Vertical & Carved Concrete

The language barrier was the least of the obstacles a team of two professors and a student from Southern Arkansas University had to overcome during a weeklong trip to Cuba last November for an art project with the University of Artemisa. The saga began with a lack of supplies and ended with the death of Fidel Castro the night before the Americans left.

In August 2010, the Assiniboine Park Conservancy in Winnipeg contacted Randall Klassen to get a quote for the demolition and removal of the Assiniboine Park Zoo’s Tropical House. The house had fallen into disrepair and the conservancy wanted to replace it with a rocky tropical oasis for animals, birds and plants.

Nick Carosi III of Arban & Carosi Inc. brings up an intriguing point when talking about exposed aggregate on vertical surfaces — what if you’re pouring an L-shaped wall piece? Since gravity’s effect on the settling aggregate is essential to the process, how does a contractor make that work?

A pool in a four-star hotel in Italy gives new meaning to the phrase “deep end.” This pool, known as the Y-40 or “The Deep Joy,” in the Montegrotto Terma region of Padua, Italy, features a plunging crevasse that sinks to 138 feet (42 meters), a depth that could easily engulf a 13-story building.

Protective coatings may not deter graffiti artists, but they’ll make cleanup a lot easier.

Florida’s Miami Beach is a part of the country known for its high real estate prices, but the penthouse condominium sales price of $60 million for the Faena House Saxony Condo set a new high.

We here at Concrete Decor always welcome submissions of photos from concrete artisans around the world. When we received a particularly attractive batch from an artist in Argentina, we decided to share them with you.

With more than 30 years of experience as a professional artist — and a darn good one at that — Thom Hunt has worked his magic at more happy places on Earth than even Walt Disney could have imagined.

Concrete Coatings is a Sundek dealer owned by Scott Burley, Will's uncle. It's a decorative concrete resurfacing contractor handling pool decks, patios, terraces and other exterior surfaces for commercial and residential customers in metropolitan New Orleans, south Louisiana and other points along the Gulf Coast.

What’s old often becomes new again, and in the case of ICF (insulated concrete forms) construction, many people feel it’s not only ready for a rebirth but a healthy adolescence, as well.

Imagine this: You own an estate in the California hills overlooking Monterey Bay. You are a lover of art and natural beauty. You want a swimming pool complex with a large concrete deck and pool house. You want it to accentuate the surrounding landscape and incorporate the feel of the bay, but you’re not sure how you want to achieve that. Who do you call?

Structurally unbeatable, decorative forms and form-liners are creating a timely and profitable advantage on more and more jobsites, big and small.

Everything about the Brawl in the Fall at the 2016 Concrete Decor Show in San Diego was hot, hot, hot— from the record-breaking 100+ degree heat to the sizzling entries that shaped up in the outside lot during show time.

Their still-in-progress project includes a number of concrete features inside the home, the centerpiece being a cast-in-place, carved, stamped GFRC staircase that resembles rock and leads into the basement-level man cave, graced by a sun-and-clouds water feature on the wall next to the staircase.

Unlike God almighty who, according to the Bible, created the world, its heavens and all forms of life in six days, the best Troy Lemon and his mortal crew could do was hand-form and carve a concrete replica of the moon in four.

When Troy Lemon the concrete sculptor met up with Troy Wolfiss the home builder, a fireplace of great proportions ensued. Wolfiss, owner of Artisan Craft Homes, busily designed his new home which would be part of the Home Builders Association of Greater Grand Rapids’ Spring Parade of Homes.

When taking on pervious paving contracts, the San Diego-based contractor’s mix design is typically accepted by clients following mock-up, as custom blends can significantly increase a project’s difficulty. Yet, there are always exceptions, with the most recent being the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans).

Beginning painters get so excited by the smorgasbord of shapes, colors and textures they have been learning that they often try to put every trick they know into each of their paintings. This leads to a hodge-podge with no focus.

While hand-mudding vertical concrete projects is the preferred method for getting a working surface ready to be shaped and carved, for bigger jobs it’s not necessarily efficient.

Enter a spray system.

Pete Johnson, who founded the U.K. division of the stone-effect coating system manufacturer StoneCoat, traveled to Sin City from his home in Manchester, England, last November for a project inspired by the natural stone colors found in Nevada.

These murals are the work of David Seils, an Asheville, N.C.-based designer, artist and relief sculptor. He applies an overlay to the walls to create these intricate, one-of-a-kind pieces.

The Streets at SouthGlenn, a sprawling new shopping destination in south Denver, boasts a block-long urban park with a brick fireplace, tall "legacy trees," gardens and cafes, and a centerpiece: a grand, European-style fountain, more than 16 feet tall with four falls.

A job that began with a mere 80 square feet of overlay snowballed into a decorative concrete transformation — complete with faux hollow tree — for this restaurant and bar.