Concrete in the Tropics

Board-formed concrete carries an unspoken assumption: that it was developed and detailed for temperate climates, where curing happens slowly and evenly. Bandung's humidity and daily thunderstorms make almost none of that assumption hold.

Over eighteen months we cast eleven test panels on a spare corner of the studio's own site, varying aggregate size, formwork timber species and curing wrap. The panel that shipped to Concrete Courtyard was the ninth iteration.

What we learned will outlast this one project: humidity is not a constraint to work around, it is a variable to design with, in the same way a structural engineer designs with load.