Jeremy 1.

Dali's diagram of the PCM method

1.

In Delirious New York, Le Corbusier’s fondness of concrete as the material choice of architectural modernism is compared to the Paranoid Critical Method which Dali used as a creative process.

Concrete is hard, but was once infinitely lenient. That something so strong and rigid can have the appearance of an easily manipulated substance is the basis of its potential to be something uncanny and interesting. Probably, this notion is only a result of the current state of technical development of concrete casting, and the uncanniness is only a misunderstanding of the true potential of the material.  

Concrete is heavy, and flows freely in its uncured state, but needs a temporary house that will hold it in place, that will let it cure for several weeks of time.

The vast majority of concrete formwork takes advantage of the stiffness of a material to harness this weight and viscous pressure of concrete to give it a temporary housing. Shutter ply, various kinds of rigid plastic or foam.

Fabric is a material form that, in most cases, completely lenient and elastic to some (sometimes great) degree, thus only carries tension. Fabric concrete casts rely on the weight and viscous pressure of the body of the concrete fluid, and the dimensions + elasticity of the fabric for the form of the product to be determined, or found. It swells and drapes, hangs and expands as forces are applied to it making it inherently more difficult to control with high levels of precision.

Photo credit Toshio Shibata

Decorative columns. via

2.

The first order of fabric casting seems to take on its moldability to create forms that are generally not associated with hard materials, for example to stabilize a fagile ground condition. The columns from C.A.S.T.’s research are interesting as the forms are uncommon in concrete, but they do not perform structural functions, and are purely decorative.

Material System Organization - P Wall. 2009 @ SF MOMA. via

In the case of P wall the formworks take advantage of the ductile nature of fabric, which results in a system that combines elastic fabric, rods and the weight of the material for a configurable setup. each panel is, although made from the same system, a variant of each other.

C.A.S.T. - Flying Vault. via

3.

With a more practical goal in mind, this freeform property of fabric can be used to find optimal geometries for specific structural tasks through catenary exercises.

Here, in a research conducted by C.A.S.T., a square fabric is stretched downwards from a square frame downwards to maintain the modularity intact, resulting in folds or ridges in the fabric where concrete is directly cast off of. While the overall curvature is the response of the fabric to the weight of concrete (or gravity acting on concrete), something that can be achieved with chains or ropes as Gaudi did, the ridges, forming perpendicular to the applied forces, are something inherent to fabric formworks.

Balloon cast porcelain by Miwa Koizumi via

Pre-tensioned thin shell panel by C.A.S.T. via

4.

Here a new possibility seems to be in casting thin shells. While an easily achievable property in other materials like porcelain, similar to concrete but with a fundamental difference in its hardening process, shell casting, or single sided casting of concrete is a relatively new frontier in concrete. there seems to be a possibility for an even more efficient structural application in this method. In this example a fabric is pre-tensioned to create matural fold ribbings, where a shell of concrete is cast off of.