The exhibition Concrete in All its forms is reopening throughout August at the UQAM Centre de Design in Montréal, Canada. Created by artist and architect Mark West, the exhibition takes the traditional conception of concrete and turns it on its head.
ThisThe works are a surreal mix, absorbing elements of architecture and structure and transforming concrete into something less industrial and rigid, to something that contains more emotion and subtelety.
To expose the often ignored artistic undertones of materials such as concrete, West has taken to flexible moulding for columns, walls, beams, slabs, and compression shells, for both pre-cast and in-situ constructions.
The use of this form of casting creates “biomimetic constructions that use the mold’s flexibility to produce castings that follow more efficient, naturally curved, structural force-paths, producing highly efficient structural shapes, as well as complex curvatures of stunning natural beauty.”
West’s take on concrete stems from the thirty years he has spent utilising “simple, flat, un-tailored, sheets of fabric” as a mould, a process that results in an entirely transformed material. His insistence on this simple style ensures his technical inventions are “accessible to both low-tech and high-tech building economies and cultures.”
West is the author of The Fabric Formwork Book (Routledge, 2016), the founder of the Centre for Architectural Structures and Technology (CAST) at the University of Manitoba, and has a long history of architectural and visual explorations. He collaborated with Louise Pelletier for Concrete in All its Forms and the exhibition is open until the 27th August 2020, Monday to Thursday from 12pm to 6pm.
More on the exhibition can be found here.
All photos from UQAM Centre de design.
Mark West
Centre de Design
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