News

Serenading the City

The first concept designs have been revealed for the £288m Centre for Music on the site of the Museum of London. Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the building will provide a new gateway for the Barbican Centre.

Concrete castle

Ferguson Mann Architects has restored the Grade II-listed Castle House in Bridgewater, Somerset. It was built in 1842 by John Board and may be the earliest surviving example of modern reinforced concrete.

What a relief

The University of York’s Central Hall, Derwent College, and Campus West landscape have been Grade II listed. Historic England praised the sculptural relief panels by artist Fred Millett, which “add flourish to the main walkway”.

70% carbon cut

Solidia Technologies says its reformulated cement cuts CO2 emissions from concrete by 70%. It has less calcium, is non-hydraulic and manufactured at lower temperatures, and the concrete is cured using waste CO2. It has been produced as precast blocks at Lafarge-Holcim’s plant in Leighton Buzzard.

Agenda

Comment and debate on the concrete industry’s most pressing issues

A Lesson in Less

Climate change, geopolitical turmoil, Brexit – complex problems call for ingenious solutions. So it’s cheering to see so much ingenuity on display in this issue, on the part of designers, manufacturers and delivery teams.

The Whole Story

Reducing waste and using recycled content are just two components of material efficiency, writes This is Concrete blogger Guy Thompson. “Just as embodied CO2 does not by itself represent a true carbon footprint, material efficiency should not be limited to a single life-cycle stage,” he says.

Events

Our popular event Cafe Concrete returns on Tuesday 19 March 2019. This pop-up event will provide inspiration and information on the design and construction of visual concrete.

A Class Above

Our autumn Concrete Elegance lecture features two buildings from practices well known for attention to detail in concrete design. Bennetts Associates’ HQ for the Royal College of Pathologists is a flexible, highly efficient building that will feature in CQ 267.

Final Frame: La Marseillaise, Provence

Jean Nouvel’s 135m-high offi ce tower in Marseille has a lightweight ultrahigh- performance concrete facade painted in 27 shades of red, white and blue. Th e matrix of brise-soleils comprises 3,500 separate precast concrete elements, with each panel painted in up to six colours to create an ombré effect. Nouvel has described the tower as a “new architectural anthem for the region”: the blue is meant to represent the city’s sky, the red its terracotta rooftops and the white the rugged coastline.

Photo Michèle Clavel

From the archive: Winer 1957

THE GRAND ARCH OF LLANDAFF

“Adding to an old building is a ticklish business these days. It has not always been so: the historical conscience is a new thing,” wrote CQ in 1957. The observation had been triggered by the fierce debate surrounding George Pace’s restoration of the bomb-damaged Llandaff Cathedral in Cardiff.

The main point of contention was the central pulpitum which, although a revival of a constructional form used in medieval times, was bracingly modern.

A parabolic arch of reinforced concrete, 25ft high, spanned the nave, with a concealed platform for the organ and a sculpture by Jacob Epstein of a distorted Christ in Majesty. “The arch has been criticized as being ‘out of place’,” wrote CQ. “This looks like another way of saying that concrete, used as concrete and not hiding it, has no place in a stone building.

” But far from destroying the cathedral atmosphere, this new layer of history had done much to restore it, CQ concluded. “With a design of today and material of today, a sense of aspiration, of movement, is established, in mood as Gothic as the arcades flanking the nave: infinite riches in a little room.”

The book, The World Recast: 70 Buildings from 70 Years of Concrete Quarterly, is out now, available from www.concretecentre.com/publications

Access the full CQ archive here