A Washington University architecture professor spent two years building a 20-foot-tall concrete spiral as a temporary home for migrating birds.
Now open to the public at the Audubon Center at Riverlands nature reserve near St. Louis, Avis Spiralis was created to serve as a bird blind and observation point.
The name means "spiral bird."
But there’s something else that’s special about this structure: a novel method of forming and shaping concrete. On this episode of St. Louis on the Air, we get to the bottom of this spiral and learn what’s inside its winding concrete walls with its creator, Pablo Moyano Fernández, associate professor of architecture at WashU’s Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.
Inspired by the concrete used in ancient Rome, Moyano Fernández created a concrete casting technique called “Opus Versatilium,” Latin for "versatile work.”
“The one thing about concrete that distinguishes the material from all construction materials is the plasticity, the fluidity,” he noted. He explained that his method uses modern construction techniques and 3D-printed molds to shape concrete onsite.
“The Romans are known to be, basically, the masters of concrete, actually the inventors of concrete,” he said. “With Opus Versatilium, what you can offer is the cast-in-place [concrete method], but using small molds. You can reuse the molds; then, you're not only saving material but also allowing you to do complex geometries.”
It’s not just bird sanctuaries that are benefitting from Moyano Fernández’s concrete methods. In an essay published this summer, he argued that modern concrete methods could be “the future” of affordable housing construction.
“When you think about affordability, it is not just the low price, it’s the operational cost,” he noted. “Hurricanes, tornadoes, hail, storms, fires, flooding … concrete is perfectly capable of withstanding all of those conditions. I think there is definitely a market for that.”
To hear the full conversation about the science behind concrete, the building of Avis Spiralis, and why Pablo Moyano Fernández believes concrete can be “the future” of affordable housing, listen to “St. Louis on the Air” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube, or click the play button below.
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. The production intern is Darrious Varner. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr.
