apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

way too cold and industrial looking and feeling...except maybe in the bathroom.

Love love love.

Love love love!!

so, where's the kraft singles photo? surely you didn't just pull that out of a hat? come on! i want to see! snack'n wall! (would also work with salami slices)

just like painted brick-- it's really a hit or miss type of thing

I'm on the fence about this. I love the older looking concrete walls with character like pics 1 and 2, but newer construction just looks cold like pic 3. Pic 4 is somewhere in between.

concrete has a beauty that one has to grow to appreciate. not every wall is as beautiful as those in tado ando's projects, which look pillow soft, nor do the all have the history infused patina of the photo that heads this post. but concrete can often be blissfully beautiful.

and I'd like to add that the CMU wall just looks even more industrial and cold.

Pretension comes in all shapes and sizes.

Marie Antoinette built a little make believe farm village in the corner of the Versailles gardens, so she could make believe that she was a milkmaid.

People that really work in grimy factories and garages, and who's daddies don't pay the rent, do not want to come home to a sweatshop.

But I gotta admit - I liked the last one. It is honest and with nice contrasts

It is all about balance. I like concrete walls if the rest of the space provides a nice balance. If you notice all of the examples have pieces of furniture that I very woody (having lots of wood). Wood is typically warm and organic and is a great balance for concrete.

If the room had glass doors, an aluminum bed-frame with shiny satin sheets it would be too cold. Too many man made materials. My design theory of MODERnestS rests on a balance between man made and natural (organic) materials.

Concrete is a mix of both, but tends towards man-made.

Cheers! http://www.modernests.com

that glass-walled shower is just unbelievably beautiful to me. some of the other photos seem very cold, so i think it really depends. wood helps mitigate it, etc.

I enjoy a certain degree of honesty of materials in modern construction - so if there's a concrete floor or CMU wall someplace, I'd like to see it nicely finished off as-is rather than have it covered over w/ wall-to-wall carpet or furring strips and sheetrock.

Love concrete walls...when done well! Half of the reason we had our wedding reception at Foreign Cinema was the concrete walls and the ambiance they gave. The other half was the food.

i dont care for the 2nd or 3rd design, but with the light coming into those bedrooms, it totally works. i love the kitchen in the first photo. i think it all depends on the space as a whole. when used in a poorly lit room, i dont like it as much.

i dont agree with the pretension comment though. whats pretensious about concrete exactly? typically its used to have the opposite (raw/natural/organic) feel in a room. oh and, my friends & i that like this design element actually pay our own rents/mortgages via one or two jobs. thanks!

Cold. I don't like any of those. The second pic is the least bad, because I think I see brick showing through at the top, and that warms it up for me a little. I really dislike concrete in general--it has all bad connotations for me--makes me think of concrete jungle, things that are man-made, industrial, impersonal, modern, barren, and yes, cold....

I don't like the blocks in the last photo, but can appreciate the others, and especially admire photos 1, 2 and 6. Concrete is a solid, honest material that is probably underutilized in 'finished' spaces. It can look quite lovely when done well. I'm all about the patina!

drool worthy!

Didn't like the last one, with the cinder blocks, or the first bathroom, but I loved the rest of the photos. Especially that kitchen in the opening photo... wow!

I like the shower photo.

Looks like people are not cinder block fans so far...I really like them in that composition. I think they work in that composition because there's almost a gallery like partition with drywall. It is almost like it is revealing something else about the home, pulling the drywall back and allowing a peak into the bones of the house. Almost sexy, really. :)

I am a fan. :)

I really like all the ones except no. 2. Looks like somebody started a remodel and forgot to finish. Don't care too much for that oversized hairball on the table of pic no. 6 either. That's just gross looking.

i'm a sucker for all things industrial including concrete walls (floors, countertops etc). unfortunately mine are covered with about a billion years of bad paint jobs. the 1st and 3rd pics here are particularly fantastic.

I like 1 and 6. But 1 especially -- the material feels honest, like another poster said. But it's warm, too. I want to be cooking in there.

Also, Geoff is really shaping up well as an AT contributor, imho.

All of these shots look incredibly cold to me (for the most part).

However, my favorite architect, Tom Kundig, of OSKAA, uses concrete and industrial materials all the time while avoiding this. I recommend people check his work out if they aren't already familiar.

Tadeo Ando's concrete walls at the Fort Worth Modern Art Museum are colossal works of art in themselves. They look and feel like satin. Whole other realm.

As for more realistically achievable projects: the potential beauty of a concrete-walled space depends entirely on the way the room is handled. Can go north or south very easily. . . .

how about cold and inviting!

When "all done up", it looks cold. The walls with the peeling paint & brick have a warm texture to them. I think this is a look that when purposefully duplicated comes off as too calculated and looks cold.