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Brutalist buildings in Victoria


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#21 amor de cosmos

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Posted 05 December 2015 - 11:23 AM

yeah it looks like nobody's touched it in years. cleaning it would make it easier to see the holes left by the wall-ties, which were probably part of the original design. replacing the brick with wood would probably brighten it up even more :cool: i don't know how that would work in this climate though, that salk institute is in the san diego area. & some of the walls of that eppich house were bush-hammered to give them a different texture, so that could be why some of them look different.



#22 gumgum

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Posted 05 December 2015 - 01:33 PM

Would a power wash take care of that?

#23 phx

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Posted 05 December 2015 - 02:16 PM

^ maybe this wouldn't be practical in that case but the salk institute in inlaid with teak rather than brick.

 

 

It's important to keep with the local architectural aesthetiic, so recladding with Hardieboard is the best approach. :1954_dancing:


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#24 Sparky

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Posted 05 December 2015 - 02:39 PM

Would a power wash take care of that?

 

Excellent question. Below is a shot of a test area that wasn't as dirty as the upper part of the building. You can see in the upper right hand corner where a small patch of pressure washing appeared to make quite a difference.

 

2020 wall before resized.jpg

 

But when the whole wall was pressure washed and allowed to dry, you can see where the stains are embedded into the concrete. The dry ice blasting would hopefully remove a thin layer of stained concrete and hopefully return the concrete to a cleaner state.

 

2020 wall after resized.jpg



#25 amor de cosmos

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Posted 05 December 2015 - 03:56 PM

It's important to keep with the local architectural aesthetiic, so recladding with Hardieboard is the best approach. :1954_dancing:


which one exactly, there are a bunch of options on their website

#26 Bingo

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Posted 05 December 2015 - 10:04 PM

I am in charge of cleaning up the appearance of 2020 Richmond Medical Building as it is dirty. I was thinking of "ice blasting" it to restore the original brick and concrete finish and then sealing it with a mat clear sealer. Someone else suggested re-cladding it but I can't see that looking any better.

 

Any suggestions?

 

I think the blasting and sealing route is the way to maintain the concrete look which I happen to like.


Edited by Bingo, 05 December 2015 - 10:05 PM.


#27 amor de cosmos

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Posted 06 December 2015 - 07:54 PM

I forget the name but those condos on Johnson just west of the Mondrian.


I think that would be sutton east & west, 1970s(?)
FullSizeRender-2-835x467.jpg
http://devonprop.com...s/sutton-east/ 

cunningham building, 1971

7090920635_adcb6c0112_k.jpgCunningham Building, University of Victoria by Alejandro Erickson, on Flickr

Edited by amor de cosmos, 06 December 2015 - 08:01 PM.


#28 Jared

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Posted 06 December 2015 - 08:54 PM

Is there a reason why painting the concrete isn't acceptable? Some of the heritage updates in Old Town include painted brick (The Vogue, The Union).

#29 Rob Randall

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Posted 06 December 2015 - 09:55 PM

Many old brick buildings were intended to be painted but this newer form of concrete should always remain raw as the bareness is its natural and purist state.
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#30 amor de cosmos

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Posted 06 December 2015 - 10:08 PM

I think that get's back to the origin of the name 'brutalism' which is beton brut, or raw concrete in french. i have a feeling painting it over would water down the design, it wouldn't be raw concrete anymore. the salk institute on page 1 was designed by louis kahn, who liked michelangelo's favourite saying of tuscan masons: "weight never sleeps". back in michelangelo's time it referred to the literal weight of stone & was more of a workplace safety thing, but kahn reinterpreted it as visual weight. so he didn't see the need for his buildings to hide their massiveness. I think that's the idea. there's also an authenticity thing, the concrete usually already has a texture left over from the formwork and a pattern left over from the wall ties, which are both intended to be part of the design. wiki has more

https://en.wikipedia...st_architecture


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#31 Bingo

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Posted 06 December 2015 - 10:37 PM

Many old brick buildings were intended to be painted but this newer form of concrete should always remain raw as the bareness is its natural and purist state.

 

Some of the old heritage buildings here were painted over to modernize them, and now they are removing the paint to restore the brick to the original look.

At the railway museum in Cranbrook they are refurbishing many of the old passenger cars by removing the paint and restoring the mahogany panelling.

 

IMG_0574_2.jpg


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#32 johnk

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Posted 06 December 2015 - 10:44 PM

When was city hall painted? I really dislike brick painted red, what's wrong with late Victorian brick? Or is the paint holding it together?

#33 Jared

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Posted 07 December 2015 - 03:04 PM

Many old brick buildings were intended to be painted but this newer form of concrete should always remain raw as the bareness is its natural and purist state.

 

A lot of modernist architecture wasn't really designed with the realities of a building's full lifetime in mind ("form follows function" is bullshit as often as not). I'm a fan of brutalist architecture, but this is not a particularly amazing example of it. I think a postmodern paint job should not be out of the question.



#34 Rob Randall

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Posted 07 December 2015 - 05:02 PM

When was city hall painted? I really dislike brick painted red, what's wrong with late Victorian brick? Or is the paint holding it together?

 

To be picky, City Hall is more Second Empire than Victorian, but it was fairly common for architecture from this era, like Bossi House to be designed with painted brick. I've read so much about the struggles to get City Hall built I wouldn't be surprised if the architect cheaped out on expensive deluxe exposed brick and went with cheaper painted brick.



#35 johnk

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Posted 07 December 2015 - 05:17 PM

Rob, was it always painted? Have lived here only 21 years so I don't know much about it. Bought a brick house painted red years ago and got the brick cleaning guy in the next day!

#36 amor de cosmos

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Posted 07 December 2015 - 09:05 PM

I am in charge of cleaning up the appearance of 2020 Richmond Medical Building as it is dirty. I was thinking of "ice blasting" it to restore the original brick and concrete finish and then sealing it with a mat clear sealer. Someone else suggested re-cladding it but I can't see that looking any better.

Any suggestions?


It's important to keep with the local architectural aesthetiic, so recladding with Hardieboard is the best approach. :1954_dancing:


how would something like this look in place of that brick? i wonder if it would be convincing enough
http://www.nichiha.c...pe/Vintage Wood

Edited by amor de cosmos, 07 December 2015 - 09:07 PM.


#37 amor de cosmos

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Posted 24 December 2015 - 12:46 PM

a couple more links on brutalism
http://brandondonnel...ve-of-brutalism
http://99percentinvi...o-love-a-brute/

this seems to be true for a lot of concrete buildings, like that one on fort st next to turner's. concrete is a victim of its own success :P
 

But tearing down Boston City Hall has never come to pass. Doing so would take an incredible amount of effort and money. And so, government officials have largely chosen to ignore the building. This “active neglect,” happens with a lot of concrete buildings—they are intentionally unrenovated, and uncared for. Which only makes the building more ugly, and then more hated, and then more ignored. It’s a vicious cycle wherein the public hate of a building feeds itself.

When people built these mammoth concrete structures, no one really thought about maintenance, because they seemed indestructible. In the early days of concrete people assumed it was an everlasting material that wouldn’t require any further attention. This has not proven true. But, it can be hard to tell when concrete needs repairing, since its decay is not visible on the surface.


another thing I've noticed is that people seem to appreciate buildings with exposed wood structure, especially with big old-growth beams (canoe brewpub maybe?) but not so much concrete. I'm not sure why that is. maybe wood is perceived to be warmer or more a 'natural' material?

there's also this pic showing the different textures that are possible with concrete. covering it over with anything, even just paint, could change the character

Concrete-Texture-Pt1.jpg

Edited by amor de cosmos, 24 December 2015 - 12:51 PM.


#38 lanforod

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Posted 24 December 2015 - 01:22 PM


another thing I've noticed is that people seem to appreciate buildings with exposed wood structure, especially with big old-growth beams (canoe brewpub maybe?) but not so much concrete. I'm not sure why that is. maybe wood is perceived to be warmer or more a 'natural' material?
 

 

Aged beams look great, so long as they aren't rotting. Better than aged concrete.



#39 amor de cosmos

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Posted 13 January 2016 - 08:55 AM

more about kahn. restoration of one of his buildings:

The renovation has pared Kahn's spaces down to their essence, restoring a Zenlike calm, and revealing the muscular concrete structure that made the design such a revelation in the early 1960s, when International Style glass towers were all the rage. As Kahn, who was known for his mystical pronouncements, might say, Richards has become the building it always wanted to be.

To nonarchitects, it may be hard to understand why the subdued brick-and-concrete complex is so important. Even Kahn's own son, Nathaniel, seems perplexed when he visits the building in My Architect, his Oscar-nominated documentary about his father's life, and gazes up at windowless, almost medieval, ventilation towers.

But that perceptible heaviness is what made Richards so ground-breaking. For decades, mid-20th-century architects had been turning out high-rises with thin glass skins that seemed light enough to float way. The facades revealed nothing about the building's structure. At Richards, you can see how the building is made and feel its weight.

http://www.philly.co...d_it_to_be.html

#40 Nparker

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Posted 24 May 2016 - 08:05 AM

I know we have a discussion on Brutalism somewhere, but I was not able to find it. If found the mods are more than welcome to move this post.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2...orms/index.html


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