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The beauty of concrete
- simonsarris 2y agoI have a budding rose garden that I would like to adorn with statuary. One problem is that I have a tight budget. A second problem is that if you look at garden centers you will see its easy to find 9000 different cast stone frogs: frogs meditating, frogs reading books, frogs thinking, frogs with a purse and shopping bags, frogs in an Adirondack chair, frogs hugging, reclining frog, etc. It is surprisingly difficult, however, to find cast stone classical or ancient sculptures outside of a few pastiche renditions. I find this extremely odd! I would think there would be a large market for beautiful cast stone things. Instead, there is (apparently) an extraordinary market for concrete frogs. I figured that in the era of 3D printing and widespread 3D models[1], it might be fairly inexpensive to make my own mold and pour my own casts, even if I do destructive casting techniques. Here again I was disappointed: To order a 3D plastic print from a site like ShapeWays came out to over $1300 for something fairly small. So that's off the table, too. I expected more democratization of ornament than there really has been, given the tech today. It's surprising to me that no one is trying to make silicone molds available of famous statues, generally, but I guess there's just no interest or no perceived demand. Or maybe there is a big market, and I've missed it, because I was not searching for silicone molds of frogs. [1] For instance, The British Museum has a sketchfab with free models: https://sketchfab.com/britishmuseum https://sketchfab.com/britishmuseum
- treflop 2y agoSilicone is actually surprisingly expensive. I’ve done cast stone… poured into cast silicone… which was cast from 3D printer molds… which was printed from my own 3D models… and silicone was by far the most expensive part. It only made sense because I was casting a lot of stone molds.
- Spastche 2y agouse latex, and if it's big enough, back it with fiberglass. that seems to be the common way to make molds on youtube
- pvg 2y agoI like the idea that technology might eventually change or increase the variance of McMansion outdoor decor tastes. It seems reasonably within expectations that ornamental concrete frogs are a bigger market than ornamental naked dudes holding up a severed head, tough, no?
- nuancebydefault 2y agoI think the reason that large (cast) stone is very expensive is not the creative part or the molds. It is mostly the storing and transportation. Storing is hard because of the space it takes and manual labour to move the heavy item when reorganizing. Transportation is costly for the same reasons and additionally it can easily damage and any damage causes it to suddenly have virtually zero value.
- bccdee 2y agoWhy not cast on site? A silicone mould is light and durable, and while pouring concrete isn't easy, I don't think it's prohibitively challenging. You could ship the mould, cast on location, and return the mould for a refunded deposit.
- krisoft 2y agoBecause that won’t be cheaper. Yes shipping statues is expensive, but setting up an impromptu workshop in your garden then tearing it down only after one cast is going to cost even more.
- bccdee 2y agoI assume you wouldn't just cast one thing. Obviously it's not ideal if you just want one statue, but the concept scales well. You could get two moulds and do a dozen statues over a couple weeks.
- lostapathy 2y agoYou're going to have a hell of a time getting very many objects out of a mold meant to hold concrete for an interesting lawn ornament. Especially when in the hands of a renter who's probably by definition never used the process.
- bccdee 2y agoI dunno, some light searching reveals that they lots of latex moulds for lawn ornaments are for sale on Etsy. It seems like these things are out there.
- acomjean 2y agoIn somerville MA about 10 years ago someone was selling mini easter-island heads as lawn statues, which I though was a great idea.
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- Swizec 2y agoThere's a dude from Slovenia who makes cement casts of famous philosophers! Although I think they're more desk than garden sized. https://www.etsy.com/shop/jurgenstudio https://www.etsy.com/shop/jurgenstudio
- Animatronio 2y agoHe's also on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jurgenwerk https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jurgenwerk
- sdwr 2y agoI think it's about whether you see the work directly, or through a lens of status consciousness. You are saying: - classical statues are beautiful, I like beautiful things And they are saying: - classical statues belong in palaces, and I don't own a palace, or want people to think that I'm reaching above my status
- boustrophedon 2y agoThere are several sites with instant quotes that are cheaper than Shapeways. PCBWay and JLCPCB both offer similarly-priced very cheap 3d printing and CNC services out of China. Weerg in Italy also offers 3d printing and CNC services and I'm probably going to try them out for the next thing I need printed. The only non-marketplace service I've seen in the US that offers instant quotes is i-solids in Texas, but they have quite high startup costs and seem to be more geared towards small-medium production runs.
- adolph 2y agoThere’s always Lego for concrete casting: https://youtu.be/C3EcdyQECBY https://youtu.be/C3EcdyQECBY
- i1856511 2y agoWhen I looked myself in my local garden center, I actually found over 9,000!
- anon291 2y agoJust go to estate sales.
- jahewson 2y agoInstead of a plastic 3D print you might be able to get away with CNC milled foam.
- dyauspitr 2y agoFoam as a concrete mold? I don’t think it’s going to keep it shape and even if it did the surface and details are going to be terrible.
- krisoft 2y ago> To order a 3D plastic print from a site like ShapeWays came out to over $1300 for something fairly small. If you are on the DIY path could you possibly find a hackspace and print it for yourself?
- krisoft 2y agoFurther clarification: the reason I’m asking is because I’m a member of a hackspace in Oxford, and this is the kind of project we would both love to support a member with and have all the tools to help. Obviously i don’t imagine that you live close to us, but maybe you have other similar places near you?
- NegativeLatency 2y agoEver thought about taking up stone carving? The tools are surprisingly simple.
- KineticLensman 2y agoUK here. Our garden centres do have faux classical statues but then again we also have plastic garden gnomes. As in the film Gnomeo and Juliet but without the Elton John back catalogue.
- onthecanposting 2y agoBuy a quality printer for their asking price and make your own molds. If it's fairly large, you may want to put the mold in sand for support, or cast in sections. Just remember to leave yourself pick points for lifting, and use dowels to join your segments. Embed a little steel, like a mesh, if any parts may be in tension or subject to bending. You've discovered a market with unmet needs!
- kurthr 2y agoOne cheaper and easier thing to do is to shape foam which can be done with hot wire 3D cutters into fairly large sizes (like baby elephants) and then put mesh and concrete on the surface. They look heavy depending and can last outside for decades if done properly, but are much easier to move than concrete versions. When you see a lot of large commercial outdoor concrete or mosaic structures this is how they're made.
- thunderbird120 2y agoIt's interesting to think that rather than being destroyed by becoming too expensive, ornamentation may have died because it became too cheap. A lot of ornamentation existed to show off wealth and status, but if everyone can have it thanks to improvements in production then it doesn't do that anymore. It's unfortunate that making buildings look nice seems to be secondary to other types of status signaling. It's hardly a new issue either. When the Chrysler Building was completed in 1930 it was criticized for being gaudy for having the nerve to actually try to have some style. >"Lewis Mumford, a supporter of the International Style and one of the foremost architectural critics of the United States at the time, despised the building for its "inane romanticism, meaningless voluptuousness, [and] void symbolism".
- dullcrisp 2y agoI don’t know, you can look at it as because gaudy, ostentatious displays of wealth have become impossible, we’ve become able to focus on other things (yes, including subtler displays of wealth). If the ornamentation had value outside of signaling, it’s now readily available to everyone, as the article says. But I’m not sure how much I believe that. Fashion is fashion. I’m sure there is a hypothetical present where minimalism isn’t valued nearly as much. But I still think that’s mostly orthogonal to how much people care about aesthetics.
- anon291 2y agoWe've lost more than intricate ornamentation. We've lost ornament as a thing that regular people 'ought' to be around. I think it's interesting how Americans often assume that ornament is meant to display wealth, and is thus some sign of show-offness. I think the opposite is often the case. Ornament displayed in public is actually meant for public enjoyment. It's a form of philanthropy when done by a private wealthy individual, and a form of public works when done by the state. Humans deserve to live in beautiful environs. We should strive for that, but we've regressed greatly, with even wealthy neighborhoods being devoid of nice beautiful public spaces (except for a handful in particular cities). The average Roman peasant would have been exposed to more ornamentation in their life than the typical American. Whereas Americans would be driving by endless McDonalds, Starbucks, and strip mall number 523, a Roman peasant would have seen the great triumphal arcs, the facades of the great buildings, etc. It's just a complete loss. Anyone who's been to an older city in Europe or Asia knows exactly what we're missing. When ornament is a thing that exists, whether private or public, the whole public enjoys it regardless.
- mbforbes 2y agoI've been randomly thinking about this a lot! One hypothesis I've been kicking around: human brains like detail. I thought of this on a walk down a (sub)urban city street. - High detail: I first noticed the variety of plants in just the garden strips between the sidewalk and the street. I was trying to count how many there were, and I quickly lost track. Then I started looking at each individual plant, and the amount of detail is wild---the sheer intricacy and variation in all the parts and stages of growth. Not to mention the colors (OK, and smell and movement). Then, I looked at the human made objects around me: - Low detail: Flat concrete road. Flat concrete sidewalk. Flat stairs. All from rectangular tiles. Metal pole handrail. The houses around weren't much better---boxy shapes, low ornamentation. While I think it's generally accepted that nature is more pleasing to the senses to be around human-created objects, it made me wonder whether amount of detail is a fundamental aspect of what our brains enjoy. This rumination gets activated whenever I walk by old ornate buildings or read an article like this. Relatedly, even low-poly games people find beautiful (Tunic comes to mind) have an extraordinary amount of detail when you dissect the textures and postprocessing effects. I'd share a video but I'm way off track now.
- interstice 2y agoI’ve wondered if an abundance of processing leads to parts of the brain ‘wanting’ to be utilised at a subconscious level. Like a bored border collie but it’s the visual cortex
- alexpetralia 2y agoI think something can have a lot of detail (granularity) but not necessarily be appealing. I imagine it's more like patterned detail, so fractal patterns which can expand into substantial and endless detail.
- maxglute 2y agoArchitects spend a lot of time doing "detailing", it's inevitable part of design and construction. Most of is simply not very good, or at least average human effort has hard time competing against nature. There's many aesthetically pleasing "tectonics", designs lacking in detail (ornamentation), but delightful in perception. Not that nature is always great, but on average it does feel more pleasing.
- ajuc 2y agoIt's weird that the obvious wasn't mentioned in the article nor here: cars change how you perceive cities. When you're walking you have time to apreciate ornaments on nearby buildings and you can see the whole buildings around you. When you're driving you don't have time to see anything that is close (as it whizzes by), the car roof occludes anything higher than the 1st floor, and anything that is far you can't see in detail. What's the point of ornaments when 90% of people won't see them? So instead of detailed ornaments people design buildings that look nice from 2 km away. Even the difference between walking and biking is huge. The same street visited by bike feels completely different than on foot. With cars you're basically half-blind. You no longer see the buildings around you - at best you might see the skyline on the horizon. I blame cars for the modern buildings' lack of decorations.
- mkoubaa 2y agoMy theory is population growth. When population doesn't grow more older buildings get reused and fewer ones are built, so society can afford to ornament new constructions. When the babies boomed, you got Sears catalog houses.
- pfdietz 2y agoIf you look at the last 12 US census figures, the highest population growth rate, in percentage terms, was in the 1910 census. Sears only sold about 75,000 house kits, btw.
- em-bee 2y agoi am surprised that this article is talking about concrete and ornamentation but then doesn't mention brutalism. isn't brutalism the very essence of using concrete without ornamentation?
- krapp 2y agoYes, but brutalism is anything but beautiful. It wouldn't make sense in an article showcasing cathedrals and statues to then say "here's a concrete eyesore that looks as if the concept of fascist bureaucracy manifested as a machine that feeds on human souls."
- em-bee 2y agothat's my point. brutalism is ugly. concrete without ornamentation is ugly. but concrete can look beautiful with ornamentation. it's not the concrete that makes brutalism ugly, but the lack of ornamentation. i didn't mean that the article should showcase brutalist examples, but where it talks about more modern architecture using less and less ornamentation, brutalism is the worst outgrowth of that, so i thought it would make sense to at least mention that.
- anta40 2y agoI assume brutalism is.... too "emotionless" or Sci Fi-ish (e.g Blade Runner)?
- medo-bear 2y agoBrutalism is anything but fascistic (social housing). In fact brutalism is the extreme emphasis of simplicity and minimalism through mathematical forms. Fascist architecture (and fashion and art in general) on the other hand is extremely ornamental. But in a world that quickly forgets what Nazism and Fascism really is you might be forgiven for your ignorance.
- PhilipRoman 2y agoFascists were surprisingly "progressive" in the original meaning of the word. Hitler himself was quoted saying that form follows function and if you look at the plans for their new capital, I would not call it particularly ornamented. I guess "imposing" would be a better description. It's a similar story with the more detailed blackletter fonts - "Your alleged Gothic internalization does not fit well in this age of steel and iron, glass and concrete" It is a big mistake to conflate traditionalism/conservatism with fascism/nazism, these movements were inherently modern, even when the majority of people under them were not (as is the case in most of the world - the politically active minority creates revolutionary ideologies which are then stripped down to only the essentials by the pragmatic masses).
- walterburns 2y agoThe invention of the steel core made the stone facade unnecessary to support the building, so most new buildings are covered in glass instead of stone. That's related to less ornamentation, but to me that's the big distinction between beautiful old buildings and ugly new ones. It also created a tremendous energy efficiency issue. Stone has much higher thermal mass than glass.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoI don’t know that the energy efficiency calculation is that simple. Stone is much more mass to move in the first place, and modern glass and insulation technology is very, very good.
- mkl 2y agoAlso much more light from big windows making a nicer interior, and an exterior much easier to clean.
- devilbunny 2y agoDepends on where you live. In a hot, humid climate, that thermal mass works against you because it never cools off enough to let you be passively cool. In a desert that gets cold at night despite hot days, it can work.
- muyuu 2y agothe steel core made it possible to made full glass facades, but it didn't make it necessary it was even more so of a conscious decision not to use any ornamentation that they weren't limited to stone facades (btw many steel core buildings had stone facades until recently, among other materials like precast concrete - in the financial district of London most buildings pre 2010 are not glass, and most post 2010 are) it just seems to be the case that the ruling elites like those buildings, and that's the main reason they are pervasive across skylines
- pfdietz 2y agoThe other thing that happened was plate glass got cheap after WW2 when the Pilkington float glass process was introduced.
- akomtu 2y agoArchitecture at large scale is built by the rich, it's the product of their minds. They could decorate it any way they want, but they choose not to, as it "doesn't add value", "it's not efficient" and "it's not productive". Architecture shows what their minds look like: machine-like, ugly in their raw efficiency. The common folk still decorate their houses and front yards if they have one. It's still unheard of to live in a grey cube with concrete slabs instead of the lawn and flowers. This slow shift in architecture style also means an eclipse of the ability of humanity to perceive beauty in general. The eclipse is temporary, but it lasts for centuries and we are yet to see its darkest moment. All this talk about productivity and efficiency is another face of this eclipse.
- cess11 2y agoI find constructing with sand hard to accept as beautiful. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2713680/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2713680/
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- paperhatwriter 2y agoHackernews talking architecture always gives me the shivers.
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- frou_dh 2y agoAre you saying I need more in my toolkit than the two words Brutalist and McMansion?
- pfdietz 2y agoAh, beautiful concrete, producing a kilogram of CO2 for each kilogram of product.
- shortsunblack 2y agoConcrete lasts longer. Concrete also absorbs CO2 from air. In its lifetime, it is expected to absorb all the CO2 emissions. Emissions do not really matter for a material that can last hundreds of years. Genociding old growth forests in Europe for biomass "renewable" energy, though. That's a problem.
- anovikov 2y agoHere's my take: large format sheet glass that is safe and durable, has become much more available due to technological change, allowing for construction of buildings with much more sunlight, enabling interior designs which are both a lot more pleasant and let extract more rent. Glass exterior leaves less space for ornament and also makes the ornament less visible and even somewhat of an eyesore.
- analog31 2y ago>>>> Baumol illustrated ‘cost disease’ with the example of a string quartet. A string quartet produces no more live music today than it did in the nineteenth century, but the cost of hiring one has risen greatly. Has anybody actually studied the cost of hiring a string quartet?
- kayodelycaon 2y agoBased on my very limited experience running events, you could easily hire a professional one for a single performance for a few thousand dollars. For an amateur group, hundreds. Modern logistics and construction has significantly reduced secondary costs. Cost per calorie of food is nearly free compared to the past.
- analog31 2y agoIndeed, and my experience comes from being a musician. I'm in a jazz quartet, but both of my kids are in string quartets, one is a professional. One thing that might make it hard to study is that the cost depends on the event and what's actually being delivered. Everybody charges a premium for weddings and corporate events. But those things also have to run absolutely like clockwork. On the other hand, the bands I'm in are also happy to charge a lower price for a "budget" wedding that isn't a $100000 Disney blowout. Everybody charges different if travel is involved. What most ensembles do is, first, book as many high-dollar gigs as possible. Then, fill in the holes in the schedule with lesser gigs. The best musicians in my locale will take a $50 gig if the alternative is staying home.
- xyzzyz 2y agoThis is insanely expensive by historic standards. $1000 worth of purchasing power back in medieval Europe would pay laborer wages for a year, not a day.
- antihipocrat 2y agoBy that logic everything is insanely expensive. Adjust for inflation and it would look much more reasonable. There are also four people earning wages in a quartet.
- m0llusk 2y agoThis raises issues, but may be missing some important points. Regarding the philosophy of ornament or not, brutalist architects were obsessed with texture. Many buildings that may seem at first to be without ornament actually had a huge amount of effort put into casting their concrete forms with rows of fins that stick out and are later roughly pounded back to form a particular look. This cost a lot of extra money even though it comes off as a rather plain texture to many. And when it comes to cost analysis this take is very shallow. An interesting counterexample is the recent rebuilding of a hospital in Chinatown, San Francisco. The initial designs were extremely plain and boxy based on the idea that every bit of money spent on ornament could be spent on life saving devices instead. Only when a foundation was formed to raise money specifically for ornamentation of the building was that added to the design.
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