The cadence of the surface of concrete is defined by its form work. Sheet material gives a slower cadence; boards a more rapid one. The small ridges of cement that seep out between formwork’s edges give an otherwise seamless surface a unit of measure. The walls of Tadao Ando’s Church of Light just outside Osaka, show traces of the 1220mm x 2440mm phenolic sheets used for the formwork. The sheets were laid horizontally in a stacked bond pattern, each sheet dotted precisely with a series of evenly spaced tie rod ends.
A scale-less material (the the concrete) was given a a recognisable unit scale produced by its construction technique. The impressions left by the carefully arranged formwork sheets are not simply a tracing of the forms but indicate the level of care and craft invested by its architect forvever embedded in the project’s thick concrete walls. These impressions remain as trace artifacts, a ghost of itself, physically removed but made present as a condition of the construction process.
Hiromitsu Morimoto metalocus.es
Tadao Ando, Church of the Light , the main chapel of the Ibaraki Kasugaoka Church, 1989. Ibaraki, Osaka Prefecture, Japan
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on site review 48 :: building materials
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