Berlin - An armchair made from cement may not look very comfortable at first glance, but design enthusiasts who value stark elegance and extravagant ideas are increasingly turning their attention to concrete furniture. Whether it be a dining table, kitchen work surface or bathtub - concrete furnishings are becoming more established in the home without appearing boring or sombre.
"Most people think concrete furniture is grey and rough - but it can be quite different," says architect Karl Heinz Suppa who designs and sells concrete furnishings in Berlin.
If you prefer colourful furniture, you can have a violet concrete plant box and concrete can be polished to make it as smooth as a wash basin.
"Furnishings like that are as hard as rock but they can still feel as soft as velvet."
There's a wide variety of concrete depending on what it's made from. "The concrete that's used in homes today has little to do with traditional concrete you find on the street or what's used to build a bridge. A lot has changed over the years," says Holger Kotzan from the German Cement and Concrete Industry Association in Dusseldorf.
New varieties of concrete such as Hi-Tech-Concrete are very hard and smooth to the touch making them suitable not just for all-weather garden furnishings but for home interiors as well.
Guenter Peterhoff from the design company "Form in Funktion" in Esslingen, Germany, says the trend at the moment is towards lighter and more elegant concrete furniture.
Peterhoff tries to avoid the "heavy" look of concrete and his designs include a table made from several concrete cubes; the individual cubes can be disassembled making the table easy to move or transport.
Combining concrete with different materials also helps make concrete furniture appear optically lighter, according to Professor Klaus Michel from the High School of Art and Design in Halle in eastern Germany.
Michel says a combination of concrete with wood, stainless steel or synthetic materials can result in an interesting contrast.
Michel assembled a group of his students together in a project called "Simply Concrete" over the course of one semester and set them the task of designing furniture that was neither heavy nor plump, but elegant and fine looking.
One of the designs they came up with was a desk made from a wooden top edged with grey concrete thus combining a warm, natural material with an aesthetically cool construction material.
"Not every house or apartment is suited to an item like that," says Peterhoff. He believes concrete only really comes into its own when the rest of the home is decorated in a modern style.
Concrete furnishings are also for people who are prepared to pay more for exclusive design: a lamp from Peterhoff costs about 650 euros (841 dollars) and a dining table including delivery up to 2,800 euros.
