Threshold I

A single cast concrete threshold, poured in one continuous eleven-minute pour to avoid a cold joint across its full length.

Cast concrete · 2024

A pour that could not stop

Threshold I asked for something concrete rarely gets: total honesty about its own making. The eleven-minute pour that produced it happened without a single break, six hundred and forty litres moved from mixer to formwork before the first litre could begin to set. Stop for even ninety seconds and a cold joint appears — a faint seam where old and new concrete refuse to fully bond, visible forever as a hairline the length of the piece. There is no repairing a cold joint after the fact. There is only not making one.

Threshold I detail — DetailStudio photograph

Formwork as the real material

The form itself, built from planed spruce boards set edge to edge, is what actually shapes the surface you see: every grain line, every small void where a knot once was, is printed into the concrete in reverse. We built the formwork the way a printmaker prepares a plate, understanding from the outset that the wood would be sacrificed and the impression would be the point. It is stripped once, and never reused.

Material study

Dimensions & specification.

Fig. 01 — elevation dimensions, Threshold I. Not to architectural scale.

Title	Threshold I
Year	2024
Material	Cast concrete
Dimensions (H × W × D)	2,100 × 900 × 420 mm
Weight	638 kg
Edition	Unique
Catalogue no.	MN-024-01
Status	Available — price on application

On weight and gravity

At 638 kilograms, Threshold I is heavier than it reads. Its proportions borrow from the domestic scale of an actual doorway threshold — something the body already knows how to stand beside — while its mass argues the opposite. That contradiction between a familiar shape and an unfamiliar weight is, for us, most of what the piece is about.