|
Intaglio Composites: A New Message Delivery System
By Joseph and Carol Berke
Concrete is a ubiquitous building material that we see around us every day. It generally sits in the background of our senses, as we view buildings, roads, dams, and other private and public works projects.
However this drab view of concrete is about to change if Robert Beverly of Intaglio Composites (www.intagliocomposites.com) has his way. His company has developed a new process to permanently place photographic images into a concrete surface. “This process will make a major contribution to creating a more aesthetically pleasing visual landscape,” says Beverly.
Beverly has an artistic streak that led him to working with wood, glass, metal, and any other medium that required unique creativity and innovation. This artistry inspired him to start Beverly Designs of Arlington, Texas, a company that served clients around the country. They specialized in everything from case goods to signage in metal, laminated lettering, set-ups, glass and polished brass.
In 2001, Beverly took a few years off to develop new products that would soon find their way into the sign industry. This new product development in the field of concrete began in 1998. Over five years, testing was ongoing in the image aspects of the concrete. “As my business was mainly in graphics on a wholesale level, I changed our company direction to ‘retail’—or direct client interaction,” Beverly relates. “During this restructure, my work in the concrete process had accelerated with positive results. The process was officially unveiled in November 2003.”
One of these products is what Beverly calls photo-engraved concrete. “Right now we have to keep our technology proprietary due to our worldwide patenting process and be careful about patent infringements,” Beverly says. “We hope to be large enough to have brand recognition and to have enough business in a country to overcome our competition.”
The process involves a combination of chemistry, high-tech equipment, concrete expertise, graphical technology, and a great deal of persistence to develop a structural material that allows a permanent image to be embedded on the surface. “Photographers have always been limited by the media through which to convey their work,” Beverly says. “They now have a way to properly display their work as art in a sculpture form. And more importantly, we’re able to visually change the message that folks might see when viewing a memorial or other important points of interest or maybe a message or architectural design that might set something apart from the norm.”
(Note: Beverly first began to investigate the possibilities of this process after having heard of a company in Europe that had failed to accomplish the same results. “I had no ideas just how scientific an industry had become as that of the nature of concrete,” he says. “Advances in this raw material have catapulted its appreciation into the many design enhancement applications. As one of those who used your ‘off the shelf’ bags to solidify posts or structural elements, it was a humbling road to educate myself of the advances.”)
“Contrast, clarity, and quality dictate the outcome of any work,” Beverly explains. “Current digital technology greatly enhances our capability to perform amazing tasks in digital transformation of the imagery.”
The process begins with procuring a high-quality graphic image to be placed in a pre-cast concrete surface. “Ideally we’d like to have a sharp, well exposed image in the range of 600 to 1200 dpi, although we have worked with JPEG images as low as 23k,” Beverly comments. “We use all types of image processing software—from sign programs to Photoshop.”
The technology impedes the cement matrix from forming where the image is located, leaving an exposed aggregate surface. The exposed aggregate now becomes the image transferred. The aggregate size and chemical makeup is used to determine the amount of detail to be captured in the image. This also determines the depth of the image in the concrete surface.
The concrete used is a high-performance Self-consolidating Concrete to create a higher strength, a higher density, and a lower permeability concrete. Beverly has successfully experimented with the addition of colored aggregate into the process to produce colored engravings.
To further improve the versatility of this process, Beverly is also working on concrete tiles containing different other materials to create terrazzo type finishes. These tiles (with portions of photos engraved on them) are later assembled into one large artistic panel.
Another product is what Beverly calls “Textile Concrete.” This process allows his company to create thinner panels that still maintain the necessary stiffness and strength. These panels (featuring photo-engraved images) may be used as overlays over existing structures to enhance their beauty and message-promoting capabilities.
This new process was so well received that Intaglio Composites was invited to exhibit their technology at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C., as part of an exhibition on concrete architecture. The exhibit focused on projects where concrete is the main construction material. Soon many requests for the technology began arriving from around the world.
Beverly believes that this photo-engraved concrete—which he calls a “message delivery system”—will revolutionize the sign industry. As billboards continue to come down, the industry will need other options.
“In the future, (as funding for highway infrastructure becomes less available and demand increases), the highway departments will be looking at alternative ways to fund their roadways,” says Beverly. “They’re already looking past toll ways to other options for funding). Companies may buy several miles of highway to install concrete structures to promote some historical site or city and also have room for their advertising. Other venues for signage could also be bridge abutments, historical markers, and memorials along the highways. For general signage on the sides of building or built into sidewalks of floors of companies, this technology does the job.”
Some of Intaglio’s projects that illustrate these concepts include the Three Bridges Project in Arlington, Texas, which is comprised on twenty-eight-foot walls along the highway incorporating three images of the history of Arlington. Another project is a 7-by-20-foot concrete photo embedded in a sidewalk in Bellflower, California, which depicting the history of the city.
Other potential clients include the City of Worchester, Massachusetts for a firefighter memorial, a veterans memorial for Arlington Cemetery, and a piece for Georgia as a memorial for World War II that includes historical photographs in the concrete structure.
Commercial projects include one from Heathrow Airport in England—for use of the textile concrete with advertising embedded in the floor of their International Terminal Wing—and a one million-square foot pier in Japan to incorporate graphical and advertising works.
Intaglio Composites is also currently working with a beer company for production of 3,000 pieces for insertion into sidewalks in front of convenience stores carrying their product. Meanwhile a city in Indiana has approached Intaglio for a wall that lies within the city that remains structurally sound but has suffered surface deterioration, an ideal scenario for large companies to come in and underwrite its restoration with the availability of a “twenty-year billboard image.” Another city approached Intaglio to overlay a 600-by-20-foot concrete wall with slight surface damage and use the overlay to add graphics and advertising for the project sponsor.
In addition to the photo-engraved concrete for use in structural projects and for advertising, Beverly also plans to perfect other photo-engraved concrete product lines that include kitchen counters, table tops for domestic or commercial use, and custom decorative inlays for people’s homes.
The use of photo-engraved concrete, tiles, and textile concrete will open up a whole new application of the combination of signage and this ubiquitous structural material to provide the customer with a unique message delivery system.
|
