Concrete: The Latest Architecture and News

Online courses have gained more and more recognition in the past couple of years. In addition to the flexibility and convenience of learning wherever and whenever you want, they provide access to content from well-respected professors and colleges. In the field of architecture and construction, online courses have grown exponentially. Last year, we compiled a list that focused mainly on constructive and material techniques. This time we selected 15 online courses covering a range of subjects. We hope this selection of courses can help you with your next project.

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For thousands of years, concrete has been a foundation of the built environment: the most widely used man-made material on the planet. However, as architects, and the public alike, sharpen their focus on the causes and effects of climate change, the environmental damage caused by cement has become a subject of unease.

As exhibited in a recent in-depth article by Lucy Rodgers for BBC News, cement is the source of about 8% of global CO2 emissions. The piece was written off the back of the UN’s COP24 climate change conference in Poland and found that in order to meet the requirements of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, annual cement emissions must fall by 16% by 2030.

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Since July 2018, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has hosted an exhibition exploring the architecture of the former Yugoslavia. “Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948-1980” became the first major US exhibition to study the subject, through over 400 drawings, models, photographs, and films.

With the exhibition soon coming to an end, Martino Stierli (Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA) and Vladimir Kulic (Guest Curator and Architecture Historian) have presented a 7-minute-long video guiding viewers through the highlights of the exhibition.

A series of concave concrete panels hoisted on slender plank-like columns sit amongst the vast rural plains of Sweden, silently redefining the typology of an otherwise utilitarian structure. White Arkitekter's recent proposal for a water tower in Varberg is a slim horizontal structure, deviating from the typical, vertical and round design. Titled VÅGA, it features two tanks for storing water within its unique shape that may actually be better suited to its purpose.

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Alvaro Siza orchestrates, like no other, the experience of the visitor in his works. By means of compressions and decompression, openings and closings, volumes, voids and light, the Portuguese architect marks the paths, points of view, and perspective of the passage of time. In this photo essay, Ronaldo Azambuja photographed the Iberê Camargo Foundation ten years after its inauguration.

Great school design is more than just a good piece of architecture. Particularly in vulnerable areas with poor public infrastructure, schools symbolize the role of the state and education as a transforming agent for social improvement. They can also become areas for community life, sports, courses, among other uses. Unfortunately, these projects do not always receive the attention they deserve. 

Schools require diverse and complex programs and flows, therefore, developing an educational project is one of the greatest challenges for architects. Due to the economy, rationalization, and speed of work, Brazil's largest portion of school projects are designed from prefabricated concrete elements with rigid modulations and, in rare cases, steel. But what may seem to limit at first, can actually become an exercise in structural creativity. 

In an attempt to elucidate the systems used to materialize these projects, we've selected a compilation of seven prefabricated schools in plan and section to create incredible spaces for learning. 

Concrete may be the material most associated with modern Brazilian architecture; high resistance to compression and, when armed, capable of assuming various forms. Its plasticity has made it a favorite material for some of Brazil's most expressive architects of the last century.

Today, it is still widely explored in the architectural production of Brazil, either for its structural robustness, ease of maintenance, or aesthetic value.

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ETH Zurich, working in collaboration with Zaha Hadid Architects Computation and Design Group (ZHCODE) and Architecture Extrapolated (R-Ex) have unveiled a 3D-knitted shell serving as the primary shaping element for curved concrete structures.

The “KnitCandela” prototype represents the first application of this technology at an architectural scale, a five-tonne concrete structure on display at the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City.

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The Jean Nouvel-designed La Marseillaise has been completed, decorating the skyline of Marseille, France with 27 shades of red, white, and blue concrete. Standing at 135 meters, the 31-story office tower contains a business restaurant, nursery, and retail.

The scheme sits in proximity to the CMA CGM Headquarters, which was the first Zaha Hadid Architects-designed tower to be built.

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This article was originally published on June 16, 2016. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.

Built in the early days of airline travel, the TWA Terminal is a concrete symbol of the rapid technological transformations which were fueled by the outset of the Second World War. Eero Saarinen sought to capture the sensation of flight in all aspects of the building, from a fluid and open interior, to the wing-like concrete shell of the roof. At TWA’s behest, Saarinen designed more than a functional terminal; he designed a monument to the airline and to aviation itself.

This AD Classic features a series of exclusive images by Cameron Blaylock, photographed in May 2016. Blaylock used a Contax camera and Zeiss lenses with Rollei black and white film to reflect camera technology of the 1960s.

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This article was originally published on April 21, 2016. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.

Although Zaha Hadid began her remarkable architectural career in the late 1970s, it would not be until the 1990s that her work would lift out her drawings and paintings to be realized in physical form. The Vitra Fire Station, designed for the factory complex of the same name in Weil-am-Rhein, Germany, was the among the first of Hadid’s design projects to be built. The building’s obliquely intersecting concrete planes, which serve to shape and define the street running through the complex, represent the earliest attempt to translate Hadid’s fantastical, powerful conceptual drawings into a functional architectural space.

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Oppenheim Architecture has released an update of their proposed Star Metals development in Atlanta, Georgia. Spread over two schemes, the project seeks to “shift the paradigm of what’s possible for new urban environments” through a 1.36 million-square-foot masterplan.

The Oppenheim scheme consists of a 14-story “Star Metals Offices” building, accommodating offices, terraces, parking, and retail, and a nine-story “Star Metals Residences” building with over 400 residential units.

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The use of concrete in construction is probably one of the main trademarks of 20th century architecture. Concrete is composed of a combination of materials which when mixed with water solidify into the shape of the container where it is poured in. In this sense, it is the container or the ‘moulds’ who rule the outcome. The reuse of molds for casting concrete is a technique used to replicate and control the production of concrete elements or buildings. Architects and designers have used/created diverse types of molds and casting techniques to explore the limits of the material.

In the eyes of an architect, concrete is practically a fetish. Currently, it's used in a wide range of projects and buildings, from infrastructure to residential, and offers an architect a great deal of freedom in generating eye-catching results. To start, we will show you how to pre-dimension concrete structures and understand what cracks in concrete structures mean. Continue reading to get our tips on how to use concrete and get the best result possible.

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39 people are now reported to have died following the collapse of the Morandi motorway bridge in Genoa, Italy. The incident happened on Tuesday 14th August, when one of the bridge’s structural components, comprising of pre-stressed concrete stays and trestles, collapsed onto a railway line and warehouse 150 feet (45 meters) below.

The cause of the collapse is not yet known, however, attention is now turning to the bridge’s maintenance record, concerns of its integrity stretching back decades, and how the collapse sits within the broader context of aging Italian infrastructure.

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Carrots cannot help you see in the dark, but they could make your buildings stronger, and more environmentally friendly. Engineers at Lancaster University in the UK have worked in collaboration with Cellucomp Ltd UK to study the effects of adding “nano platelets” extracted from the fibers of root vegetables to enhance the performance of concrete mixtures.

The vegetable-composite concretes, made from vegetables such as sugar beet or carrot, have structurally and environmentally out-performed all commercially-available cement additives, such as graphene and carbon nanotubes, doing so at a much lower cost. 

New drone footage and photographs have been released of the One Thousand Museum, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, as work progresses in Miami, Florida. Having topped out in February 2018, the 62-story residential tower is due for completion later in the year.

The new imagery showcases the 700-foot-high (210-meter-high) tower’s curved structural exoskeleton, comprising 5,000 pieces of glass-fiber-reinforced concrete. The photo gallery also offers some of the first images of the scheme’s interior spaces, still under construction, showing the influence of the exoskeleton on the internal environment.

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