FORMWORK is an architecture studio working in a single material - board-formed, in-situ concrete. Every wall carries the grain of the timber that shaped it. No cladding, no render, no apology.
We don't disguise structure. The mark of the timber boards, the tie-rod holes, the seams of each pour - these are the architecture, not flaws to be hidden beneath a finish.
Board-formed, cast-in-place concrete - and nothing else. Constraint is the discipline. A single material forces every decision into the open.
Timber is selected, sequenced and aligned plank by plank. The grain transferred to the wall is designed as deliberately as any plan.
There is no second take with in-situ concrete. We rehearse the pour in full scale before it happens. Precision is the only safety net.
Houses, chapels, galleries and civic rooms - each one a study in what a single material can hold.
A four-bedroom house cast as a single continuous wall that folds to form every room. Larch boards, laid horizontally, run unbroken across forty metres of façade.
A roadside chapel where the boards run vertically, drawing the eye and the light upward. Daylight enters only through the seams between the timber planks.
A disused foundry reborn as a gallery. New board-formed inserts are cast against the old brick, each pour deliberately mismatched to mark the passage of a working day.
A half-buried public library. Above ground, only a board-formed parapet shows; below, light wells of raw concrete carry daylight to the stacks.
Concrete remembers everything - the timber, the weather, the hand that poured it.- FORMWORK, founding statement
From the selection of a single tree to the day the formwork comes away - our method is built around the irreversibility of cast-in-place concrete.
We choose and grade every board for grain, width and texture before a single line is drawn. The wood determines the wall.
The mould is a piece of carpentry in its own right - boards aligned to the millimetre, ties set on a designed grid.
A single continuous pour, vibrated by hand. There is no correction afterward; the rehearsal is the work.
The formwork is removed. The grain of the timber, now permanent in the concrete, is seen for the first time.
We take on a small number of projects each year - houses, civic rooms, places of quiet. If you want raw concrete done with conviction, write to us.
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