lining

Always on the hunt for construction techniques and products that will benefit his work as a watershaper, Paolo Benedetti has spent years examining and refining the way his firm stems the damage that weather and wear can impose on his highly customized, highly complex concrete creations. Here, in the second installment of a set of articles on installing durable hardscape, he offers his informed view of the science of ‘fortifying’ concrete.

Protective Measures

Next to the water itself, concrete is the most important and widespread of materials used in watershaping. Not only is it instrumental in creating the structures that contain water as well as the substructures that support them, concrete is also the stuff of which faux-rock panels, pre-cast or poured-in-place coping, pavers, all manner of stamped or textured decks and poured-in-place or block walls are made. Despite its omnipresence, however, concrete remains one of the most misunderstood of all watershaping materials in this sense: Because it is so durable in basic structural applications, there's a tendency to