Decorative Concretes

This Civil Engineering Topic is regarding with the Decorative Conceretes. From the last many years, concrete has been used as a simple, effective & low cost surface for all sorts of areas ranging from car parks to the drive ways to commercial freight yards. However, the one factor you rarely hear being praised is its looks. Techniques to improve the aesthetic appeal of the monolithic concrete pavements have been around since the fifties, notably in North America where concrete is possibly the most popular surfacing for patios, drives and 'yards', and in southern hemisphere, particularly Australia. However, it is the only since the mid 1980s that many of these techniques found their way to the North-west European paving market. Decorative concretes have been used to the dramatic effect in the new structural developments such as Trafford Centre in Birmingham, UK, Basilica of Yamoussoukro on Ivory Coast & the new European Parliament building. Dramatic effects are not only achieved in large structures though. Coloured concrete is just as effectively used in architectural pavements, paving stones and the internal flooring Undoubtedly, the most popular prettifying technique we see in the UK and Ireland and other western countries are Pattern Imprint, sometimes known as

‘Stamped’?’Imprinted' or 'Textured' concrete. From a sluggish start at the back end of the 1980s this technique has slowly but surely grown in popularity and now attracts a reasonable level of the interest, in both residential and commercial markets. In the recent years, refinements and developments of this technique have emerged and we now have stencilling techniques, high-strength textured overlays.