With new innovations, concrete breaks the mold

Considering the ubiquity of concrete in the visual landscape, in the form of sidewalks, bridges and apartment buildings, it seems disingenuous to talk about concrete as a new design trend.

[...] this humble material, comprising water, aggregate (of rock, sand and/or gravel) and cement, is shifting into high gear for residential and commercial use, thanks to innovations over the past 20 years in materials, modeling software and milling machinery.

Mark Rogero, owner and president of design and fabrication studio Concreteworks in Oakland, says, There’s renewed excitement about the authenticity and substance of concrete.

According to the Cement Sustainability Initiative, concrete is the most widely used man-made material on the planet.

“Once you put rebar into concrete, it had tensile and compressive strength, and could be much more expressive,” says Fu-Tung Cheng, principal/CEO of Cheng Design in Berkeley and author of several authoritative books on concrete design in the home.

By the 1950s, however, concrete in design had started to play understudy to glass, steel and plastic, and remained in the background through the 1980s.

[...] advanced computer numerical control (CNC) machining techniques transformed those materials and design concepts into reality.

“We could make the beauty of concrete more accessible,” says Rogero, who with a staff of 45 in Oakland and a new fabrication facility in Alameda undertakes 400 to 500 commercial and residential projects each year.

Concreteworks’ projects range from bus shelters imprinted with topographical maps and fanciful organic shapes for the city of San Jose, to soaking tubs at Carmel Valley Ranch, to banquettes, bars and bathroom sinks at SoMa’s Bar Agricole.

Design, Form, and Finishes for the New Kitchen and Bath (Taunton Press), which remains a best-selling resource for homeowners and architects.

In 2006, Cheng was inducted into the National Kitchen and Bath Association Hall of Fame, and he continues to lead a team of architects and designers in custom home and commercial projects.

Cheng wrote two follow-up books on concrete design and in 2002 established the Concrete Exchange, a concrete countertop supply business and learning center for the trade.

Cheng says, “Originally the classes were aimed at union concrete workers, but as the books sold, we got all kinds of people, from ex-dot-com guys to one of the ‘Brady Bunch’ kids” — that would be Mike Lookinland, a.k.a. Bobby Brady — “learning how to pour concrete.”

When it comes to the allure of the viscous composite of dirt and water that hardens into concrete, Concreteworks owner Mark Rogero says, “What we do brings out the inner 10-year-old; there’s a primordial instinct to make things.”

Another is a snowy white sculptural screen separating public and private areas of a Sonoma home, its clean crosshatch design imbued with depth and dimensionality, and created using 3-D printing technology.

The Exchange website includes a library of how-to videos, like “How to Make Recycled Glass Countertops” and “Make a Concrete and Wooden Bench,” as well as links to purchase concrete mixes, tools and equipment.

Though it just started hitting Home Depot store shelves in September, ShapeCrete already won the award for best design material 2015 from the annual Dwell on Design show.