Construction Innovation

C.E.S. Office – Martinez House: Interior beams, columns, column capitals and ceiling patterns

1983

Construction System, Sprayed Concrete

Shaping building elements by shooting gunite into lightweigh open formwork; styrofoam fillers on a plywood form were used for details and ornaments.

Created by:

Christopher Alexander, Gary Black, Seth Wachtel

Content of

Project

C.E.S. Office - Martinez House 1977 to 1984

4207 Arthur Road, 94553, Martinez, CA, U.S.A.

Residential, Realized , Construction completed in 1984

Client:

Center for Environmetal Structure - C.E.S. Directors

C.E.S. staff:

Christopher Alexander, Jonathan Fefferman, Harissos Tsiringas, Gary Black, David Dacus, Olasheni Agbabiaka

Contractor:

Center for Environmetal Structure

Project cost:

$120,000

Project stages:

Layout on the site by C.E.S. Design Development and Building Permit drawings done after layout Direct construction management and on-site design decisions Users involved in the construction Innovative construction methods

The second building completed on the Martinez site, was a 2,000 square feet house. A gunite all-concrete building as well, it was the first sizable and fully functional project in which C.E.S. used gunite, while applying all permit and specification ...

References

Scientific Research

Strong Centers in all Levels of Scale

Areas of focus:

Design and Building Process

Guiding idea:

Structure Preserving Transformations

A building can only amount to something as a living thing when the various physical elements which appear in it are profound centers. The dominant feature of the process that is working correctly is that new centers are formed, and ...

Books

The Nature of Order - An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe. Book Three - A Vision of a Living World 2005

Authors:

Christopher Alexander

Publisher:

The Center for Environmental Structure Publishing, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

No of pages:

697 pp

“A Vision of a Living World”, the third volume of “The Nature of Order” series, presents, for the first time, a full spectrum of Alexander’s and CES built and unbuilt works. The book describes hundreds of buildings, plans, neighborhoods, drawings, ...

Book Chapters

Articles

An Approach to Wholeness 01/02/1986

Publication, Article

Authors:

Dorit Fromm

Published in:

The Architectural Review, Vol. CLXXIX, No. 1068, pp. 24-31

Publisher:

The Architectural Press Ltd., London, U.K.

Visual & Audio Materials

Locus Manifesto-exposition: CES presented the construction innovation on the use of gunite for building an all-concrete building, as applied in the Martinez House 30/05/2014

Public Event, Visual, Exhibition Board

Created by:

Lily Alexander, Artemis Anninou, Maggie Moore, Center for Environmental Structure, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

Two boards included in Science Cabinet #1 of the exhibit, illustrating three of the phases of the construction process using gunite experimentally, as well as the building as completed.

Course Material

The Architect's Responsibility and the Process of Building "The Martinez Experiment" 12/05/1985

Academic, Student Work, M.Arch Thesis

Authors:

Jonathan Fefferman, University of California Berkeley, College of Environmental Design, Department of Architecture, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

The Master of Architecture thesis presents in its 312 pages the theory behind the development of the Sprayed Concrete Building System, and a detailed documentation of the system as recorded during the construction of the Martinez House, between Fall 1981 ...