirecting the course of its active forces.

Concrete and formwork are both the live catalyst and dichotomy explored in this book, through which new forms of spatial organizations are once more made possible. To experiment with concrete is to actively engage with its live properties, in an irreversible dance in which the concrete reacts to the formworks materials. In this book, two key projects are laid bare, manifesting a shift in the work from an early preoccupation with material responsiveness, to one that additionally addresses concepts of spatiality and its relation to the proposed idea of augmented materiality.

Author Bio

Olivier Ottevaere is an Associate Professor of Practice at the University of Hong Kong. He is the director of Double (o) studio, an architecture practice focusing on the design integration of active structural principles, properties of materials and procedures of construction.