Producers spotlight home designs across concrete masonry spectrum

Florida concrete masonry producers revisited a March 2021 promotion to continually spotlight the potential of gray and architectural block in single-family residential building. Their March Masonry Matchup kicked off with a bracket of 16 homes posted at the portal of their Block Strong campaign. Weekly voting tallies at www.BlockStrong.com determined which homes advanced to brackets of eight, four and two,…

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Lifting to accolades

Design-build specialist Keystone Construction Company has received the St. Louis Concrete Council’s 2021 Quality Concrete Award for work at The Factory entertainment venue in Chesterfield, Mo. The 52,000-sq.-ft., tilt-up building is the first performance venue to be built from the ground up in the region in over 20 years.  The venue was constructed using more than 50,000 square feet of…

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Wine Country precaster presses concrete tank vs. oak barrel efficacy

A Petaluma, Calif. specialty precaster’s latest innovation sets a new threshold for making wine in concrete tanks. With a capacity of just over 1,000 gallons or 3,800 liters, the Sonoma Cast Stone SuperEgg is more than twice the size of any other such vessel, including the producer’s own top gun, the 476-gal. Egg. The SuperEgg will allow users to produce…

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Mountainside shrine to light

An immersive art installation to be unveiled next summer will envelope viewers in a one-of-a-kind kinetic light and color experience in Green Mountain Falls, Colo. The newest Skyspace by renowned light and space artist James Turrell is the first in the state and the first in the world to be nestled into the side of a mountain.  The Skyspace, standing…

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Royal cast

IntoConcrete has announced the latest addition to its interactive collection – the Arena concrete chess set. A modern interpretation of the age-old game of chess, Arena is inspired by the architecture of the Roman amphitheatre. Designed by Material Immaterial Studio in partnership with IntoConcrete, the set includes a board and 16 distinct concrete pieces, each handcrafted with stately detail to…

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French promenade excellence

A reinforced concrete pathway around the Bastia fortress in Corse-du-Sud, France, took home the top award in the seventh annual ACI Excellence in Concrete Construction Awards, which showcased dozens of innovative concrete projects from around the world. Constructed at the foot of the Bastia fortress on the island of Corsica, the Aldilonda promenade is a sinuous path set into rock,…

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School’s In

Students at two schools recognized in the 2021 Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute Design Awards program will enjoy new recreation spaces thanks to advanced building practice. Smithfield Middle School (North Richland Hills, Texas) and Boston College (Chestnut Hill, Mass.) are home to the winning projects: a gymnasium addition that plays double duty as a storm shelter and a new recreation center, respectively.

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A contractor’s bold statement

In a welcome sign of economic stability and pandemic recovery in the building industry, Utah’s Jacobsen Construction Co. has built a modern headquarters near the Salt Lake City International Airport. The facility bears on robust and prominently exposed cast-in-place elements, and recognizes concrete practice through touches that include repurposing formwork shoring in a wall sculpture.  The headquarters was designed by…

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