Concrete, and what it does with light
Three buildings, one material, three completely different rooms. On board-marked, polished and pigmented concrete...
Concrete gets called cold by people who have only seen it in car parks. In a room it does something to light that no other material does: it holds it.
Board-marked
Cast against rough timber, so the grain prints into the surface. Raking light picks out every board. It looks like a wall that remembers being built.
Polished
Ground back until the aggregate shows, then sealed. A floor that reflects the window in a soft way, like water at dusk.
Pigmented
Iron oxide in the mix, a few percent, and the whole building goes the colour of the local earth. The chapel in the third photograph is the same colour as the field it sits in.
The trick
Concrete is only as good as its formwork and its curing. Both are slow and both are boring, which is why most concrete is bad, and why good concrete is worth a whole post.
One building a month, by email
A photograph, the plan, and the reason. Nothing else.
Hana Sato
Architect and one of the four partners. Writes most of what appears here and draws the plans with no furniture on them.
Folio
An architecture and interiors journal: houses, rooms, materials, and the reasons behind them.
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