Ken
There have been a few presentations on Edison Houses fairly recently...at the moment I can't recall where or by whom.


Thanks,

Eric Hammarberg
Vice President
Thornton Tomasetti
51 Madison Avenue
New York, NY  10010
T 917.661.7800  F 917.661.7801 
D 917.661.8160 
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This message sent from Treo, please pardon spelling and other mistakes.

 -----Original Message-----
From:   Gabriel Orgrease [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Thursday, December 13, 2007 06:10 PM Eastern Standard Time
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        Re: [BP] concrete and clay

Hammarberg, Eric wrote:
>
> I have always loved exposed aggregate sidewalks with pea gravel but
> using it as the pastic workable mat'l that it is should be exploited
> but seldom seen.
>
Eric,

One of my early projects, I think '86, was supervising a fairly large
exposed aggregate sidewalk replication at an NPS site in Indiana. To me
then it seemed extremely exotic. I agree that concrete is an under
explored/exploited material.

As to restoration of existing antique & patinated concrete finishes I
believe the difficulty is that there is not enough of a demand, and the
money behind the demand, to pay for development of the techniques or for
the sustaining of a craftsperson that would develop such techniques. As
concrete in general is concerned most concrete workers are paid by the
yard of placement and their entire being is focused on refinement of the
efficiency of that process. A concrete finisher can make a whole lot
more money finishing yards and yards of new concrete than they can
diddling with fixing up existing concrete. Why bother to learn that? So
I think it tends towards 'artistes' who would play with refinishing
antique concrete, but they often don't seem to have any clue what
concrete is or how to play with it. Concrete is a very bullish kind of
material to play with.

Beginning of last summer a young architect in NJ contacted me and was
asking questions re: refabrication of existing shot-stucco over brick
wall substrate and had an idea that molds could be made of the existing
to use to make concrete forms and replace the entire 'historic' garden
walls with poured concrete. I was a bit perplexed how to say what. I
think they found someone else to talk to which was ok by me.

We did some nice refinishing work on the Horace Greeley barn in
Chappaqua which was an early 'concrete'. Now it is a private residence.
The proud owners wanted to keep some of the distressed look. It seemed
to me though that the original concrete used boulders for aggregate with
a lime-based matrix. I don't know what the type of lime it was or if it
made any distinction in the conservator's analysis... this was a bit
before everyone started going lime crazy.

I would very much like to find any existing of Edison's concrete houses.

][<en

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