Friern Road site visit - Concrete Finishes

This morning I made a site visit to Friern Road to see progress on our new build house. We are currently building the concrete elements of the construction. This includes the external ground floor walls, which are all in-situ insulated concrete with a board-marked finish (left image below), and the stair-cores which have a smooth, ply finish (right image below).
 

  

To create the external walls, timber formwork is erected around a core of insulation, reinforcement mesh and basalt ties (which eliminate thermal bridging), into which concrete is poured in layers. Between each pour the layers of concrete are vibrated with a poker to remove air bubbles and create a clean surface. This construction allows us to create the structure, insulation and finish simultaneously.

For the formwork to the external walls we have used locally sourced English Larch which has been finished to provide a relief of the grain on the concrete surface. The timber is then sealed and coated with a release agent prior to fixing into the formwork.

We have spent many months researching the techniques and construction methods in order to create an efficient building envelope and a high quality architectural finish. This research has allowed us to test innovate concrete construction methods to eliminate cold bridging and improve thermal performance - I will write a more technical blog on this subject sometime in the future.

Keep posted for that, and further updates from Friern Road as construction works progress.  

Oriel Mostyn Gallery

In between getting hailed on and shivering on a recent holiday in Caernarfon, North Wales, I spent a morning at the Oriel Mostyn contemporary art gallery in Llandudno.

The project, by Architects EllisWilliams, is a refurbishment of a listed Victorian gallery building and has a central circulation core of board-faced concrete.




The variations in the concrete wall surfaces generated by the timber formwork created a wonderful play of light, accentuating the horizontality and persepctive of the space. The contrast between the warmth of the timber used for the stairs and the cool concrete also created a pleasing aesthetic which I hope we can explore in some of our current projects.



Exhibiting at the gallery was the work of David Nash which has a strong sculptural and material quality. Timber was the primary material and several of the pieces were made from burning the surface of the wood. This is a technique which I have been exploring in the office and the potential to use burnt timber as a cladding material. It was interesting to see the finish first hand and how the technique had been used in a different discipline.

To summarise, I had 'Oriel' good time

Cracking concrete conference on the Southbank

Yesterday I spent the day at the Southbank Centre, London with fellow 'concrete-ophiles' for the 'Specifying Visual Concrete' Conference. The audience was a mix of Architects, Consultants and Suppliers and the guest speakers provided a great insight into different features and uses of concrete in construction. @thisisconcrete were 'tweeting' throughout the conference if you're interested in seeing what went on...

The Angel Building by AHMM

The big themes of the conference seemed to be about how the construction industry can change clients' perception towards concrete and how it can be used sustainably. Thermal mass was the buzz word for the day and it was shown how it could be used to negate the need for air conditioning and thus offset the carbon created during its construction.

Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield by David Chipperfield

All the guest speakers were engaging though my particular highlights were the talks by Steve Smith from AHMM on the Angel Building, Alex Waight from Allies and Morrison on their office building, Anton Sawicki from Ramboll on the new Hepworth Gallery and PhD candidate John Orr on fabric formed concrete which introduced some exciting possibilities for the way concrete could be used in the future to achieve structural efficiency and complex geometry.

To summarise, this conference really cemented my love for concrete.

'One must be entirely sensitive to the structure of the material that one is handling. One must yield to it in tiny details of execution, perhaps the handling of the surface or grain, and one must master it as a whole.'
Barbara Hepworth