“Con-crear” project aims to advance and contribute in the ongoing research of additive manufacturing applying as material concrete and finally revealing new potentialities. This thesis focuses on the most man used construction material deployed for a variety of projects from housing to infrastructure. It should be underlined that its price, availability and high performance are aligned to its popularity. The innate material’s behavior is studied and informed in order to liberate architecture from pre-conceived forms and sterile formal explorations while the construction process is completely visible to the outcome. The “Con-Crear” project develops a vertical growth system in which a unit which varies within itself is being populated. The physical properties of a tubular extrusion of cement and water mix leads to a geometrical function of incremental growth informing constantly a design catalogue. In the same time, the limit of hydration and subsequently merging (of neighboring surfaces) time defines restrictions from which new opportunities of design emerge.
So, liberating the structure of the known constraints like molds and scaffolds but embedding others which derive from the material’s properties and the rules of nature (on top of all, the gravity), how much further can we go?
