Concrete: 4b. Some Concrete Finishes

Concrete: 4b. Some Concrete Finishes

Concrete: 4b. Some Concrete Finishes - Full TranscriptionSo now let's talk about finishing, surface finishing the concrete after it has been placed, vibrated, and ready to go. This is from the Morphosis Building, the Federal Building in San Francisco. It has a very nice shading on the west facade that gives this beautiful pattern. Anyway, so again, we've seen these before, the placing of the concrete. They have all kinds of tools for finishing the concrete. Basically, there's an edging tool, there's the knee pads, there's scoring tools, there's trowels, there's all this stuff, And finishing a nice surface is very important, a leveled surface. We talked about honeycombing in the other video. You don't want things like this. This is because not enough vibration. So it has to be properly vibrated. That's essential. And it cannot be dropped from a high height, from a distant height, because it'll segregate. The gravel will go down and the rest will rise to the surface. Bleeding is an issue, so you don't want excess water to rise to the surface. They try as much as possible to smooth it with a power trowel that we see on the top right, this one here. But then there's riding ones. They can go around. These trowels are rotating, and so they smooth the surface. Oh, I forgot I put this in here. Okay, this was a video of one of these power trowels, these, that went rogue. And this is a tilt-up project. And a student sent this to me, and it's kind of hilarious. There's these guys watching from their office window, and the power trowel went rogue. And so here's the video. Please listen to the comments. Okay, we're going to try a bucket of water. hang a bucket of water on the handle. Actually, I figured, oh, here comes a big stick. Here comes a big stick. We're going to drown it with acid. We're going to try the big stick there. He's going to go flying across the... Try to kill the engine with water and hit the big stick. Okay, now we're going to smother it with a tarp. We've now angered the machine. The machine is now angry. You dumbass. This is hilarious. Okay, we're gonna smother it with tarp. It's actually gonna work, I think. Oh, here we go. Oh, ride him in the hole. Oh, ride him, cowboy! We're now in the hole, Stan. Oh, hey! Eight seconds, eight seconds. He is now blinded and mad. Look, you can't see! Oh, this is... Oh! This is a YouTube movie. The film is rolling, Howard. All right, now we're going to... Now that we've irritated him, thrown him in the hole, we're up to 18 people now. It'll run out of gas eventually. Grab it. We got $50 to the first person to grab the tarp. $50 and a free lunch. Screw it, man. I don't got any benefits. Oh my gosh, we're still going now. It's not going down, it's fighting. The lions around the Indian gazelle. Oh, there we go, $50. To the gentleman with the antlers. Okay, that's the little bit of comic relief. Let's go on with our business. random acts of rebellion. So you can do form inserts. This is a small piece, but it can be done on a larger scale where rubber is placed in the formwork, rubber with a certain texture or image or something, and then they cast in there. Then the rubber comes off the cured concrete very easily. This is from my studio. This is a former student. And again, on the CNC machine, he took some pink foam and routered it and then cast on it. And they're doing that at a larger scale. And it's very nice. But again, you put something in the form, you pour on it, then you de-shutter it, and then it picks up the texture. So sandblasting is another option, of course. This is at the pre-casting yard, so they have all the equipment they need for sandblasting. This is something I hate, but I felt that I had to put it in there. I call it fake brick, which is quarter-inch bricks. They're put in this form, and they pour the concrete on top of them, and then it looks like crap anyway. Okay, so very good. So a little bit nicer here is the Queen Alia Airport in Jordan, Norman Foster and Partners. It's a very nicely done precast concrete building. versus a rake finish. A rake finish is usually used, it's a rough texture because another pour will come on top of it on the site. This is precast and they did the rake finish and then they're going to pour a topping on the site itself versus a smoother broom finish. There's different textures that can be accomplished in concrete. Brutalist finish is basically Beton Brut in French, started by Le Corbusier. It's in the formwork. It's rough concrete. Okay. Board finish, you have horizontal, you have vertical. Again, a little bit rough texture versus Ando smooth. Here is the Everson Museum by I.M. Pei. It has a lot of interesting textures, very nice building with this monumental stair in the middle. Again, you can see the boards. What they do is they sand them, they clean them, they handpick them, no knots, nothing, and then they pour on them. We can see it here also. A lot of care is paid to the formwork. Or it could be rougher. Again, form inserts. This is the Paul Hurley building in Boston. Paul Rudolph, also a brutalist. You can tell from the concrete. This was slated for destruction. I don't know what ended up happening on this one, if it was preserved or was it gone. I'm sorry, I didn't keep up with it. Okay, so that's it for finishes. I know there's many more finishes. It's just, I like to use the slides I have, so that's.