Experiencing ÂŤtouchingÂť concrete: close contact with the material
The word concrete comes from the Latin word "concretus" (meaning compact or condensed), the perfect passive participle of "concrescere", from "con-" (together) and "crescere" (to grow).
S贸lidos plat贸nicos
Cement
terahedron
Portland cement is the most common type of cement in general usage. It is a basic ingredient of concrete, mortar and plaster. English masonry worker Joseph Aspdin patented Portland cement in 1824. It was named because of the similarity of its color to Portland limestone, quarried from the English Isle of Portland and used extensively in London architecture. It consists of a mixture of oxides of calcium, silicon and aluminium. Portland cement and similar materials are made by heating limestone (a source of calcium) with clay and grinding this product (called clinker) with a source of sulfate (most commonly gypsum).
Water
Combining water with a cementitious material forms a cement paste by the process of hydration. The cement paste glues the aggregate together, fills voids within it, and makes it flow more freely.
Dodecahedron
Aggregates
Octahedron
Fine and coarse aggregates make up the bulk of a concrete mixture. Sand, natural gravel, and crushed stone are used mainly for this purpose. Recycled aggregates (from construction, demolition, and excavation waste) are increasingly used as partial replacements of natural aggregates, while a number of manufactured aggregates, including air-cooled blast furnace slag and bottom ash are also permitted. The presence of aggregate greatly increases the durability of concrete above that of cement, which is a brittle material in its pure state. Thus concrete is a true composite material.
Reinforcement
Pentogonal pyramid
Concrete is strong in compression, as the aggregate efficiently carries the compression load. However, it is weak in tension as the cement holding the aggregate in place can crack, allowing the structure to fail. Reinforced concrete adds either steel reinforcing bars, steel fibers, glass fibers, or plastic fibers to carry tensile loads.
Mixing concrete
cuboctahedron
Thorough mixing is essential for the production of uniform, highquality concrete. For this reason equipment and methods should be capable of effectively mixing concrete materials containing the largest specified aggregate to produce uniform mixtures of the lowest slump practical for the work.
hexahedrons
Hexahedron/覺c forms
Hexahedron/Ic volumes
*Volume is the quantity of threedimensional space enclosed by some closed boundary, for example, the space that a substance or shape occupies or contains
Modern structural concrete differs from Roman concrete in two important details. First, its mix consistency is fluid and homogeneous, allowing it to be poured into forms rather than requiring hand-layering together with the placement of aggregate, which, in Roman practice, often consisted of rubble. Second, integral reinforcing steel gives modern concrete assemblies great strength in tension, whereas Roman concrete could depend only upon the strength of the concrete bonding to resist tension
*Robert Mark, Paul Hutchinson: "On the Structure of the Roman Pantheon", Art Bulletin, Vol. 68, No. 1 (1986), p. 26, fn. 5
Arch覺tectural forms
megaron
*a building or semi-independent unit of a building, generally used as a living apartment and typically having a square or broadly rectangular principal chamber with a porch, often of columns in antis, and sometimes an antichamber or other small compartments.
Helvetica
*Helvetica is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger with input from Eduard Hoffmann.
Its use became a hallmark of the International Typographic Style that emerged from the work of Swiss designers in the 1950s and 60s, becoming one of the most popular typefaces of the 20th century. Over the years, a wide range of variants have been released in different weights, widths and sizes, as well as matching designs for a range of non-Latin alphabets. Notable features of Helvetica as originally designed include the termination of all strokes on exactly horizontal or vertical lines and unusually tight letter spacing, which give it a dense, compact appearance.
Le Modulor , 14 October 1947, Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier developed the Modulor in the long tradition of Vitruvius, Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, the work of Leon Battista Alberti, and other attempts to discover mathematical proportions in the human body and then to use that knowledge to improve both the appearance and function of architecture. The system is based on human measurements, the double unit, the Fibonacci numbers, and the golden ratio. Le Corbusier described it as a "range of harmonious measurements to suit the human scale, universally applicable to architecture and to mechanical things".
Pablo Picasso created 'Bull' around the Christmas of 1945. 'Bull' is a suite of eleven lithographs that have become a master class in how to develop an artwork from the academic to the abstract. In this series of images, all pulled from a single stone, Picasso visually dissects the image of a bull to discover its essential presence through a progressive analysis of its form. Each plate is a successive stage in an investigation to find the absolute 'spirit' of the beast.
'Bull - plate 10', January 10, 1946 Pablo Picasso
One of the most famous houses of the modern movement in architecture, the Villa Savoye is a masterpiece of LeCorbusier's purist design. It is perhaps the best example of LeCorbusier's goal to create a house which would be a "machine a habiter," a machine for living (in). Located in a suburb near Paris, the house is as beautiful and functional as a machine.
Villa Savoye, 1928, Le Corbusier
The pavilion’s design is based on a formulaic grid system developed by Mies van der Rohe that not only serves as the patterning of the travertine pavers, but it also serves as an underlying framework that the wall systems work within. By raising the pavilion on a plinth in conjunction with the narrow profile of the site, the Barcelona Pavilion has a low horizontal orientation that is accentuated by the low flat roof that appears to float over both the interior as well as the exterior.
The Barcelona Pavilion
The Barcelona Pavilion designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, was the German Pavilion for the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. This building was used for the official opening of the German section of the exhibition.
The past thirty years have seen frantic attempts by architects to escape the domination of the "shoebox" concert hall. Rather than struggle with the inescapable acoustic superiority of this traditional shape, the Casa da Musica attempts to reinvigorate the traditional concert hall in another way: by redefining the relationship between the hallowed interior and the general public outside. The Casa da Musica, has a distinctive faceted form, made of white concrete, which remains solid and believable in an age of too many icons.
Casa da MĂşsica is designed by Rem Koolhaas, 2005
Orquestra Nacional do Porto, Orquestra Barroca and Remix Ensemble.
It is a major concert hall space in Porto, Portugal, which houses the cultural institution of the same name with its three orchestras.
For Libeskind, the extension to the Jewish Museum was much more than a competition/commission; it was about establishing and securing an identity within Berlin, which was lost during WWII. Conceptually, Libeskind wanted to express feelings of absence, emptiness, and invisibility – expressions of disappearance of the Jewish Culture. It was the act of using architecture as a means of narrative and emotion providing visitors with an experience of the effects of the Holocaust on both the Jewish culture and the city of Berlin.
The Jewish Museum Berlin, 2001, Daniel Libeskind
The Jewish Museum Berlin (J端disches Museum Berlin) is one of the largest Jewish Museums in Europe. In three buildings, two of which are new additions specifically built for the museum by architect Daniel Libeskind.
The Stool thanks its unique shape to the cooperation between concrete block and woods, and also texture of cement.
the stool
part覺c覺pants: