Haute Concrete With his first building in New York, the architect Tadao Ando takes the material to new heights. BIANCA BOSKER APRIL 2017 ISSUE 4 hile architects once worker ash a cigarette into the considered concrete a 1 concrete mixture for one of Ando’s Wbuilding’s underwear— buildings, he reportedly slugged an essential but hidden layer— the man. Tadao Ando’s 1 1 structures display Over the course of his nearly their concrete with pride. There’s a 50-year career, Ando has helped story (which Ando’s team declined transform the gritty, gray material to confirm) that’s used to illustrate often associated with driveways how seriously Ando takes the and median strips into an artistic material: When the architect, a medium. “Every architect I know former boxer, saw a construction who wants to do something in 2 3 concrete always refers to him as the ideal in concrete design,” says Reg Hough, a concrete consultant who has for decades worked closely with top architects, including Ando, I. M. Pei, and Richard Meier. Having left his mark on cities from Tokyo to Fort Worth to Milan, Ando is now overseeing construction of a seven-unit, concrete-and- glass condominium building, 152 Elizabeth 2 3 , his first stand- depressions 4. 4 (It’s even possible so, nine inspectors oversee most alone structure in New York City. to buy premade paneling that pours to ensure that every protocol Ando is hardly the first knocks off the Ando look.) When is followed. The crew has lugged architect to embrace concrete; 152 Elizabeth is completed later in heaters, because concrete is he cites the brutalist architect this year, its apartments will feature hypersensitive to temperature Le Corbusier, an earlier concrete Ando’s concrete both inside and shifts. And Khurana says they’ve virtuoso, as an influence. But while out, where it will do double duty as rejected “several trucks” of mixed Le Corbusier and his peers used structure and surface. 5 concrete in ways that suggested a Making Ando-caliber concrete heavy ruggedness—Prince Charles is not for the faint of heart. “It’s ungenerously described Owen been a bit of a war,” says Amit Luder’s brutalist Tricorn Centre Khurana, a co-founder of Sumaida as a “mildewed lump of elephant + Khurana, which is developing 152 droppings”—Ando’s concrete, Elizabeth. “Getting architectural which is smooth to the touch, concrete right is like a fight because seems more like cashmere. To it’s so hard to do.” Because the architecture buffs, his walls are as concrete will remain exposed, recognizable as Bottega Veneta’s any imperfection will be visible. woven leather is to fashionistas: Khurana’s team practiced pouring They bear a consistent gridlike concrete for 18 months before pattern, and are dotted with starting work at the site 5 5 . Even concrete for failing to meet the 7 project’s stringent specifications. But it is the process, more than the ingredients, that distinguishes Ando’s concrete. Like most architectural concrete, it is made of water, cement, sand, and small rocks blended with chemicals and slag, a by-product of steelmaking that lends the final result its creamy finish. The material is trucked to the site, where it is pumped into a formwork—essentially a mold made of large wooden panels. Other architects might use bare panels of oak or fir, but those he told me. “This is my jewel.” Ando, 8 woods typically transfer their grain however, seems drawn to concrete to the concrete as it dries. To avoid precisely because of the challenge this, Ando has since the 1970s involved in making a pedestrian used plywood coated in plastic, substance appear extraordinary. which imparts a smooth surface. In his hands, the material takes These panels are painstakingly on a counterintuitive grace—his connected so that the edges fit designs 9 9 direct light, air, and together tightly 6 6 . Each mold is leave behind Ando’s iconic lines, people’s movement in ways that also pierced through with a series while the plastic cones produce his recall works by artists like James of steel rods, called form ties, which trademark holes, which are partially Turrell or Richard Serra. “I want to keep its two sides together 7 7 . plugged with mortar. create a space which no one has The form ties are in turn held in Khurana predicts that this created before with a very common place by blue-plastic cones, which will be his last project involving material which anyone is familiar protrude into the wet concrete 8 8 . exposed architectural concrete. “I with and has access to,” Ando has When the formwork is removed, the don’t think I’ll have the energy to said of 152 Elizabeth. “Concrete can seams between the wood panels ever do something like this again,” be made anywhere on Earth.” 6 9.