Oh, if only I could remember the title of this simply ravishing book I was perusing yesterday on some recent concrete architecture... beautiful stuff. Tadao Ando is great but there's far more than just him as well as all sorts of different techniques / articulations possible.

Ah... here we are:
'Liquid Stone: New Architecture in Concrete' Jean Louis Cohen, Martin Moelle
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Liquid-Stone-New-Architecture-Concrete/dp/3764374837/ref=sr_1_9/026-3076514-4578804?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1172869904&sr=8-9

Paffard Keatinge-Clay

i was pretty excited about the use of concrete at the student center at tu delft by van den broek, bakema. not sure when it was done.

gottfried bohm

ZAHA

nice call on bohm, he's relatively unknown even in germany...

axel schultes loves concrete
valerio olgiati
luigi snozzi
aurelio galfetti
peter maerkli
patrick gartmann
wiel arets
trahan architects
calatrava

atelier 5 + corb (not contemporary)

Eero Saarinen
Williams/Tsien
Moshe Safdie

And I just rejected a bunch of formwork shop drawings this week; they were not up to snuff. (Just a related thought - I'm not considering myself a great concrete designer.)

louis kahn

can't go wrong with kahn. Look at calatrava's connection details with concrete.

boy DCA I can't think when last I did any formwork shop drawings (simply because fail to use them) All fairface concrete work locally is rendered

Concrete seems to a be a bit taboo in my neck of the woods. I'd just love to do some on this school I'm designing at present but, as they say around here (aided and abetted by the miserablist tendencies of the all-powerful building insurance monopoly) 'aesthetics are being conquered by the 'Knights of White Render'

erk

I DREAM in concrete right now. My current project has cast-in-place concrete foundations, architectural precast, structural precast, and post-tensioned cast-in-place concrete.

Alberto Kalach. He is building two houses in southern california (one in LA and one in San Diego). He also has plenty examples of concrete in Mexico.

I had a tour of the house in LA, it was pretty incredible and nicely exacuted by the contractor.

link

i've done a few fair faced concrete stuff, but its a bitch

you have to ride the contractors to get it right because they always assume its going to be rendered or worse cladded

on a side note, have any of you worked with concrete contractors that sacked and patched a whole wall because they poured it incorrectly (didn't follow spec and didn't want to tear it down to do again?

concrete, it's beautiful

went to a lot of Bohm projects when I was in Germany..they were great

Look at Lautner

Jamie Fobert

I second holz.box's suggestions about the ticinio-school: Galfetti (check out the Castelgrande at Bellinzona...fantastic), and Snozzi's exposed concrete work at Monte Carasso. sound stuff.

An interesting application of exposed concrete is for funerary work--have you researched Scarpa's Tomba Brion, or Enric Miralles' cementerio in Igualada? Both are breathtaking.

In Spain, there are some interesting practitioners using exposed concrete. Check out:
Vazquez Consuegra (el MuVIM de Valencia)
Sancho Madridejos (that tiny chapel in castilla-la mancha)
Eduardo de Miguel (check out his auditorium El Musical in Valencia) Justo Rubio Garcia (did a really cool "folding" bus station in Caceres). Among others...

holz.box - oh yes!! Had that experience with block work and twice with insitu both times were entertaining to say the least.

2/3 times we were right and the contractors followed suit...we let one slide because it would have programmatic side effects, and the wall was non-structural.

I am not familiar with the process of sacking and patching, although it doesn't sound good. Can someone please explain? (Google was no help to my understanding of the issue.)

I thought that was a typo...being instead "hacked & patched"

hacking is the process of striking the bulged or incorrect area with a ax-like device (with a hammer on the other) then you patch it typically with a cement + sand mortar (typ with less water than the original poured mix)

I hear your pain solidred. Everyone in the UK associates concrete with those awful 70's blocks and they can't imagine how concrete can really be used.

A real shame because render always looks cruddy.

Check these guys out: http://www.glucksman.org/building.htm

Went to a lecture on this building last year. The cantilever is MASSIVE. The beams to hold it all together are almost 2m deep in places. I don't really like some bits of it, but it's structurally very impressive.

I always liked John Lautner's use of concrete but he's not 'doing'.

brazilians love their concrete

paulo mendes da rocha



niemeyer

mmmmm... concrete... (cue homer simpson drooling noise)

some good names on this list. let me add a couple more:

pier luigi nervi



felix candela



marcel breuer

you've got good taste b4g. kalach is one of my newest favorite architects. where in l.a. is the house that he's building?

kalach's work ain't too shabby.

if you like candela, check out heinz isler

Valerio Olgiatti

I dig appreciate the tactile qualities of kalache's work - its very throw back to the jaboule house