Omer Arbel - chair

Another chair today made of concrete.
Omer Arbel, the Vancouver-based designer of the lauded 1.2 Shelf, has used ductile concrete—usually an infrastructural material—in its first application as furniture. Arbel’s 8.0 Chair—the inaugural piece in what the designer anticipates will be a series of outdoor pieces—has the pallor of a sunbaked Nevada salt flat and seems to project in all directions. “The concrete is very, very, very, very strong,” Arbel says. “It allows me to create this incredibly thin, cantilevering form.’

Links:
http://www.omerarbel.com/
http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20050514/80-a-ductile-concrete-chair
http://minimalissimo.com/2009/11/8-0-concrete-chair/

Chesterfield concrete sofa by GrayConcrete UK

http://www.grayconcrete.co.uk/ created a chesterfield sofa for the garden. Might be uncomfortable without cushions but surely undestroyable.

via chariblog
http://www.chairblog.eu/2011/05/02/concrete-chesterfield-sofa-by-gray-concrete/

Concrete necklaces - Bergnershmidt

Beautiful concrete jewellery - and you can buy it online. Great xmas presents.

When Ludwig Mies van der Rohe proclaimed: „please do not confuse the simple with the simple minded“, he characterized the formal principle of the label BERGNERSCHMIDT. 

The clothes and jewellery are reduced to form to focus on their essence and have been conceived on the basis of the Bauhaus maxim ’less is more’. 
The ’baustoff’ collection combines purist and constructive expression with subtle femininity in the contrasting materials silk, silver and concrete. 
Each piece of jewellery is handmade and therefore has a unique character.

MATERIAL: concrete

COLOUR: grey/black

DIMENSIONS: length 5,5 cm, depth 0,5 cm, ∅ 6,5 cm"

Oh, I'm already in love with these...

Concrete infographics - for floors

Here we go. This is the perfect merge of our professions: concrete and infographics. This blog has almost reached nirvana. Unfortunatelly there is no art involved. The survey is about concrete floors.

But look at that! Cool infographics created some really useful stuff about the conception of concrete and use of concrete flooring.

People would normally go for multiple colours but then... the next most popular are brown tones.Ugh. How come?

Mircea Cantor

Moloko Magazine is featuring Mircea Cantor today - and this should be a special post for us too to showcase his work.

Especially that one of the blog's contributor, Ferenc Csurgai was very (very) closely involved in the process of creating the huge Christmas presents as a collaborator. And yes...they are really huge. They are very actual at the end of the year in the festive season indeed.

Of course these are all made of concrete.

see more: http://www.mirceacantor.ro/see.htm

Max Bill - Endless Ribbon

Searching for concrete art on Google I've stumbled into another concrete-related blog here on blogspot.com.

artconcrete.blogspot.com is also collecting concrete related art and I found Max Bill's sculpture there.

Concrete art was closely related to constructivism, an earlier movement that tried to reflect the industrial world by constructing art or sculpture through processes similar to what industry might have used. "Constructivism is a purely technical mastery and organisation of materials," said a 1923 manifesto. You can understand how constructivism influenced concrete art in the avoidance of meaning and symbolism.

Will follow Art Concrete in the future - hope they'll carry on with interesting findings from the world of concrete art.

Anish Kapoor - Concrete Piping Machine

Anish Kapoor is a celebrity and there's no need to introduce him. He has several works exhibited around London and wins ever growing number of prizes each year.

However I didn't know that last September he had an exhibition at the Royal Academy.

He created a machine (well, it's a pipe, connected to a computer) that creates formed material. The result is this endless spaghetti (let's consider it a spaghetti for now) which covered the whole floor of the gallery.

Royal Academy went further than calling it spaghetti:
[...] "using a computer programme similar to those employed by architects, a technician translates them into instructions that guide the machine. The process is simple: liquid concrete is shovelled into a hopper, from where it travels along a plastic pipe to be extruded in long, intestinal coils or short, turd-like lengths that accumulate to make up different forms; so far there are pyramids, nests, boats, triangles, ovals, lattices, spirals, beds, cubes and cylinders. The texture of some is dry and crumbly, while others appear liquid; some are dark grey, others spotted with white blobs of the polystyrene added to lessen the weight."

Sources:
http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/ra-magazine/autumn-2009/features/
http://nialldebuitlear.com/blog/?p=623
http://barnmotskogen.blogspot.com/2009/11/anish-kapoor-royal-academy-of-arts_18.html 
http://www.anishkapoor.com/