BÉTON: ESMA Montpellier

The delicate touch of Madame Varlet moves over the concrete walls, which are sick in places. She will heal and take care of them.

The desired fine, impeccable finish is a possible outcome, but normally lacking this care.

Here, we want a smooth, abstract, perfect wall.
Not the expression of chance and necessity. Not béton brut.

Martine Varlet
Concrete artist in the treatment and aesthetic repair of façade concrete

“What we have here is a fairly exceptional context, in that I had the complicity of Mr Mateo, of Mateo Architecture, who immediately understood the technical problems that we might come across when working with tinted concrete mix.

A whole team was set up around me, with the scaffolding, the engineers, and the complicity of the architect.

And I think we achieved a very respectable result.

Basically I am an expert in concrete formulation, as well as a concrete artist. I have developed products, which I have patented, that improve with age.

On a smooth surface, if the surface is to remain smooth, we carry out small repairs, with repair products that are inserted deep into the mass and then they are pressed—load pressed, of course. This fine, solid product is the same colour as the concrete. And then we go back to the start to find the concrete, the holes in the concrete.

And here we can say that we have an aesthetic repair, because it blends in completely with the concrete.”