In praise of board-formed concrete

Concrete gets a bad reputation it half deserves. Poured carelessly, it is the most brutal material we have. Poured against rough-sawn boards, it becomes the most honest.

It remembers the formwork

Board-formed concrete carries the grain of the timber it was cast against. The wall is a record of its own making, knots and all. Nothing in a render can fake that.

It ages on purpose

A board-formed wall looks better at twenty years than at two. That is the whole argument.