Invitarion for Competition: by Kaza International Ltd.

Planning: 2017-2018

Realization: 2018

Leading designers: LAB5 architects | Linda Erdélyi, András Dobos, Balázs Korényi, Virág Anna Gáspár

Designers: Zoltán Kozma, Petra Mezey, Bálint Szelezsán

Visuals, photos: LAB5 architects, background images: Zsolt Batár

 

Kaza Concrete is a London based design firm with Hungarian roots and background, focusing on interior concrete finishing. LAB5 architects won their competition for the new pattern design ideas in 2017. It’s available in the selection of Kaza tiles from the end of 2018.

 

...Read more

 

Outdoor or indoor, yesterday or last century, classic or contemporary - concrete is a material that can appear in many different contexts, but always has a strong, inner, characteristic arua and appeal that provides its unique atmosphere around it. You can find it in an industrial bunker or a luxury apartments, forgot in the nature or seen on a public building, its surface is always steady and tenacious.

 

Seems immemorial and timeless, goes well with aging, and goes well with the first time fresh look.

 

We imagined to leave a piece of concrete surface outdoor for a century, and tried to get what it feels like after getting a sublime gentle result of it. After such a long time we can see the prints of nature because of frost, rain, direct sunlight, cracks because of the changing temperature. And also we can find the prints of the history of human being, layers of times separated by thin lines of dust.

 

What we could find is not a secret capsule of the year when the concrete was poured and casted, but we could see a chain of years, many layers on top of each other, in the very same strong surface, at a moment, a single minute, when we stopped the aging, and we started to survey it.

 

Our designed piece shows this fragile moment of the time, the fragment of those series of ages, in contrast to the strong material.