The three fins that carry the upper volume are poured in one continuous operation. There is no construction joint anywhere in them, which is why the pour has to happen in a single morning and why everybody was on site before five.
Board-marked concrete is unforgiving in a way that is easy to underestimate from a drawing. The boards were laid out and numbered in the workshop in September, and the numbering is what you are actually looking at when you look at the finished wall. Get it wrong and the grain runs in three directions.
The first truck was late by twenty minutes, which is nothing, and the second was late by fifty, which is not. Between them the contractor kept the face wet and the pour continuous, and the only visible consequence is a slightly darker band about two metres up the middle fin that you can see in raking light in the afternoon.
We struck the formwork on the fourteenth day rather than the seventh. There was no structural reason for it. The extra week was for the surface, and it was worth it.
The client came up from Athens on the day of striking and said almost nothing for about ten minutes, which we have learned to read as a good sign.
