Modern Atlanta

PaleoDesign uses engineered stone to create concrete countertops, furniture, and home and garden fixtures.

MD What intrigues you about concrete?
PD It’s like being a little kid again. You play in the mud and the result is this hard, elegant form. Concrete is part science and part art. They say anyone can cast concrete and practically anyone can. But almost no one completely understands it. Most experts in the field, whether in construction or decorative concrete, have their own mixes—most of them secret. The literature is constantly revealing new developments from better looking concrete to more rapidly curing and even flexible concrete.

MD How is concrete part of modernism?
PD Concrete was really only effectively used starting in the 1920’s, so it is modern by default. It didn’t exist before modern architecture. As soon as it became available people began to use it, but there was an initial backlash. It looked rough and brutal and was used poorly. However, people stuck with it. Certain architects like Bernard Maybeck, Louis Kahn and Frank Lloyd Wright took it under their wings and made a mark.

MD Will you work with clients who don’t have a modern aesthetic?
PD Absolutely. PaleoDesign recently renovated a kitchen on Lake Lanier with a reclaimed heart of pine floor, dark woods for the cabinets, a weathered island and our concrete, which was done in terra cotta and a brick red. Not only will we work with traditional designs, we think concrete is often more appropriate in them than say, granite. We did a kitchen in Buckhead for a couple that was inspired by a kitchen they had seen in a chateau in rural France. If anything we’ve seen more traditional concrete installations than modern ones.

MD In your eyes, what makes a dwelling modern?
PD There are certain architectural movements that might be called modern, post-modern, or deconstructionist. And of course there is no need for us to define those. Our personal interpretation of what is modern is probably closer to what is contemporary in the sense that when we develop our concrete mixes we use the latest additives and techniques. So for us, modern is the fact that we read the current literature. We develop our own mixes; we pay attention to current concrete development and the way the reinforcement is used. Our process is modern. Our product is modern. Our mixes are modern. Or should we say contemporary? We use computer modeling that allows us to calculate mixes, volumes, strengths, and weights accurately. Whatever we use -from the molds, to the caulk technology, and certainly our drafting aids and laser levels - it’s a modern way of doing it. PaleoDesign is keenly trying to understand the modern science. Some of our mixes are right out of the engineering journals– mixes that they are developing to fix roadways. So in that sense we are modern. In the design sense, it’s a matter of personal aesthetics.

MD What hesitations do clients have about concrete?
PD The first thing out of anybody’s mouth is “Does it stain?” Also, it’s sometimes difficult to overcome the expectation that concrete is going to look like the garage floor. Yet people touch our pieces and actually say it feels soft. People have asked us, “What kind of stone is that?” and we tell them “It’s not stone, it’s concrete.” There is this look of amazement and they start asking more questions. People are more accustomed to the raw, brutish concrete that is found in its most edifying form at the base of a skyscraper and at it’s worst, cracked at the edge of a sidewalk. The concrete we make is technologically more advanced, designed to use the natural appearance of concrete in a superior way. It’s a much smaller quantity, crafted with much greater care as to its molding, curing, and subsequently, its grinding and sealing. So it looks very different.

MD What features of your installations are clients most enthusiastic about?
PD They like to have something that most people don’t have. Concrete answers that need. In a glowing tribute to modern manufacturing and logistics, granite has been made extremely uniform. Whether you are in California or New Hampshire you can have the copper flake or galactic pearl or galaxy black. With concrete, to a certain extent, the piece can be more individual. Most of the clients we have dealt with have enjoyed the ability to have something different and also the ability to make shapes that would be very prohibitive in granite. Granite comes in rectangular slabs. You might be cutting out more material than you were using, whereas with concrete, there is no waste. In fact that’s one of the environmental aspects of concrete buildings and fixtures. There is no dumpster. You just pour what you need and that’s it.

MD Who is your ideal client?
PD Every client is our ideal client. And we mean that perfectly honestly because if we define the ideal client, by definition, we preclude having clients that show us something new, which is what we find most interesting. The Lake Lanier clients we spoke of earlier introduced us to a completely different pigment supplier that ended up having a superior grade of pigment that flowed better in the mold and led to us furthering the development of our mix. While the color request was quite extraordinary, and was designed to match an Aga oven and some Cherokee red windowpanes, it taught us something. So I think every client is the ideal client. The nature of the material demands that the person is already thinking outside the box. So there is a sort of filter on the clientele. We haven’t met one we didn’t like yet.

MD Why do you think Atlanta is the right place to be in business?
PD We live here. It’s convenient. Atlanta is a city that is young in the modern movement. It’s possible to be in contact with and interacting with some of the leaders. That would be a lot harder in New York or San Francisco or Chicago. I think Atlanta makes it possible not to follow the established lines of thinking, but to establish our own. Atlanta in particular tends to have this very traditional “Build a house, put granite in it” attitude. And we’re looking to change that.

MD How do you see modernism evolving?
PD Modernism has evolved without our help. The other day, walking between Richard Meier’s High Museum and the Renzo Piano addition, we could see a huge difference in the complexity of details and materials. That increasing complexity of material and detail specification is the evolution. And we hope people will start thinking of countertops as things that are integrated into backsplashes, aprons, different thicknesses and unsupported spans. The kitchen suddenly can be more complex than cabinets with countertops on top. The computer has reduced the amount of physical waste. We can design something, structurally analyze it and if it doesn’t pass, we can change it without ever having built a prototype. And it’s only getting better and faster from here.

MDDescribe your work in relationship to this moment
PD Concrete is set to make resurgence as a building material. The appreciation of the concrete aesthetic beyond its novelty is something that’s going to happen again. There’s also a diversity beginning to happen in the concrete aesthetic, whether you go towards Tadao Ando’s light and silky aesthetic, or Kahn’s more massive and block-like style or Calatrava’s shells and domes. Builders in the Midwest’s tornado alley are building houses in concrete that don’t look any different than the traditional homes out there. But methods have gone beyond building squares and rectangles and things like that. They are actually getting more complex. We are just part of the whole movement. It happened quite naturally for us. We didn’t use that as a strategy. We just saw the possibility of the material.

PaleoDesign is Steve Drabant and Neil Deshpande. Visit http://paleodesign.com/ for more information.