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'No-tolerance construction'
Architecture seminar aims to achieve perfection By Liam Otten Nothing looks simpler than perfection. Tadao Ando's Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, which opened last year at 3716 Wash-ington Blvd., boasts some of the most elegant and most exacting craftsmanship imaginable. Two precisely proportioned, light-filled wings -- constructed with the architect's signature material of concrete -- frame a central courtyard and reflecting pool in crisp, clean lines, with corners sharp as knife blades and walls as smooth to the touch as polished stone.
"We call this 'no-tolerance construction' because everything has to be absolutely perfect," said Clarkson, who has worked with Ando since the mid-1990s and built the architect's first structure in the United States, the Eychaner/Lee House in Chicago. "What I'm trying to show are the steps you have to go through to achieve that. "It's very, very difficult, and very different from normal construction," Clarkson continued. "You can't go back and adjust things, and you can't hide mistakes with a baseboard or molding or a doorframe. Ando's architecture wants those straight lines. Something is either right or it's wrong." To build the Pulitzer Foundation, Clarkson helped train local contractors to meet Ando's famously rigorous standards -- one observer described it as a "master class for trades-people" -- and supervised construction of some 200 individual concrete wall "segments," each measuring 10 inches thick by 24 feet high and 12 feet wide. On a more modest scale, Clarkson recently drilled his six graduate students in some of the techniques for making "Ando concrete" -- building the "forms," or molds; blending, pouring and smoothing the wet mixture; and critiquing final results. Working in a semi-renovated industrial space just across the street from the Pulitzer, students spent three weeks crafting a single 5-foot-by-3-foot section. The class began by preparing the form, a box-like assemblage of plywood and steel tie-rods. Because even the smallest leak or air pocket can cause distortion or discoloration, painstaking carpentry is of the utmost importance -- joints need to be solid, planes need to be impeccably straight, and the entire structure is sealed watertight. To achieve that final, glass-like sheen, interior-facing plywood is coated in a slick resin washed in a layer of "form oil," a fatty substance that chemically reacts with the concrete to create a kind of soap, which then helps the plywood release from the finished wall. Steve Morby, former general superintendent and now facilities manager for the Pulitzer Foundation, helped students fabricate parts for the form, which they then built on-site. They later mixed the wet concrete, using the same "recipe" of all-local ingredients developed for Pulitzer. After a brief lesson in the proper method for checking viscosity, students began loading wheelbarrows, filling the mold and operating the "concrete vibrator," a long, rope-like piece of equipment (think of a heavy fire hose) that smoothes out lumps and "pushes" the wet mixture tightly into seams and corners. (Ando concrete is vibrated about four times longer than the typical variety.) The following week, plywood was stripped away and the class critiqued results. "We found some of the same problems they came across during construction," master's candidate Robert Lindgren said. "(The texture) was smooth as could be, but some air got in and left discolorations at certain corners and around one or two of the tie holes." Still, such shortcomings are the nature of apprentice work. Clarkson pointed out that the real lesson of the class -- and, in a sense, of Ando's architecture -- is the way it highlights the importance and interconnectedness of every job on the worksite. Having done it themselves, students develop a more visceral appreciation for the role played by every member of the construction crew, from contractor to subcontractor to laborers mixing and vibrating concrete. Ultimately, building a building such as the Pulitzer "is all about teamwork, all about planning, about checking and rechecking," Clarkson said. "Mostly, it's about deciding to do it -- about desire from everyone involved to achieve perfection." |
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