Structures inspired by concrete

Vitra Fire Station / Zaha Hadid

One of the first realized projects in Zaha’s career, the Vitra Fire Station in Germany uses concrete planes that bend, tilt, andbreak according to the conceptual, dynamic forces connecting landscape and architecture.

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Cathedral of Brasilia / Oscar Niemeyer

The structure of this Brazilian cathedral, created by one of the great concrete masters, is made up of sixteen parabolicconcrete columns reaching up towards the sky. The columns integrate with the stained glass windows, which are differentshades of blue, white and brown.


Crematorium Baumschulenweg / ShultesFrank Architeckten

A German crematorium comprised ofsimple boxes and columns of concrete.The building includes a slat-steered casingof glass and allows light to filter into theceremonial halls from the concretecolumn tops.


Bagsværd Church / Jørn Utzon

The unassuming exterior of this church in Denmark merely hints at the stirring forms inside. It is clad in white precast concrete panels and glazed white tiles attached to a frame. Utzon positioned the reflective glazed tiles to relate to the sinuous concrete curves of the interior sanctuary.


Salk Institute / Louis Kahn

The Salk Institute in California is one of the great architectural masterpieces, both an “intellectual retreat” and an inspiring environment for scientific research. The concrete was poured using a technique studied in Roman architecture. In order to attain a warm glow in the concrete, Kahn allowed no finishing touches once the concrete was set. www.betonvecimento.com 6

Tama Art University Library / Toyo Ito

The randomly placed concrete arches in this library, located in the suburbs of Tokyo, Japan, were designed to allow individuals to easily flow through different spaces and have a variety of views.


Brufe Social Center / Imago

This Portuguese social center was designed as a building that is turned inside out. That concrete block form is carved out by openings that illuminate the interior space and courtyard within.


Igualada Cemetery / Enric Miralles + Carme Pinos

A new type of cemetery found in Spain that wasdesigned as an earthwork blending into thelandscape. The gabion walls and the worn/agedconcrete evoke the hard and rough landscape ofthe surrounding hills.


Grisons College of Education / Pablo Horváth

A concrete structure in combination with roughly-cut formwork make up this college in Switzerland. Thecolumn-free space and smooth white surfaces allow light to reflect far into the interior.


Sunset Chapel / BNKR Arquitectura

Clients asked that this Mexican chapel take full advantage of spectacular views and that the sun set exactlybehind the altar cross. The team worked the concrete form to make the chapel look like “just another”colossal boulder atop the mountain.


Sancaklar Mosque / Emre Arolat

Sancaklar Mosque in Turkey isselected as the Religious Building ofthe year at Archdaily Building of theyear awards 2015.


Villa Saitan

A housing complex in Kyoto, Japan,completed in 2006 by local firmEastern Design Office—is encased ina concrete shell with undulatingcutouts that mimic the roots, trunk,and leaves of a tree.


This minimalist structure that looks like a single sheet of white concrete is actually a Bus Stop!I t’s designed by architectJusto García Rubío and is located in Casar de Caceres-Spain!


Felipe Escudero’s trefoil-shaped reinforced-concrete Clover House, constructed in Ecuador in 2012, was conceivedspecifically for the Andes Mountains. Each “leaf” of the structure contains a large window that frames a segment of thelandscape like a picture and lets in maximum sunlight.


Pritzker Prize–winning architect Richard Meierdesigned Jubilee Church, just outside Rome, as partof Pope John Paul II's 1993 initiative to reinvigorateparish activity in the city. Three concrete sails,modeled on the half circle, are supported by asquare spine. Windows nestled between each ofthe slabs allow light to fill the volume at varyingdegrees, depending on the hour.


Santiago Calatrava’s auditorium inSanta Cruz de Tenerife in the CanaryIslands cuts a striking figure againstthe Atlantic Ocean. Inside thestructure, completed by the Spanisharchitect in 2003, a performancespace is enclosed by curvingabstract concrete forms.


Shanghai’s Long Museum,completed in 2014 by the city’sAtelier Deshaus, was built around a1950s bridge and a parking garage.Its cantilevered form features giantcast-in-place concrete curvesjuxtaposed with transparent metalwalls.


For two buildings at Chile’s newDiego Portales University campus,Chilean architects Duque Motta &AA and Rafael Hevia sought tocreate a design that stood out fromthe other glass-box structures in thearea. To that end, they incorporatedgreen space—parks, gardens, andliving walls—into fortified concretestructures.


The Salk Institute, a monumental research center designed by Louis Kahn in 1965, is perched on a bluffoverlooking the Pacific Ocean in La Jolla, California, creating a symphony of geometry and shadow. Forthe two identical six-story buildings that flank a courtyard of imported travertine, Kahn chose pouredconcrete for its proven durability and low maintenance.


Gus Wüstemann’s Stone H apartment building in Zurich is made of an H-shaped concrete block. Theconcrete for the exterior was cast using wooden molds for a rough-hewn, organic look, while the insidefloors and walls of the same material was rendered in a sleek and smooth finish.


Chandigarh, the utopian city designed by Le Corbusier with Pierre Jeanneret in 1947, in post-independence India, was built largely out of concrete. In the Palais de l’Assemblée, situated on areflecting pool, the swooping sculptural form at the entrance contrasts with the building’s linear concretecolumns throughout.


From the top terrace of the Cidade das Artes in Rio de Janeiro, completed by Pritzker Prize–winningFrench architect Christian de Portzamparc in 2013, you can see both the mountains and the sea. Thecurvilinear concrete walls, an homage to Brazilian modernist architecture of the mid-20th century, createan interplay between voluminous shape and empty space, visible from a distance.


The Stamp House by Charles Wright Architects is a surprisingly sprightly concrete home that hovers abovea lake. The house's concrete form and structure looks suspiciously like the Millennium Falcon, Han Solo'strusty smuggling-turned-Rebellion-saving cruiser.


Church of the Light, Ibaraki, Japan, 1989, TadaoAndo

"A cut cross meets the ceiling, floor and walls ofthis small residential church with memorableflair. Ando failed to persuade the client that noglass was necessary in the cross itself. Twentyyears later he told a lecture hall 'one day I willremove that glass … an architect must never,never, never give up.'


Heyri Art ValleySeoul, South Korea


"One of the most highly regarded scientific research centres in the world, the Salk Institute sits on a cliff overlookingthe Pacific Ocean. Founder Jonas Salk aimed to create an environment that would entice the best researchers fromaround the world. Kahn helped him to choose the site and created something approaching a secular monastery forscience."


"This billowing roof sits, in the words of the architect, 'floating above the site like slowly drifting clouds.' Its gentle,calming undulations give the building a subtle presence, entirely appropriate to its role as a crematorium."


TWA Flight Center, New York, 1962, Eero Saarinen

"Briefed to 'capture the spirit of flight,' Saarinen created a building of such futuristic virtuosity that it still looksmodern 50 years on. … Reinforced concrete embeds a grid of steel rods. In a slab this is a bit like oversized chickenwire and enables gentle rolling curves like those seen here."


German architects J. Mayer H. have completed the first two of 20 roadside service stations for a new highwayrunning from Azerbaijan to Turkey, through Georgia


Historic and ethnographic museum on Sulaiman-Too mountain in Osh, KirghiziaThe museum complex was built in 1978. Its structure represents a huge glassed concrete arch which in fact closes theentry to the cave. Initially they planned to use it for a restaurant but it never happened.


Date post:	17-Jul-2015
Category:	Engineering
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Structures inspired by concrete

Engineering