Make concrete moves inside your home
Concrete — the composite building material made from stone, sand, cement and water — is having a bit of a moment in the home design world. Used to create everything from bookends to home furnishings, concrete fits in especially well with modern, contemporary, rustic and industrial architectural design.
“We’ve seen the use of concrete growing quite a lot in contemporary architectural building,” said Joseph Di Benedetto, executive director and product designer at Designer Doorware in Altona, Australia, who launched the Bullet+Stone collection of contemporary concrete door fixtures, attributing the trend in part to a resurgence of interest in mid-19th century Brutalism, the 1950s and ’60s style of architecture that celebrated blocklike forms of concrete and steel.
Although the material has been around since ancient times (some people believe the Great Pyramids may have been built with a combination of limestone and concrete), building with composite has cycled in and out of favor. “I think architects have always loved concrete on some level,” said Abeer Sweis, design partner at the Los Angeles-based firm Sweiskloss. “In regard to buildings it felt like the use of concrete did go away because there was something about it that made it more of a political statement (in the Brutalist era), with a very powerful look that was not friendly, but that was more in the design than the material because there are a lot of beautiful churches that are incredibly inviting and made of concrete as well.”
The power of touch
Today, contemporary concrete design has shifted from its formerly formidable and imposing aesthetic to embrace the material’s organic roots in a modern collaboration of earthy elements.
Using concrete in combination with wood, warm-toned metals and tactile materials creates a sense of nature and balance in both product and building design.
“There’s something really peaceful about (concrete),” Sweis said, “and yet it’s very powerful, strong and permanent. If you buy something made out of concrete, it feels like it’s been around awhile ... it feels like it has just existed.”
In addition to an inherent sense of soul and design gravitas, concrete has a surface “you just want to touch,” Sweis said. “I feel like it absorbs its surroundings, it absorbs heat if it’s warm, and if you touch it in the morning it’s cold. It emanates different things, and I think it does the same thing with light ... it just feels alive, in a way.”
T.J. Eads, lead industrial designer for Indianapolis-based luxury faucet and fittings manufacturer Brizo, believes the longing for substance and style is a reaction to our increasingly virtual landscape. “Millennials, and (people) younger than that, have been raised in a tech world,” Eads said, “where there are a lot of flat screens and glass surfaces, and they want that tactile feel. ... They want those elements, like concrete, within their house — whether it’s a drawer pull or a faucet ... they want texture.”
Even faucets? Yes
“I think it’s often perceived as a more functional, utilitarian type of material for sidewalks, driveways.” Eads said. “But right now, people really appreciate the aesthetic, the imperfection. Imperfect is the new perfect.”
For his part, Eads recently debuted a sculpted, limited-edition Vettis concrete faucet for Brizo. “It was inspired by a waterfall,” he said, “the pairing of the water and the stone.”
“People ... see it, they love it, they want it, and it’s affordable. It looks cool, and you can implement it in any type of space, really. The longevity is really appealing,” said Los Angeles-based Homepolish interior designer Mandy Cheng.
Both slick, highly coated, epoxy-finished concrete as well as roughly finished stone with exposed rebar and aggregate are in demand. “You’ll see both ends of the spectrum,” Eads said, “but I really think people love the rawness of it; they want to see and touch and feel it now.”
“It just feels nice, solid,” Cheng said. “It feels natural and real.”