Detail: Bauen mit Beton | Concrete Construction | Construire en béton, 1/2/2006

Editorial

The tra­di­tio­nal buil­ding ma­te­rial of con­crete, which in an un­co­vered, un­trea­ted state is still very dif­fi­cult for the lay per­son to ac­cept, is used today in a di­ver­sity never seen be­fore. Just a few years ago ab­so­lu­tely even, smooth sufra­ces ‒ such as pro­cu­ced by Tadao Ando ‒ were the holy grail of con­crete con­struc­tion (even though achie­ving this ideal drove many ar­chi­tects, not to men­tion con­struc­tion firms, to des­pe­ra­tion). Al­re­ady, howe­ver, we are see­ing a shift towards an app­re­cia­tion of the sculp­tu­ral qua­li­ties of the ma­te­rial. Con­crete sur­faces are again being worked by hand ‒ flu­ted, ham­me­red, etc.