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Slow-Motion Demolition: Expanding Agent Cracks Concrete from Within

17 Jul

[ By WebUrbanist in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

Going forward, buildings may not need to go out with a bang if this “non-explosive cracking agent” takes off. The destructive action is quieter and potentially cleaner way to take out structures, break down old infrastructure or excavate building sites.

Betonamit is boasted to be a non-toxic powder that, when mixed with water and poured in to drilled holes, much like TNT, but instead of exploding, it “hardens and expands, exerting pressures of 12,000 psi. Reinforced concrete, boulders, and ledge are fractured overnight with no noise, vibration, or flyrock.” It’s not the only such stuff, but claims to be the first (other brands include the cleverly-named Crackamite).

Like some kind of anti-concrete, the dry powder is mixed with water — thus activated, it is poured into place. It is advertised for indoor use, as well as bridges, dams, limestone, boulders and concrete slabs. Seems like great stuff for large-scale artwork of some kind, but there don’t appear to be many such applications as yet.

Geoff Manaugh of BldgBlog wonders, though, what happens when something goes wrong. He writes: “I’m imagining a truck full of this stuff overturning on a crack-laden bridge somewhere, just an hour before a rainstorm begins, or a storage yard filled with crates of this stuff being ripped apart in the summer wind; a seemingly innocuous grey powder drifts out across an entire neighborhood for the next few hours, settling down into cracks on brick rooftops and stone facades, in sidewalks and roadbeds. Then the rains begin. The city crumbles. Weaponized demolition powder.”

[ By WebUrbanist in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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Architectural Relics: When Demolition Leaves Behind Nonsensical Structures

19 Jan

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

thomasson-2

Steps that go nowhere, pedestrian walkways that dead-end into elevated bridges, doors that open out into mid-air: these so-called ‘Thomassons’ are what happens when workers demolishing an outdated structure leave part of it behind, whether out of necessity or laziness. Ultimately, they become almost sculptural in their absurdity, visual ties to the past of a particular place. Walking up one of those staircases to nowhere almost seems like it could be the key to time travel.

thomasson-10

thomasson-3

Japanese artist Akasegawa Genpei named these nonfunctional structures ‘thomassons’ or ‘hyperart thomassons’ in the ’80s in reference to a baseball player with a ‘useless position’ on his team. He noted one such structure in Tokyo in 1972, a staircase that had no entranceway once you reach the top. Discovering more around the city, Akasegawa began giving them names like “the useless window of Ekoda,” building a collection that was published as a book called Chogeijutsu Tomason.

thomasson-5

thomasson-6

thomasson-7

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A photo posted by ???? ?????????Y????? (@ytanet) on Feb 24, 2016 at 10:49pm PST

These days, images of such relics are collected via Instagram tags, on the Hyperart: Thomasson tumblr and on Reddit. There’s even a Thomasson Observation Center on Facebook, accepting public submissions and curating them into new visual references.

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A photo posted by uu_architects (@uu_architects) on Dec 24, 2016 at 5:22pm PST

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A photo posted by ??????/masataka matsuoka (@masatakamatsuoka) on Dec 23, 2016 at 8:37pm PST

thomasson-wikimedia-1

thomasson-wikimedia-2

Like the human appendix, these vestigial structures have long since ceased to be useful, yet somehow they’re still around, even as the world constantly shifts and changes. That in itself is pretty strange and incredible.

(images: Mathieu C, Matthew Fargo, Seng Chen and mindbomb via hyperart thomasson tumblr; reddit; wikimedia commons)

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

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Saving Face: ‘Ghost Facade’ Preservation Worse Than Demolition?

12 Feb

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

ghastly grafted facade example

London is filled with grafted facades, nearly two-dimensional artifacts held in place while updated buildings are constructed behind them; many seem to haphazardly half-disguise the boring new structures on which they are grafted. While other cities have done similar, the sheer volume of them in this East End neighborhood is astonishing.

facade combination abomination

The writer behind Spitalfields Life, a web publication, does not mince words in reacting to this partial approach to preservation, which “threatens to turn the city into the back lot of an abandoned movie studio …. As if I were being poked repeatedly in the eye with a blunt stick, I cannot avoid becoming increasingly aware of a painfully cynical trend in London architecture.”

facade ghost grafting

In further criticisms, The Gentle Author bemoans the results as a compromise between “cowed planning authorities” and “architects … humiliated into creating passive-aggressive structures.” Perhaps this gives insufficient credit to architects, some of whom also fall guilty to facadism at times, and have been known to prioritize the exterior over the plan, skin over skeleton, form over function.

facade stabilized new structure

It is dangerous to suppose that preservation is necessarily binary. Compromises are almost inevitably made over time to keep architectural functional, through essential electrical and plumbing retrofits to more debatable code-related upgrades and updates. There is also a case to be made that the streets are a public room of which buildings are the walls, so preserving facades (properly, at least) can maintain the public’s experience of a place.

facadism preservation

Nonetheless, whether you approve of the general approach or cannot see the apologist’s point of view, it is hard to argue against the examples: the executions documented by The Gentle Author range from mediocre to outright terrible. In short: there may be a right way to approach preserving facades as part of new structures, but many architects are doing it wrong.

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

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Divisible Design: Modular House Anticipates Partial Demolition

14 Oct

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

modular house potential street

While nothing is set in stone as yet, the city of Tokyo has plans to build a road through this residential plot, forcing architects working on the site to craft an ingenious future-proof solution for potential partial destruction.

modular 3 piece house

modular demolition house japan

Faced with a long history of earthquakes, Japanese architecture has a long history of ephemerality, but this challenge is of a more controlled nature: an expanded street is slated to eventually slice at an angle through the property, hence a home designed to break into pieces.

modular home site plan

modular home road area

Japanese architects Starpilots call their creation Housecut, a direct reference to this core dilemma. The house-and-office they crafted for the site is composed of three structurally independent volumes, anticipating the possibility that one or two may be demolished.

modular home interior slice

modular home bathroom box

The family runs a funeral home, lives in the structure and wants to maintain a business and domestic presence in the remaining space should part of their live/work building be removed. While the warehouse, break room and other elements may go, their goal is to at least maintain a reception area for clients if the city does eventually proceed with its plans.

modular home deck area

modular home corner view

For now, two residential areas border a central entry and are lofted above the business below. Everything is designed with dual endgames in mind, at once spacious and open but able to be reconfigured to make maximum use in a scenario where much of the building vanishes.

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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Ghost Architecture: Unconscious Art of Building Demolition

20 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

void building architectural photos

When a free-standing building is razed there is often little left to tell its story, but in places where structures directly abut one another there are sometimes amazing traces of not just buildings but floor plans, wall placements, staircases and even room contents.

void building demolition art

Like architectural section drawings, remnant spaces can be extrapolated from two-dimensional clues, like material transitions, degree of weathering, surface shapes and color shifts. Occasionally, there are even three-dimensional fixtures still hanging on, like the showers, sinks and toilets in one of the pictures above.

ghost void building

The Unconscious Art of Demolition is a Flickr photography group that focuses on these accidental works of ghost architecture – leftover structural voids and the spaces they imply.

void structure implied volume

In the process of observing and photographing, these passers by and onlookers are turned into amateur documentarians and de facto archaeologists, discerning and (at least subconsciously) projecting patterns into ambiguous urban decay.

void architecture building examples

Some take an abstract approach, zooming in on the rich materials where parts of walls were left and other pieces ripped away. Others take a broader focus, highlighting building outlines and implied interiors. Still others capture works of street art placed within the flat landscapes one can imagine inside of these non-buildings.

void building street art

Images included here are by Steven Kunstler, Merrick Brown, Daniel Lobo, Thomas Hobbs, Dave Meyer and Xenmate, but many more can be found in the aforementioned Flickr group with over 500 images and members.

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

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Incredible Shrinking Building: Top-Down Demolition in Style

31 Jan

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

demolition top down

Japanese culture is commonly thought of as being centered around quiet politeness and public respect. If so, this may be a physical representation of that interpretation -a remarkably subtle and deferential structure-destroying process with many levels of conscientious thought behind it (not to mention a brilliant visual effect, per the video below).

demolition process deconstruction phases

This elegant form of razing is “reverse engineering” in a much more literal sense – taking apart what has been put together with equal care. The strange structure that seems to move down the building does just that: at each stage, it is held up, then strategically lowered as the process unfolds, making it appear as if the building is shrinking (perhaps imperceptibly to pedestrians, but noticeable as time lapses).

Demolition might be too strong a word: Taisei’s Ecological Reproduction System (aka Tecorep) caps buildings and proceeds to disassemble them piece by piece and level by level in order to reuse intact components and materials.

building deconstruction by floor

The process does more than just aid in reuse – it lower environmental impact, from dust and debris to sound, all of which are buffered. And as elements are dropped down by crane, the power generated by that release of potential energy serves to generate electricity for the deconstruction efforts. The entire system is, in short, incredibly considerate and extremely well thought-out.

360Photography

Posts Tagged ‘Demolition’

Slow-Motion Demolition: Expanding Agent Cracks Concrete from Within

Architectural Relics: When Demolition Leaves Behind Nonsensical Structures

Saving Face: ‘Ghost Facade’ Preservation Worse Than Demolition?

Divisible Design: Modular House Anticipates Partial Demolition

Ghost Architecture: Unconscious Art of Building Demolition

Incredible Shrinking Building: Top-Down Demolition in Style

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360Photography

Posts Tagged ‘Demolition’

Slow-Motion Demolition: Expanding Agent Cracks Concrete from Within

Architectural Relics: When Demolition Leaves Behind Nonsensical Structures

Saving Face: ‘Ghost Facade’ Preservation Worse Than Demolition?

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Divisible Design: Modular House Anticipates Partial Demolition

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Ghost Architecture: Unconscious Art of Building Demolition

Incredible Shrinking Building: Top-Down Demolition in Style

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