Inflated Concrete Furniture

Over the past couple of days I have been assisting Rene with refining their concrete furniture. Both Rene + Tejo created a series of exhibition pieces late last year created from a method of sewing 3 dimensional moulds out of rubber and plastic and pouring concrete into the mould. The flexible moulds give the concrete an inflated appearance.

Yesterday I was tinkering away most of the day trying to prepare a mould for casting a table in concrete. The mould is very complex and it is so easy to stuff up cutting and punching holes in the mould pieces. Like any intern I regularly slip up and stuff the process up. But this is all part of the learning experience I suppose.

Anyway, we are working towards creating a table, which requires no sewing in the moulds, making the rubber mould reusable for each chair. This requires a lot of clamps, bolts, rubber moulds and wooden clamping pieces.

By the end of the day we frantically poured the sewing free chair. We will see how this piece pops out. It may compromise the organic qualities of the piece having a wooden structure forming the edges of the chair leg.