formworklessness

donovan bunn arch522 f’22 paul preissner

i. introduction ii. process iii. columns iv. walls v. slab (shelter!)

the following chronologizes the work produced throughout the semester in effort to create a formworklessness structure of columns, walls, and slabs. the initial attempts were towards a dissolving formwork. using foil and agents to make the concrete more acidic produced varied results and still relied too much on a ‘formwork’...old habits. i then turned to a mesh that had some rigidity when made into a column but the weight of the concrete broke any seams making it difficult to work with. finally, the direction turned to a medical wrap. at scale one could imagine some sort of large crocheted tube. this starting point could not stand up at all on its own and could expand roughly 10x its initial width when stretched. in this, a method of ‘formworklessness’ emerged. the tube needed the wet concrete in order to stand up, and vice-versa. in the case of columns, a few tubes were needed so that they could rest upon each other as the concrete cured. different shapes and folds were reached through gravity, also resulting in the columns shrinking in height of what was originally intended. to help combat this, the walls were constructed by layers horizontally to reach the desired height. this allowed the walls to remain quite thin and made construction easier as there were less forces at play (they no longer needed to rest against each other to provide stability). over a small gap, such as the opening in one of the walls, the tubes could span quite easily. when moving on to slabs, however, this was tested and gravity was once again made visible. the two walls were put end to end and the columns zig-zagged through the middle to provide a mix of longer and shorter spans. in retrospect, placing all of the columns in them middle may have made the construction of the slab more consistent. still, the end result is perhaps more dramatic and explores the capabilities of the method better than making all the spans identical. pieces of the tubes were placed between columns and then over the entire structure from wall to wall. the resulting ‘structure’ creates an interesting terrain as the tubes sagged while curing. this method may have had varying degrees of success, but in the end it produced a fascinating, and somewhat grotesque, piece of formworklessness.

i. introduction