Air & Concrete

AIR & CONCRETE Residential Applications of Shotcrete in the 20th Century

Hannah Lise Simonson May 2017 | History of Building Technology

AIR & CONCRETE Residential Applications of Shotcrete in the 20th Century

by Hannah Lise Simonson May 8, 2017 ____________________________________________________________________________ Shotcrete is concrete—in other words, water, fine aggregate, and cement—placed by air.

Shotcrete contains the same material components as concrete, but is unique for its pneumatic application. While concrete aggregate can come in many shapes and sizes, since shotcrete is sprayed by pressurized air through a hose, the aggregate must be fine and sandy. Shotcrete may be sprayed over an existing structure or over a formwork made of wood, wire mesh, steel rods, or a fibrous material. Over the past century since the invention of shotcrete, the construction method has been referred to by a number of trade names such as Gunite, Guncrete, Gunstone, or Gun-All referencing the application device, often referred to as a cement gun; other trade names include Blocrete, Glastcrete, Jetcrete, Nucrete, Pneuctret, and Spraycrete (figs. 1-4). Gunite was a proprietary term used by the Cement Gun Company, which used a wet-mix process (fig. 2). Later, in the 1930s, the American Railway Engineering Association coined the term shotcrete for a dry-mix process. Although both wet- and dry-mix processes were used throughout the 20th century and continue to be used today, shotcrete is the contemporary umbrella term, used by the American Shotcrete Association, for all methods

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of pneumatically applied mortar and concrete. Gunite is still sometimes colloquially used to refer to a wet-mixed process.1 While shotcrete is a widely used construction method in engineering projects, such as tunnels, cliff stabilization, retaining walls, and pools, its application in residential architecture is rare; in residential architecture, shotcrete is not often integral part of structural form or aesthetic. A number of architectural icons, including Le Corbusier’s Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum, have utilized shotcrete to its expressive, structural, and aesthetic potential. More recently, the undulating interior walls of the POLIN Museum of the History of the Polish Jews in Warsaw used shotcrete to achieve an innovative tactile and spatial experience. Shotcrete is also used to great effect for rehabilitation projects such as Wright’s Unity Temple and Ant Farm’s House of the Century.2 However, despite the structural and aesthetic potential, relative ease of construction, and low cost, shotcrete has few applications in contemporary residential architecture.

Experimentations in the 20th century suggested that shotcrete had exciting and gamechanging potential for affordable and non-orthogonal forms of residential architecture. Using the framework presented by art and architectural historian Dennis Doordan in his essay, “On

Anne T. Sullivan, “Shotcrete,” in Twentieth-Century Building Materials: History and Conservation, ed.

Thomas C. Jester (Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 2014), 71.

1

Originally constructed using a ferro-cement technique, Ant Farm’s House of the Century had to undergo a massive renovation due to damage caused by water infiltration in 1977, five years after initial construction. During the renovation, a 2” layer of shotcrete was used to cover layers of rubber, polyurethane and new 1/4” steel rod reinforcements. See, Richard Jost, “House of the Century Construction (1972) - Part 4.” YouTube video, 6:28. Posted November 2007. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=IJ17w8GNfLo. 2

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Materials,” this paper will explore the fabrication, application, and appreciation of shotcrete in 20th century residential architecture. Doordan presents these three categories as not mutually exclusive or sequential, but rather part of an overlapping, mutually informing feedback loop of categories to organize research and discussion.3

FABRICATION As noted, shotcrete is a method of construction rather than a particular building material.

When a method to create Portland cement was patented by Joseph Aspdin in 1824, amidst the Industrial Revolution, concrete became a more and more widespread construction material.

Carl Akeley is known as the founder of shotcrete as he was the first person to patent a device for pneumatically spraying concrete or mortar (fig. 5).4 Akeley, additionally known as “the father of modern taxidermy,” was a celebrated naturalist who discovered an interest in taxidermy as a young child. While he was working as the Chief Taxidermist at the Columbian Museum, now called the Field Museum, in Chicago, Akeley was busily engaged in creating more accurate methods of “dermoplastics,” which is to say, building anatomically precise models for natural history exhibits. In 1907, Akeley and a coworker were using an “enlarged atomizer,” that he had created, to build imitation rocks sprayed with colored plaster of Paris.

Seeing the device, the museum’s director asked if they could replaster the Field Columbian Museum building which had been erected for the 1892 World’s Columbian Exposition in 3

Dennis P. Doordan, “On Materials,” Design Issues 19 (Autumn 2003): 8.

4

“Carl Akeley” The Field Museum. n.d. https://www.fieldmuseum.org/about/history/carl-akeley

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Jackson Park, and was badly in need of repair. To get the job done, Akeley developed what he called a “plastergun” which forced dry plaster through a hose with compressed air and when it reached the nozzle, the necessary amount of water was added from another hose (fig. 6).5 While on a trip to Africa in 1909, accompanied by Teddy Roosevelt, Akeley was supposedly encouraged by the former president to pursue the development of the plastergun.6 Now working for the Museum of Natural History in New York, Akeley filed a patent for an “apparatus for mixing and applying plastic or adhesive materials,” in September 1909, which was finally patented on May 9, 1911, as Patent No. 991,814 (figs. 7-8).7 Word and knowledge of the plastergun spread relatively quickly through trade publications and industry events such as the second annual Cement Show in New York City in 1912. 8 Indeed, the Cement Appliance Company received their own patent in July 1911 for an “apparatus of combining comminuted solids and liquid” (fig. 9)9 Through extensive research and development, companies standardized the dry-mix process. Although Akeley’s initial design was based on a wet-mix process, the machinery tended to clog and, by about 1915, dry-mix shotcrete became the norm

5

Peitro Teichert, “Carl Akeley—A Tribute to the Founder of Shotcrete,” Shotcrete (Summer 2002): 11.

6 Teichert, “Carl

Akeley,” 11.

C. E. Akeley, Apparatus for mixing and applying plastic or adhesive materials. U.S. Patent 991,814 filed September 13, 1909, and issued May 9, 1911. https://patents.google.com/patent/US991814A/en 7

8

Sullivan, “Shotcrete,” 71.

E A. Faller, Apparatus for combining comminuted solids and liquid. U.S. Patent 998,762 filed May 19, 1911, and issued July 25, 1911. https://patents.google.com/patent/US998762A/en 9

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in the industry until the “True-Gun” of the 1950s, renewing interest in the wet-mix process.10 Dry- and wet-mix shotcrete are both still used today.

Shotcrete can be applied to horizontal, vertical, and overhead surfaces in relatively thin coatings ranging from about 1/8” to 4” thick. Application is generally undertaken by two workers—one “nozzleman” directing the nozzle and sprayed shotcrete, and one person assisting in handling the hose (figs. 10-11). In the dry-mix process, compressed air moves shotcrete mix through a hose and from a separate hose, carefully regulated amounts of water are added to the mix at the nozzle. In the wet-mix process, on the other hand, a damp slurry is forced through a hose using a concrete pump, and compressed air forces the slurry out at high pressure from the nozzle (fig. 12).

Due to the fact that shotcrete can be applied to a built structure, or to an inflatable, rebar, or mesh framework, the amount of labor, time, money required for shotcrete construction is generally less than traditional poured-in-place concrete construction. In his book Concrete and Culture, Adrian Forty writes, Many of the nineteenth-century pioneers of concrete were just as excited about the social possibilities of the medium as they were by its structural potentialities. The prospect of a sound method of construction that could be performed by people without any skill opened up all sorts of opportunities for social transformation, not just to the advantage of the employers and capital-owning classes, but to all social ranks.11

10

Sullivan, “Shotcrete,” 71.

11

Adrian Forty, Concrete and Culture: A Material History (London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 2012), 227.

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Shotcrete seemed to promise the socioeconomic benefits of concrete, and then some, as the method, while it requires some skill, requires relatively far less skill and training than carpentry and other craft-laden building methods. While poured-in-place concrete has been celebrated as a more accessible method of building construction, the wooden formwork required for construction still necessitates some level of skill and, often, material waste. The wire mesh or steel rod formwork used in shotcrete construction, however, does not necessitate the same level of skill create or produce as much waste since it is part of the structural system itself, working in tension. It was this idealistic vision of a more accessible and affordable construction method that animated the imaginations of a few architects and designers in the mid-20th century as they tried to reconceptualize housing and community.

APPLICATION & APPRECIATION Concrete, unlike stone and wood, does not have a predetermined form—begging the question: what is concrete supposed to look like? What form should it take? Even more than poured-inplace concrete, shotcrete has innumerable expressive possibilities as it can be applied to wire or mesh formwork in biomorphic and curvilinear shapes. Combined with the relatively low cost and lack of skilled labor, the expressive possibilities lead architects like Wallace Neff, Friederick Kiesler, Jacques Gillet, and Antti Lovag to reimagine how people live and interact with their spatial environments.

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Wallace Neff’s Bubble Houses Perhaps one of the earliest architects to experiment with the new structural and expressive possibilities of shotcrete was Wallace Neff (fig. 13). An architect in Southern California, known for designing homes for Hollywood movie stars the likes of Groucho Marx and Judy Garland, most of Neff’s homes were in historicist styles. However, in the mid-1920s, Neff began experimenting with shotcrete construction in these otherwise traditional homes. For example, the Arthur Bourne Residence (1927) is a wood-frame house in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, but is coated in shotcrete (fig. 14).12 Neff’s explorations of pure shotcrete construction came soon after, during the height of the Great Depression. After building houses for Hollywood’s wealthy elite, Neff was interested in developing a low-cost, mass-produceable housing product to accommodate young couples and families that were struggling through America’s financial crisis. In 1934, he developed a prototype of a semi-mobile house called the “Honeymoon Cottage” (fig. 15). However, this mock-up was essentially just a smaller woodframe home—a proto-“tiny house”—and was ultimately not successful because it had all the trappings of traditional construction and materials, making it neither very affordable, nor easily mass-produceable or moveable.13 In a dramatic divergence from his previous historicist designs and the Honeymoon Cottage, Neff began to experiment with new formwork for cheap, fast shotcrete construction.

Jeffrey Head, No Nails, No Lumber: The Bubble Houses of Wallace Neff (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011), 19.

12

Jan Furey Muntz, “Bubbles for Defense,” in Wallace Neff 1895-1982: The Romance of Regional Architecture, ed. Andrea P. A. Belloli (San Marino: The Huntington Library, 1989), 71.

13

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Initially he imagined a sort of umbrella formwork that could be sprayed with shotcrete, then folded up, removed, and reused. Inspired by the curves and thin-shells of ferro-cement boat construction, Neff eventually developed the idea of an inflatable formwork. This balloon-like formwork is essentially a half-sphere, tethered to a catenary ring, covered in wire mesh, and sprayed with shotcrete (fig. 16). Neff began development on what he would call the “Airform” construction method, and would eventually get his first patent in 1941 (fig. 17).14 Jesse Jones, the influential politician who was the chairman of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, later the Federal Loan Administrator, and then President Roosevelt’s Secretary of Commerce from 1940 to 1945, was convinced by Hollywood director King Vidor to use federal funding to commission a project from Neff. 15 Neff’s first built Airform project was in Falls Church, Virginia where he built twelve houses for defense workers and warevacuated people (fig. 18). Each “bubble house” was twenty-three feet in diameter, in single or double dome configurations. Known as “Igloo Village” by residents, construction of the community began in October 1941 and was completed in May 1942. After the balloon framework was inflated, a layer of shotcrete was applied and allowed to set for eight hours, then a layer of waterproof insulation and wire mesh were overlaid, and finally a second layer of shotcrete which set for twenty-four hours. The Falls Church project was constructed for just

Wallace Neff. Design for a dwelling. U.S. Patent D127276S filed February 21, 1941, and issued May 20, 1941. https://patents.google.com/patent/USD127276S/en 14

Diane Kanner, Wallace Neff and the Grand Houses of the Golden State (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2005), 190-91.

15

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$91,000 (which is about $1.4 million today), including the $22,000 cost of the land—making the individual building cost about $3,000 for a single and $6,300 for a double Airform.

Vital to the marketing of the shotcrete Airform as a construction method and product during World War II, was the fact that the houses were designed to be fireproof, “bombsplinter proof,” and that they did not use critical materials which were being rationed as part of the war effort. Nails and wood were required to create the door and window frames, and minimal scaffolding was required for the shotcreting process, but the fifteen pounds of nails required was considerably less than traditional wood-frame construction.16 Neff partnered with Goodyear Tire & Rubber which manufactured the industrial-strength neoprene nylon balloons for the bubble houses, and helped sponsor advertising. Neff believed that the balloon forms could be reused hundreds if not a thousand times, although in practice they were only ever reused a handful of times. Despite the financial and structural success of the Falls Church project—Jones was photographed taking the blunt end of an axe to a shotcrete bubble house to prove its strength—Neff ultimately did not get the many government contracts that he expected.

In 1945, Neff founded the Airform International Construction Company and would go on to hold twelve patents for pneumatic construction processes and dwelling designs.17 During Neff’s lifetime, he and his company had planned over 400,000 bubble houses, although

“Balloon Houses Designed for Defense Workers Bloom Under Virginia Trees,” Life (December 1, 1941):34-35.

16

17

Head, No Nails, No Lumber, 27.

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only 2,500 were ever built.18 Many of these were built overseas, including 1,200 in Dakar, Senegal which were constructed between 1948 and 1953 (fig. 19). 19 By this time, Neff had perfected his system so that a house could be built in less than 18 hours for just $200-300.

Interestingly, in places like Brazil where manual labor was cheaper than concrete mix, rather than using shotcrete, concrete would be applied by hand with trowels.20 For Neff, it is clear that shotcrete was a means to the end of achieving the socioeconomic goal of quick, affordable, and mass-produced housing. He was less interested in shotcrete as an aesthetic or expressive form, stating “Airform construction permits the best of modern design for the least money, yet permits building with materials which are plentiful …. the last word in streamlined beauty and efficiency.” 21 In other words, the bubble houses were beautiful in their expression of efficiency.

Indeed, he struggled with the backlash of public opinion which often saw the Airform houses were too futuristic, modern, and strange to be desirable. “The older I got, the more I noticed the stigma about living in an igloo house, and I felt a little more strange about it. A lot of parents wouldn’t let their kids come visit us, because they thought we were too weird for living in the houses,” Kathy Miles recalled of her childhood growing up in a Falls Church Airform house.22 Practical concerns such as how to hang pictures on a curved, concrete wall 18

Ibid., 158.

19

Ibid., 114-19.

20

Ibid., 88.

21

Ibid., 15.

22

Ibid., 133.

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and how to accommodate typical furniture further plagued the Airform houses as Neff sought to market them to a wider lower- and middle-class American population (fig. 20). Additionally, Neff’s Airform bubble houses were a single story, and adding on square footage after construction proved to be a challenge; double and triple bubble configurations were possible, but openings had to be strategic and limited in order to retain the structural integrity of the thin shell dome.

Neff attempted to make the bubble houses more appealing to a typical audience by installing linoleum flooring, dark green sash windows, or pergolas for flowering plants (fig. 21).

In spite of these attempts to soften the radical form of the bubble house, they remained largely a novelty and a spectacle to the American public. “To be commercially successful, prefabricated houses must suit consumer tastes, and the public is not interested in igloo houses” wrote Architectural Forum in 1942.23 The project, however, received enormous publicity for its innovative approach and potential to provide affordable housing. Architectural critic Douglas Haskell described them as “enchanting” possible antidotes to the sterility of the planar International Style; he wrote in The Nation, So the manifest affection being displayed for the “bubble houses” suggests the desire to return to fantastic shapes for relief from the shock of rationalism disrupted … It suggests the possibility that domed or rounded vaults may multiply as an element even in domestic building, serving for quiet withdrawal from the openness of our glass planning. At one end of the scale stand the African village, the drive-in igloo, and the bubble house; at the other St. Mark’s in Venice or the Hagia Sophia; and the basic impulse is the same. 24 23

“A Fresh Approach to Housing,” Architectural Forum 74 (February 1942): 88-89.

24

Douglas Haskell, “Bubble House Afflatus,” The Nation (February 28, 1942): 265-66.

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Eliot Noyes, one of the so-called “Harvard Five” architects, a student and employe of Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, was inspired by Neff’s Airform experimentation. With Peir Luigi Nervi also in mind, Noyes adapted the Airform design, with Neff’s permission, to be more square and flat-roofed with larger arched openings. Noyes built two of these prototypes in Hobe Sound, Florida in 1953 (fig. 22).25 Wallace Neff’s Airform bubble houses have a mixed legacy—although they were affordable and mass-produceable housing, they did not achieve the popularity and widespread use that Neff had hoped for. An idealist, Neff truly believed that the shotcrete Airform houses could provide a solution to the problem of housing construction and home homeownership.

Initially predating Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes, however, the American public seemed unready for the innovative form and unusual aesthetic. Advertising brochure boasted, “the absolute absence of girders, columns, and jigsaw trusses startles the imagination,” but perhaps the general public was startled past the point of appreciation.26

Friedrich Kiesler’s Endless House While Neff was driven primarily by a desire to solve a socioeconomic problem, architects such as Friedrich Kiesler developed radical ideas about housing starting from a desire to confront a structural and aesthetic problem. Austro-Hungarian architect Kiesler stated, “Form does not

25

Diane Kanner, Wallace Neff, 194-97.

26

Ibid., 189.

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follow function. Form follows vision. Vision follows reality.”27 From this mantra, Kiesler developed an approach to architecture and spatial design that prioritized the body and human experience rather than standardized components or prescribed formal styles. This experimentation was expressed in his model of the Endless House, which, although never built, was an essay in the possibilities of biomorphic form and new spatial configurations.

Kiesler began developing the idea of the Endless House in 1944 and would exhibit it at the Museum of Modern Art’s Visionary Architecture exhibition in 1960 (fig. 23). 28 Building on his theory of correalism which he defined as “the dynamics of continual interaction between man and his natural and technological environments,” the Endless House rejected the box as an adequate living environment, and posited that a house must itself become a “creature.”29 Although never built, like many of Kiesler’s projects, the Endless House and his theoretical writings were hugely influential—referring to the project, Philip Johnson called Kiesler the “greatest non-building architect of our time” (fig. 24). 30 Speaking of the biomorphic forms of the Endless House, Kiesler said, to achieve the desired results, a new construction principle had to be invented, which I called “continuous tension,” the material being concrete, in a great variety of textures and colors, outside and inside. This material may be easily molded, even without a

Frederick Kiesler, “Pseudo-Functionalism in Modern Architecture,” in Friedrich Kiesler: Endless House, 1947-1962, ed. Hatje Cantz (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Museum für Moderne Kunst, 2003), 31.

27

Laura M. McGuire, “Energy, Correalism, and the Endless House,” in Endless Kiesler, ed. Klaus Bollinger, Florian Medicus and the Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation (Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser, 2015), 62.

28

29

McGuire, “Energy, Correalism, and the Endless House,” 61.

30

Ibid., 62.

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form, and is less expensive than brick for a house of the same cubic content. Columns and beams are eliminated. The shell is waterproof and fireproof, and comparatively easy to maintain.31 While the shotcrete method was not specified by Kiesler himself, shotcrete construction is one of the few ways that the Endless House could have been constructed the mid-20th century to his specifications—which demanded undulating and curved surfaces to seamlessly erase the distinction between roof, floor, wall, and column. Some architects wondered if the Endless House could have been built, but architect and architectural theorist Florian Medicus asserts that 1959 engineering drawings of the Endless House suggest a shotcrete shell (fig. 25).

Medicus writes: the concrete case of the Endless House would have resulted in shells of various thicknesses, depending on the position and the load and limitations in the intellectual “cutting” of openings. But this would not have accounted for failure—neither then nor today! Here I would much rather claim that, with the proper use of shotcrete—as for example in 1926 in Dischinger’s Zeiss-Planetarium in Jena—1959 the Endless House could have certainly been built. This technique would even have made it possible to recreate a certain compactness and the living surface of the models.32 The Endless House begs the question whether a material or construction method is determinative of form, or whether theories of space and body can necessitate technological and material innovation. Architects like Kiesler did not set out to experiment with a material,

Friederick Kiesler, “Short statements about the Endless House, pertaining to the questions usually asked, 1961,” in Friedrich Kiesler: Endless House, 1947-1962, ed. Hatje Cantz (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Museum für Moderne Kunst, 2003), 93.

31

Florian Medicus, “Spheres and Shells. The Construction of the Endless House,” in Endless Kiesler, ed.

Klaus Bollinger, Florian Medicus and the Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation (Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser, 2015), 203-4.

32

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but rather with space, and finding a material and construction method to achieve this end was perhaps of secondary thought.

Rather than being driven by a socioeconomic need like Neff, Kiesler took it upon himself to reconceptulize how the human body can and should relate to space, and how this might shape and inform an ideal living environment. Despite the fact that the Endless House was never built, the project initiated new thinking about biomorphic form, normative understanding of space, and the body’s relationship to architecture.

Jacques Gillet’s Sculpture House In the 1960s, architect Jacques Gillet, engineer René Greisch, and sculptor Félix Roulin formed a unique partnership to build a house for the architect’s brother’s family of six in Angleur, Belgium.33 Also called a “habitation-sculpture,” the collaborative project was greatly inspired by the organic architecture of Bruce Goff in particular, who Gillet met and admired (fig. 27). Commissioned in 1965, and eventually built from 1967-68, the Sculpture House was constructed using shotcrete to achieve a complex, “spontaneous” form that reacted against the commercialized and rigid forms of most Modernist architecture. Interested in merging art, architecture, and nature, the three partners found that shotcrete could meet their unique

Stephanie Van de Voorde and Ronald De Meyer, “On the interface between architecture, engineering, and technology: two case studies on concrete construction in Belgium,” Construction History 23 (2008): 87.

33

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structural and aesthetic needs—a construction method rarely used in Belgium at the time, and never for a private residence.34 Gillet, Greisch, and Roulin were drawn to shotcrete for the same reason that shotcrete may have been the only method capable of bringing the Endless House to reality in the 20th century—the unity between structure and material and shape, the diminished distinction between horizontal and vertical planes. The trio created a formwork out of steel rods, covered in a wire mesh, and sprayed with shotcrete; the shotcrete method allowed them to continue refining the design even on the construction site as they manipulated the shape of the mesh (figs. 29-30). Although they consulted with Czech-Belgian engineering firm Pasek, they primarily tested the structure experimentally on site (fig. 31); Gillet was pleasantly surprised that the local authorities permitted their project with minimal debate. 35 Not as curvilinear as the Endless House, the Sculpture House combines arcs and angled planes with strikingly large expanses of unframed glazing—hiding and revealing views into the surrounding forest or back into other rooms of the house itself (fig. 28). Particularly because shotcrete was unpainted and allowed to weather, the Sculpture House, over time appears more and more to look like something grown out of nature, blending back into its surroundings. Interior surfaces, too, are largely unpainted and unfinished, emphasizing the connectivity of the shotcrete structure which is expressed throughout the building (fig. 32).

While the trio was successful at breaking down the barriers between art, architecture, and 34 Van 35

de Voorde, “On the interface,” 91.

Ibid., 93.

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engineering in the Sculpture House, the building is unique in Belgium and a rare example worldwide. The sculptural possibilities of shotcrete exemplified in the Sculpture House have only been explored by a handful of architects for new forms of residential architecture.

Antti Lovag’s Maison Bernard and Palais Bulles Antti Lovag is one such experimenter of the sculptural and architectural possibilities of shotcrete. Born in Hungary, part Finnish and part Russian, Antti Lovag did not consider himself an architect—he preferred the title bricoleur (“handyman”) or habitologue, or habitat researcher. Lovag coined the term “habitology” which is his theory of how the human body relates to architecture and how spaces are inhabited. In the 1940s, Lovag moved to France and worked with Jean Prouve, and later, Jacques Couëlle who was noted for his concrete “architecture-sculpture.”36 Lovag’s two most architecturally and conceptually significant built projects, Palais Bulles (“Bubble Palace”) and Maison Bernard were built in Southern France in the 1970s—Palais Bulles for the haute couture fashion designer Pierre Cardin, and Maison Bernard for wealthy industrialist Pierre Bernard (figs. 33-34). Both of the projects were built using shotcrete over a period of a number of years, based on Lovag’s intuition rather than any plans or construction drawings.37

Anna Winston, “Odile Decq completes renovation of Antti Lovag 1970s bubble house,” Dezeen, March 3, 2016. https://www.dezeen.com/2016/03/03/odile-decq-completes-renovation-of-antti-lovag-1970sbubble-house-maison-bernard/ 36

Maison Bernard Fund, “Maison Bernard - The Approach,” Filmed 1981. Vimeo video, 8:28. Posted July 21, 2014. https://vimeo.com/101275024.

37

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Lovag’s theory of habitology sought to take into consideration site-specific topographic and climactic conditions, as well as how the human body would interact with light and views when inhabiting the space. He rejected the confines of orthogonal box architecture as unnatural and uncomfortable for the human body saying, “The right angle is by nature unnatural. In nature everything is in constant motion—the curves of the human body, flowing water, and the canopy of heaven. Man gains more and more liberties, but he still inhabits boxes crammed with furniture.”38 Using shotcrete, Lovag was able to create a massive series of undulating bubbles of irregular sizes, and with site- and body-responsive spaces. Lovag created the bubble-like forms using grids of steel rods, interweaved with steel hoops and covered in a wire mesh, then sprayed with shotcrete (fig. 36). As opposed to having a predetermined program and design, Lovag designed as he constructed and would use his own body to test spatial conditions and, say, decide the perfect placement of a window to capture a particular view. Notably, this approach to design, facilitated by the flexibility of the shotcrete system, prioritizes an interior spatial experience rather than an exterior aesthetic or style.

On the one hand, Lovag’s projects have been described as “hypermodern,” and as organic and inspired by primitive forms on the other: “[Maison Bernard] springs organically out of the rocks. Like the Nomadic tents of times past, or African round clay huts” (fig. 35).39 Although both associated with Modernity and the Industrial Revolution, concrete also has a strong tradition of outsider architecture and use in developing countries; as Adrain Forty, asks, 38

Ibid.

39

Ibid.

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can “concrete ever become detached from ‘modernity’”?40 While both hypermodernity and primitivism have been ascribed to Lovag’s work, the designer himself seemed to make no distinction, seeing the experience of the human body as transcending cultural, linear time. Not interested in architectural style or conforming to the norms of architectural discourse, Lovag has said, “I am not interested in large facades and construction plans. Human problems are the only ones that interest me. I create a cell around man, a cell that reflects him. The outside should adapt to the inside.”41 Although built for wealthy patrons, Palais Bulles and Maison Bernard were part of a larger conceptual project for Lovag. The massive projects are an essay in the possibilities of large-scale, cheap, fast, and accessible construction and communal living. The Palais Bulles contains an amphitheater for 500 people and a series of many interconnected habitable spaces, not always organized with traditional programs such as “dining room” or “bedroom” in mind (fig. 38). Lovag’s interest in the potential for complexes such as the Palais Bulles to scale up to community-sized as a new way for humans to inhabit space and relate to the natural environment has a distinctly utopian-bent. Indeed, like complexes like Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti, Lovag would invite apprentices for three-week workshops to learn shotcrete construction methods and how to build and design within his precepts of habitology.

Lovag is recognized in the field as an important figure in the architectural theory of organic architecture and biomorphic form. His work has become iconic largely due to 40

Forty, Concrete and Culture, 41.

41

Maison Bernard Fund, “Maison Bernard - The Approach.”

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exposure through Pierre Cardin, the fashion designer and owner of Palais Bulles—at which he has staged numerous fashion shoots, parties, and shows (fig. 40). A recent Dior campaign shot at Palais Bulles, as well as the recently completed and much lauded five-year restoration of Maison Bernard by Odiel Decq, has brought media coverage and resurgent interest in Lovag’s work from tourists and architecture enthusiasts (fig. 39). Rather than approaching architecture programmatically or through the material determinism—asking what does the brick want— Lovag approached architecture as an exercise in spatial organization responding to the questions: what does the human body want? Thinking about the act of inhabiting as as spiritual and emotional aspect of human existence lead Lovag to an approach to architectural design that sought to reimagine how people could and should live.

APPRECIATION Thought the case studies of Neff’s Airforms, Kiesler’s Endless House, Gillet’s Sculpture House, and Lovag’s Palais Bulles and Maison Bernard, we have seen to a certain extent how the new concepts of housing and community have been received by the architectural community and general public. Shotcrete was quickly accepted in the building trades and developed throughout the 20th century, advertised in trade magazines and fairs and eventually professionalized through organizations like the Shotcrete Contractors Association and the American Shotcrete Association. Largely due to its useful application in engineering and

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infrastructure projects such as retaining walls and tunnels, shotcrete continues to be a popular method of concrete construction.

However, in spite of the well-publicized experimentations with shotcrete in residential architecture, the construction method never gained much traction. Although still celebrated, projects like the Endless House, the Sculpture House, and Lovag’s work are treated more like artworks than practical prototypes for the housing industry. Other examples include the socalled “Flintstone House” in Hillsborough, CA just thirty minutes south of San Francisco, designed by William Nicholson in 1976. Built with shotcrete using wire mesh frames over inflated balloons, the method is clearly indebted to Neff, but achieves a biomorphic organic form more similar to Lovag. The Flintstone House, even by its name indicates its outsider status as architecture beloved for its “weirdness.” While biomorphic and curvilinear forms built in shotcrete are uncommon in residential architecture, the more conceptual ideas that informed the creation of these examples of shotcrete housing started a conversation within architectural design that is ongoing today. As an interest in biomorphic form developed further into biomimicry in architecture, and as architects delve into deeper understandings of how to relate buildings to nature—whether formally or in terms of performance—these trends in sustainable architecture are indebted to the earlier experiments of the 20th century.

While the building trade has been successful at making shotcrete an industry standard method for certain types of construction projects, every once in a while they make a push for using shotcrete in residential construction. A 2007 article in Shotcrete, the magazine of the

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American Shotcrete Association, made the case for shotcrete as practical method for residential construction due to its fireproof, storm resistant, and energy efficient qualities, saying, “Concrete has many advantages that make it a more environmental friendly framing material over the life-cycle of the structure. … Is it time to reconsider the shotcrete method to meet the demand for sustainable features in residential construction? It just might be an idea whose time has come.”42 In the 1990s, a New England company made an effort to popularize a method of shotcrete construction with “welded wire sandwich panels” (WWSP), which could achieve more traditional housing typologies.43 However, despite these occasional shows of optimism, there is little evidence that shotcrete has played more than a minor role in residential building.

In the mid-20th century, Neff’s Airform bubble houses were widely published in articles from TIME to Architectural Forum to Forbes to Vogue, gaining the attention of the public as well as the military and politicians such as US Secretary of Commerce Jesse Jones. Neff’s bubble houses were part of a national conversation about affordable, mass-produced housing during the rationing of World War II and the postwar housing boom (fig. 44). Although Neff, arguably did find a solution to that problem, the bubbles faced a certain amount of stigma for their unorthodox appearance and their practical limitations as curvilinear, one-story buildings, which were difficult to adapt and add on to over time. Residential and larger-scale shotcrete

42

“Is it time for shotcrete homes?” Shotcrete (Fall 2007), 54.

John A. Koski, “Shotcrete homes challenge wood-frame construction,” Concrete Construction, November 1, 1993. http://www.concreteconstruction.net/how-to/construction/shotcrete-homeschallenge-wood-frame-construction_o.

43

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construction using inflatable formwork still occurs today. For example, the Monolithic Dome Institute in Italy, TX is about an hour outside of Austin and builds small to large scale domes for residential and commercial uses, as well as for storage purposes (figs. 43). Other companies such as Binishells has tried to market concrete domes as new mass-produceable, sustainable housing by rendering them with green roofs (figs. 41-42).44 However, the concrete dome, somewhat like Fuller’s geodesic dome, has become vernacularized to the point of being associated with mundane roadside architecture and fringe hippie, “green” building (figs.

45-46).

Antti Lovag’s Maison Bernard and Palais Bulles, on the other hand, are appreciated more in terms akin to fine art sculpture. These buildings have been celebrated as backdrops in high fashion photography, and images of the projects are still widely circulated in the architectural press and through social media platforms like Tumblr and Instagram. While Lovag’s work remains spatially and aesthetic relevant through popular dissemination, this kind of appreciation does not address his innovative ideas about body and habitation. In an attempt to invite a conversation about concepts of dwelling, the Museum of Modern Art hosted an exhibition in 2015, “Endless House: Intersection of Art and Architecture,” in honor of the 50th anniversary of Friederick Kiesler’s death (fig. 26). The MoMA invited a number of different

44 The

Binishell system was developed by Dante Bini in the 1960s and more recently revitalized by the architect and his son Nicoló Bini. The Binishell system does not use shotcrete, but rather involves pouring concrete over steel reinforcement and an uninflated formwork, then inflating the form with air pressure. The resulting form is very similar to Neff’s Airforms. Over 1,600 Binishells were built in 23 countries, many of them in New South Wales, Australia. For more, see Dante Bini, Building With Air (London: Bibliotheque Mclean, 2014).

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architects and artists to respond to Kiesler’s Endless House and engage in a dialogue about the intersection between art and architecture and nature.

Shotcrete is a unique construction method because it is relatively cheap and accessible, and has significant expressive and structural possibilities. New spatial and aesthetic idioms have been explored by a number of architect-engineers and architect-artists, such as Neff, Kiesler, Gillet, and Lovag, as they sought to reimagine how people could live. Neff was primarily interested in developing an affordable and mass-produceable housing product, to address socioeconomic needs that he identified in the American and global housing markets.

Kiesler, Gillet, and Lovag on the other hand, were engaged in the intersection between art and architecture. Kiesler and Lovag in particular believed that contemporary architecture based on rectangular forms did not properly respond to the natural conditions of the human body, and by creating new spatial forms they could create better living environments. While these aesthetic and socioeconomic experiments were facilitated by shotcrete, the shotcrete method remains at the fringes of residential architecture awaiting its big break into the mainstream.

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Bibliography 99% Invisible. “Bubble Houses: Episode 89.” Radiotopia podcast. Broadcast on September 17, 2013. http:// 99percentinvisible.org/episode/bubble-houses/

“A Fresh Approach to Housing,” Architectural Forum 74 (February 1942): 88-89.

Akeley, C. E. Apparatus for mixing and applying plastic or adhesive materials. U.S. Patent 991,814 filed September 13, 1909, and issued May 9, 1911. https://patents.google.com/patent/US991814A/en.

American Shotcrete Association. “Is it time for shotcrete homes?” Shotcrete (Fall 2007), 54.

“Ballon Houses Designed for Defense Workers Bloom Under Virginia Trees,” Life (December 1, 1941): 34-35.

Bini, Dante. Building With Air. London: Bibliotheque Mclean, 2014.

Bollinger, Klaus, Florian Medicus and the Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, ed.

Endless Kiesler. Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser, 2015.

Cantz, Hatje, ed. Friedrich Kiesler: Endless House, 1947-1962. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Museum für Moderne Kunst, 2003.

“Carl Akeley” The Field Museum. n.d. https://www.fieldmuseum.org/about/history/carl-akeley Carta, Diana. “Endless House.” Domus, October 2, 2015. http://www.domusweb.it/en/architecture/ 2015/10/02/endless_house.html Doordan, Dennis P. “On Materials.” Design Issues 19 (Autumn 2003): 3-8.

Faller, E.A. Apparatus for combining comminuted solids and liquid. U.S. Patent 998,762 filed May 19, 1911, and issued July 25, 1911. https://patents.google.com/patent/US998762A/en Forty, Adrian. Concrete and Culture: A Material History. London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 2012.

Haskell, Douglas. “Bubble House Afflatus,” The Nation (February 28, 1942): 264-66.

Head, Jeffrey. No Nails, No Lumber: The Bubble Houses of Wallace Neff. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011.

Jost, Richard. “House of the Century Construction (1972) - Part 4.” YouTube video, 6:28. Posted November 2007. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ17w8GNfLo. Kanner, Diane. Wallace Neff and the Grand Houses of the Golden State. New York: The Monacelli Press, 2005.

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Koski, John A. “Shotcrete homes challenge wood-frame construction,” Concrete Construction, November 1, 1993. http://www.concreteconstruction.net/how-to/construction/shotcrete-homes-challengewood-frame-construction_o Maison Bernard Fund, “Maison Bernard - The Approach,” Filmed 1981. Vimeo video, 8:28. Posted July 21, 2014. https://vimeo.com/101275024.

Maison Bernard. http://fonds-maisonbernard.com/en/the-endowment-fund/ Muntz, Jan Furey. “Bubbles for Defense.” In Wallace Neff 1895-1982: The Romance of Regional Architecture, edited by Andrea P. A. Belloli, 69-95. San Marino: The Huntington Library, 1989.

Neff, Wallace. Architecture of Southern California: A Selection of Photographs, Plans and Scale Details from the Work of Wallace Neff, Architect, FAIA. Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1964.

—. Design for a dwelling. U.S. Patent D127276S filed February 21, 1941, and issued May 20, 1941. https:// patents.google.com/patent/USD127276S/en Štěch, Adam. “Inhabited sculpture.” Domus, March 6, 2013. http://www.domusweb.it/en/architecture/ 2013/03/06/inhabited-sculpture.html Sullivan, Anne T. “Shotcrete,” in Twentieth-Century Building Materials: History and Conservation, edited by Thomas C. Jester, 71-75. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 2014.

Sveiven, Megan. “AD Classics: Palais Bulles/Antti Lovag.” ArchDaily, January 19, 2011. http:// www.archdaily.com/103991/ad-classics-palais-bulles-antti-lovag Teichert, Peitro. “Carl Akeley—A Tribute to the Founder of Shotcrete.” Shotcrete (Summer 2002): 10-12.

Van de Voorde, Stephanie and Ronald De Meyer, “On the interface between architecture, engineering, and technology: two case studies on concrete construction in Belgium,” Construction History 23 (2008): 77-98.

Winston, Anna. “Odile Decq completes renovation of Antti Lovag 1970s bubble house,” Dezeen, March 3, 2016. https://www.dezeen.com/2016/03/03/odile-decq-completes-renovation-of-antti-lovag-1970sbubble-house-maison-bernard/

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[Figure 1] 20th century advertisement for Gun-All. (http://www.shotcrete.us/equipment-early-days.html)

[Figure 2] Gunite Concrete and Construction Company catalogue, Kansas City, MO. (Sullivan, “Shotcrete,” 71.)

[Figure 3] Advertisement for the Cement Appliances Co. or “C-A-C� Cement Gun. (Concrete 11 (August 1991): 71)

[Figure 4] 20th century advertisement for the Jetcreter. (http://www.shotcrete.us/equipment-early-days.html)

[Figure 5] On an 1896 expedition to Somaliland, a leopard attacked Carl Akeley and he had to defend himself by hand. Akeley was a devoted naturalist and expert taxidermist. (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-toknow/culture/keys-to-the-kingdom-the-story-of-a-revolutionary-taxidermist/5036/)

[Figure 6] Early model of Akeley’s portable cement gun, c. 1910. (Sullivan, “Shotcrete,” 72.)

[Figure 7] Akeley’s U.S. Patent 991,814 for an apparatus for mixing and applying plastic or adhesive materials. (https://patents.google.com/patent/US991814A/en)

[Figure 8] Detail of Akeley’s machinery design. (https://patents.google.com/patent/US991814A/en)

[Figure 9] The Cement Appliance Company patented a cement gun soon after Akeley. Detail shows the hose and nozzle through which pressurized cement is sprayed. (https://patents.google.com/patent/US998762A/en)

[Figure 10] Shotcrete being used in a building camp at Fort McHenry, 1917. (Library of Congress. http://www.loc. gov/pictures/item/hec2008006017/)

[Figure 11] Shotcrete machinery at Fort McHenry, 1917. (Library of Congress. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ hec2008006018/)

[Figure 12] Diagrams illustrating the difference between the dry-mix and wet-mix shotcrete processes.

(American Shotcrete Association. www.shotcrete.org)

[Figure 13] Wallace Neff in front of one of his Airform houses. (Head, No Nails, No Lumber, 12)

[Figure 14] Arthur K. Bourne residence by Wallace Neff in San Marino, CA, is a wood-frame house covered in shotcrete. (Wallace Neff, Architecture of Southern California: A Selection of Photographs, Plans and Scale Details from the Work of Wallace Neff, Architect, FAIA (Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1964), 91.

[Figure 15] Wallace Neff’s 1934 Honeymoon Cottage. (https://paradiseleased.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/whatever-became-of-the-honeymoon-cottage/)

[Figure 16] Airform balloon being inflated; the balloon is tethered to a catenary ring.

(Head, No Nails, No Lumber, 39)

[Figure 17] Man spraying shotcrete over an inflated Airform balloon and wire mesh formwork.

(Huntington Library via http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/bubble-houses/)

[Figure 18] Falls Church, VA “Igloo Village,� built by Wallace Neff in 1941-42. (Head, No Nails, No Lumber, 10.)

[Figure 19] Development of 1,200 Airforms in Dakar, Senegal from 1948 to 1953. (Head, No Nails, No Lumber, 114.)

[Figure 20] Interior view of an Airform window illustrating the unique poche of the shotcrete dome.

(Steve Roden and Jeffrey Head via http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/bubble-houses/)

[Figure 21] Airform house in Arizona with traditional residential features such as flowers, a pergola and French doors, mitigating the otherwise futurist appearance of the dome. (Head, No Nails, No Lumber, 25.)

[Figure 22] Eliot Noyes adaptation of Neff’s Airform, built in Hobe Sound, FL in 1953. (Photograph by George Skadding via https://room-of-flint.tumblr.com/post/55773024016/b22-design-eliot-noyes-bubblehouse-hobe)

[Figure 23] Model of the Endless House by Frederick Kiesler, 1958.

(MoMA via http://www.domusweb.it/en/architecture/2015/10/02/endless_house.html)

[Figure 24] Concept sketch of the Endless House by Frederick Kiesler. (http://www.archdaily.com/126651/ad-classics-endless-house-friedrick-kiesler)

[Figure 25] Design drawings of the Endless House by Frederick Kiesler. (http://www.archdaily.com/126651/ad-classics-endless-house-friedrick-kiesler)

[Figure 26] Installation view of “Endless House: Intersections of Art and Architecture,� 2015. (MoMA via http:// www.domusweb.it/en/architecture/2015/10/02/endless_house.html)

[Figure 27] Sculpture House in Angleur, Belgium built by Jacques Gillet, René Greisch, and Félix Roulin in 1967-68. (http://www.domusweb.it/en/architecture/2013/03/06/inhabited-sculpture.html)

[Figure 28] The shoctrete Sculpture House is between 5-12cm thick. (http://www.domusweb.it/en/architecture/2013/03/06/inhabited-sculpture.html)

[Figure 29] Construction of the Sculpture House was based on some models and testing, but much of the formmaking was ad-hoc in the field. (https://dprbcn.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/3_content.jpg?w=600&h=399

[Figure 30] Process of applying shotcrete to the Sculpture House. (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/98727416802056155/)

[Figure 31] Structural load testing to ensure the strength of the wire mesh formwork and shotcrete construction of the Sculpture House. (https://dprbcn.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/1_content.jpg?w=600&h=403

[Figure 32] Interior view of the Sculpture House illustrating the unfinished shotcrete. (http://www.domusweb.it/ en/architecture/2013/03/06/inhabited-sculpture.html)

[Figure 33] Maison Bernard built by Antti Lovag in the 1970s in Southern France. (https://www.dezeen. com/2016/03/03/odile-decq-completes-renovation-of-antti-lovag-1970s-bubble-house-maison-bernard/)

[Figure 34] Antti Lovag with patron Pierre Bernard in front of Maison Bernard. Antti Lovag inside of the house while under construction. (Maison Bernard Fund, http://fonds-maisonbernard.com/en/)

[Figure 35] Indigenous Ethiopian residence; domed structures like those found in Ethiopia provided inspiration to Lovag’s ideas about habitology. (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/ae/5c/e8/ ae5ce8ae07459fc39136d5b60f3021b5.jpg)

[Figure 36] Lovag (right) with apprentices installing a metal hoop for the formwork prior to covering with shotcrete. (Still image from video, Maison Bernard Fund, “Maison Bernard - The Approach.”)

[Figure 37] Complex arrangement of spaces at Maison Bernard defy traditional programmatic categorization.

(Maison Bernard Fund, http://fonds-maisonbernard.com/en/)

[Figure 38] Aerial view of the Palais Bulles complex designed by Antti Lovag for fashion designer Pierre Cardin, including a 500 seat amphitheater. (http://www.palaisbulles.com/)

[Figure 39] Maison Bernard recently underwent a five-year renovation by architect Odiel Decq. (https://www.dezeen.com/2016/03/03/odile-decq-completes-renovation-of-antti-lovag-1970s-bubblehouse-maison-bernard/)

[Figure 40] Palais Bulles has been used as a backdrop for numerous fashion shoots and events. (http://www.bellomag.com/diors-cruise-2016-presentation-to-be-held-at-pierre-cardin%E2%80%8Bs-palais-bulles/)

[Figure 41] A Binishell in New South Wales, Australia. (https://vimeo.com/57359143)

[Figure 42] Rebranded and revitalized “green” Binishells” are being marketed today. (http://www.binishells.com/)

[Figure 43] Two-story shotcrete house by Monolithic Dome Institute. (http://www.monolithic.org/news-feed/dome-of-a-home-for-sale)

[Figure 44] Only one of Wallace Neff’s Airfoms is extant in America—the one he built for his brother is in Pasadena, California. (Leslie Williamson via https://aneclecticeccentric.wordpress.com/2013/04/15/ wallace-neff-bubble-house/)

[Figure 45] Monolithic Dome Institute production facility and showroom in Italy, TX. (http://www.dallasobserver.com/arts/an-hour-south-of-dallas-the-monolithic-dome-institute-is-preparing-for-the-end-oftimes-8816922)

[Figure 46] Monolithic Dome roadside architecture. (http://www.monolithic.org/featured)