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Concrete: Material of the Future!
By Le Vin Chin
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An interview with Stephanie Knust and Robert Haslbeck of 10 Liter Design and the Simply Concrete project at the University of Art and Design Halle at Burg Giebichenstein.
How did you come to work in concrete?
Robert Haslbeck and Stephanie Knust
Stephanie Knust: The initiator of the whole thing was actually Thomas Rehder and his company Betoniu. He’s an entrepreneur with a high affinity for design. For a new project, he asked our professor at the University of Art and Design Halle at Burg Giebichenstein if his interior design students would be interested in doing a project on concrete furniture. We were around eighteen students. We all had no idea about how to work concrete as a material, so we first experimented with it and made many small design objects which then went on sale in the 10 Liter Design shop. Later, we dared to manufacture larger-scale objects like furniture. Although the project is finished, all of us will continue to work with concrete. It’s been a very successful endeavor.
Did you have certain notions about concrete as a material before you started?
Robert Haslbeck: Well, we went into the whole thing starting from zero. What we did was look at architectural examples, on excursions with the art school and then made small objects, to understand the material and develop our own process for working with it. Then we delved deeper and deeper into the process as we worked on the furniture pieces.
Ekkard table and Tave and Tede vases by Stephanie Knust
Some of the surfaces you have achieved are incredibly shiny, others are very matte …
Haslbeck: We tried out different molds. The results were stunning, we hadn’t seen that on the excursions at all ...!
Knust: We simply tried to shape the concrete in molds of all kinds of materials: aluminum, plastics, rubber – everything.
And did you also experiment with using different recipes?
Knust: In construction, there are fixed recipes for mixing because of the loadbearing requirements, so the parts of water, sand, cement, etc., need to be very exact. We didn’t care about that at all and tried out all kinds of different mixtures to see what we could cast: we experimented with how soft you can go, how dry, etc., to see the difference in the results. With small objects, it doesn’t matter so much, of course, as long as you can cast it thinly and it doesn’t break. Nearly every one of us found a mixture that was right for them, although we didn’t keep our formulations secret or anything ...
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Haslbeck: ...and we even experimented with substitutes: we tried shell limestone [Muschelkalk] instead of sand once ... Knust: ... also calcium carbonate ...
Haslbeck: ...or when we added pigments, we experimented with the amount to see when it gets too much, i.e. when the object gets too porous ...
Knust: No one can really give you advice in that matter, because engineers think on a much larger scale. There are other people who have been working with concrete for furniture, but of course they don’t tell you anything – there’s so much work behind finding the right mixture it becomes something of a trade secret. I’ve spoken to people who have been working on concrete furniture for ten years who say they still get surprises, in spite of using formulations they’ve developed themselves. So many things have an effect: room temperature, humidity, whether it’s summer or winter …
Klemmbrett desk by Hanni Antrack
How did working with concrete influence your personal design style?
Knust: I wouldn’t say I have completely found my style yet. Perhaps someone else could describe what my style is – I, myself, can’t describe it yet. I do have tendencies towards the simple and unostentatious, nothing too flashy or obvious. But I’m still experimenting; that’s what I’m at art school for, to give me space to transgress my limits and challenge even my own ideas and preconceptions of beautiful design. So, no, I don’t have my own style so far.
Haslbeck: I would like to expand my style, take it further. In the space of just one semester, my style has changed so much.
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