Material Vestiges FormWork / the Forgotten
concrete construction surface silent partners
Francesco Martire
It is paradoxical really… the permanence of concrete requires temporary assistance of a secondary material to shape its tangible presence in architecture and landscape architecture. So many of its characteristics are determined by a material no longer present, formwork. Despite its temporality, formwork leaves permanent impressions. Integral form, texture, rhythms, colouring are all the result of an ephemeral mould assembled and then removed. Formwork traces the process of pouring concrete as a building material. Its visual and tactile surface qualities rely upon a fleeting relationship with something else for it to speak its intended language.
Other materials used in architecture and landscape use input energy to form them: steel ingots are shaped by extreme temperatures and a series of rollers to make a beam or channel. Large saws transform felled logs into dimensional lumber. Input is typically super-sized pieces of equipment in massive manufacturing plants, or a plethora of tools used over and over again in workshops or on site. Concrete is special. It is transported to site wet and formless, requiring an entire structure assembled in advance of its delivery with which to interact. Concrete, mould, curing time and discarding the mould describes the construction process — a brief moment of overlap with long lasting results.
Whether orthogonal and rectilinear or sinuous and sculpted, formwork is concrete’s inverse shape. The Teshima Art Museum , Kagawa Prefecture, Japan, designed in 2010 by Ryue Nishizawa, a co-founder of SANAA, is a beautiful low- slung dome echoing its contextual topography. Two oculi let both light and weather into its interior. The project’s singular
material is white concrete which used earth as formwork. A grading plan for compacted fill built a hill as formwork, upon which concrete was poured. The hill was then excavated through the oculi — a poetic topographic and landscape interpretation of formwork as something designed not to last but which is critically important.
Iwan Baan arquitecturaviva.com
Ryue Nishizawa, Teshima Art Museum , 2013. Teshima, Kagawa Prefecture, Japan
10 on site review 48 :: building materials
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator