Concrete
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cepts involving extensive prefabrication. Although these systematic approaches did not become established in construction technology or economy, these experiments were an important (first) step on the path to indus trialising building [2]. In the 1950s and 1960s large panel construction – building with large format, load-bearing walls – became widespread. While prefabricated system construction resulted in the building of very schematic facades on a massive scale, postmodern architecture almost reversed this approach, using prefabrication and the plastic malleability of concrete elem ents to create arbitrary interplays of colours and forms. Architects like Angelo Mangiarotti (see p. 116), Bernhard Hermkes (Architecture faculty building at the Technische Universität Berlin, 1968, Fig. B 3.4), Gottfried Böhm and Eckhard Gerber formulated architectural responses. Böhm’s administration building for Züblin AG in Stuttgart (1984) shows a sophisticated treatment of the forms and colours of precast elements. Gerber used orthogonal planar steel-reinforced facade elements in a structurally clear way to clad the columns and spandrel panels of an office building in Dortmund (1994). “Heavy-duty prefabrication” is once again an option from a technical and design point of view. Architects such as Thomas von Ballmoos, Bruno Krucker (Stöckenacker housing estate in Zurich, 2002) and Léon Wohlhage Wernik (Sozialverband headquarters in Berlin, 2003) have planned buildings with storey-high, multilayered precast elements that vary slightly in size and create a harmonious result.
B 3.2 Priory of Sainte-Marie-de-la-Tourette, Éveux (FR) 1960, Le Corbusier B 3.3 Pilgrimage Cathedral, Neviges (DE) 1968, Gottfried Böhm B 3.4 Architecture faculty TU Berlin (DE) 1967, Bernhard Hermkes B 3.5 Vodafone Headquarters, Porto (PT) 2009, Barbosa & Guimarães B 3.6 John Storer House, Hollywood (US) 1924, Frank Lloyd Wright B 3.7 Office building, Centraal Beheer, Apeldoorn (NL) 1972, Herman Hertzberger B 3.8 Schaulager, Basel (CH) 2003, Herzog & de Meuron
One form of unreinforced facade cladding is small-format, concrete artificial stone panels. Panels fixed with mortar are a robust, easilyworked building material that has been used in construction for more than 100 years, especially at the bases of buildings. One of the earliest examples of this in Germany was the Town Hall (Rathaus) in Trossingen (1904), where concrete panels clad the plinth and splayed door jambs. The wide range of ways that concrete can be worked and shaped and the combinations of different aggregates possible have been used to create orna mental structural elements such as (demi-) columns, balusters, gables, rosettes and the like. Concrete panels are now widely used as a suspended, rear-ventilated, small-format cladding material, as in the red facade of the German School in Beijing (2001) by Gerkan Marg + Partner. Concrete blocks
Concrete blocks offer the advantages of en abling small-format, light construction with a wide range of colours and surface treatments. From 1914 Frank Lloyd Wright explored various ways of using them. With his “Textile Block”
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system, he was seeking an alternative to largeformat panel construction. Starting from a square basic module, he worked with variously shaped bricks and stones. Buildings like his John Storer house in Hollywood (1923) feature richly ornamented facade surfaces with alternating patterns of smooth and structured stones (Fig. B 3.6) [3]. Egon Eiermann focused on the motif of a translucent wall, using concrete grid blocks with (coloured) glass infills in the St Matthew Church in Pforzheim (1956), and the Kaiser-Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin (1963). Another application for exposed masonry blocks is as opaque surface filling in a steelreinforced concrete structure, a technique frequently found in Herman Hertzberger’s work. In buildings such as the Centraal Beheer office building in Apeldoorn (1972, Fig. B 3.7), the Vredenburg music centre in Utrecht (1978) and the Apollo Schools in Amsterdam (1983), untreated exposed masonry, visible inside and out, with its the slightly porous surfaces and variously coloured textures, contrasts strikingly with smooth exposed concrete and glass (brick) surfaces [4].
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