Concrete – a Yearning for the Monolithic

Pre-reading Discussion

1. What is a construction?

2. Concrete has become an important construction material, hasn’t it?

3. What do you think about the construction architecture of the 19^th and 20^th centuries?

4. How can you explain the phrase “a monolithic construction”?

5. Does good knowledge of drawing help to create perfect buildings?

Monolithic buildings radiate a sense of strength. The pervasiveness of a single material, in conjunction with only a few restrained details, creates an agreeable impression of archaic simplicity in our modern society. If one seeks to achieve a unified design for the structure, facade, paving and other ancillary elements of a building in temperate climatic zones, the versatility of concrete makes it the ideal material. Many different surface treatments are possible for the design of facades. In the Swiss embassy in Berlin, Diener sought to achieve a monolithic effect by avoiding all trace of working joints. The walls were concreted in a continuous process over a period of 26 hours.

Another method of circumventing the constraints of joints can be seen in an office building in Munich by MVRDV, where a series of U-shaped precast concrete elements were offset to each other from storey to storey to create a series of projections and recesses. Sometimes the pattern of formwork ties may be exploited to lend the surface a certain structure. In the Scholler Bank in Vienna, however, Jabornegg and Palffy used an elaborate expanding shuttering technique to avoid precisely this effect. The monolithic outward appearance of a concrete building often results in internal complexity, especially in the building physics. An adequate solution can nor­mally be achieved only through the creation of thermally separated inner and outer skins, in which case, care must be taken to avoid cracking caused by extremes of temperature. In the 16-meter-high exposed concrete fa­cade to the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, which was executed without joints, flexible anchors were in­serted between the two skins, and the external wall was prestressed. Monolithic structures may also be differen­tiated and given an individual character through the use of color. In the housing group on the Zurichberg by Gigon/Guyer, mineral pigments were applied to the surface of the concrete to create a matt, "pollen-like" tex­ture. With its red-brown coloration, the guesthouse by Auer and Weber in Chile merges into the desert sur­roundings to become a monolithic relief in the landscape.

Different surface qualities may also be desired internally and externally. The black memorial structure in Sachsenhausen by Schneider/Schumacher seems dematerialized externally by reflections of the surroundings in the long shiny walls. The rays of light entering through the glazed roof strips, however, highlight the rough-textured natural grey face of the internal skin, thereby augmenting the massive effect of the interior.

The various forms of surface treatment that are possible with concrete also allow the simulation of natu­rally monolithic materials. Rem Koolhaas, for example, used the texture of traditional Japanese fortifications as a kind of collage in his housing development in Fukuoka.

With its 50 cm external walls, the house in Flasch by Andrea Deplazes is truly monolithic. To achieve the necessary thermal insulation, a special type of expanded concrete was developed, foamed to form hollow pores in the material. Steel reinforcement was replaced with polypropylene fibers. The use of sawn vertical boarded formwork reduced the danger of pockets and defects. The outer surface was treated with a water-repellent coat­ing. The building is certainly experimental, but it also marks a step back to the original qualities of simple monolithic forms of construction, which hold a promise for the future.