MATERIAL FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES
A concrete myth, 2019
A story about concrete – commissioned by Gabrielle Kennedy for Damn Magazine.
While Claude Lévi-Strauss was not thinking of a mixture of cement, sand and gravel in his essay "The Savage Mind" (1962) – but to the idea of a real fact and structural anthropology, his first chapter "the science of the concrete" provides an alternative way and theory of thinking to tell the story of an ubiquitous building material: concrete.
First, the bricoleur who creates new ideas of objects from the materials at hand, thereby renewing or enriching the stock of available constructions. Second, the engineer who questions the universe and strives to think beyond the given constraints, thereby opening up new possibilities through technology. What about the designer ?
Credits
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Furniture design
Bram Vanderbeke, Casted objects and Brick wall / Brick stools, 2019 - Gent
Omer Arbel, 8.0 chair, 2005 and Particles for the Built World, 2018 – Vancouver
Linde Freya Tangelder as destroyers / builders – Bolder chair, 2018 - Brussels / Antwerp - Research and writing – Fiona du Mesnildot
- Editing and Publishing – Damn°73, "Language melts into summer", July 2019 – Printed in Belgium.
