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Inflatable Concrete and Other Innovations in Materials Science

The Medium Awards is an annual materials sciences recognition program in the UK. Cliff Kuang of Fast Company has a slideshow of seven winners, including a carbon fiber alternative made from carrots, a sponge that absorbs oil but not water, and a very lightweight substitute for kevlar. Pictured above is an inflatable tent made from concrete-embedded cloth. Just add water, and it turns into a hardened structure.

Link | Photo: Concrete Canvas

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24 Hour Tombstones

Time is tight if you are just starting to make Halloween decorations, but this one can be ready in a day. Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has instructions for making your own concrete tombstone! It might not be fancy enough for an actual grave, but it is sturdy and customizable for Halloween. Link

The Crack Garden

Photo credits: Kevin Conger (top left), Nancy Conger (top right), Tom Fox (bottom)

The Crack Garden is an award-winning project by CMG Landscape Architecture in San Francisco, California. The project transforms a desolate concrete landscape into a lush garden:

Inspired by the tenacious plants that pioneer the tiny cracks of urban landscapes, a backyard is transformed through hostile takeover of an existing concrete slab by imposing a series of "cracks". The rows of this garden contain a lushly planted mix of herbs, vegetables, flowers, and rogue weeds retained for their aesthetic value.

Link – via Pruned

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Bendable Concrete

Traditional concrete will only take so much pressure before it breaks. A team led by Victor Li of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor has developed a new type of concrete that bends under such pressure and can repair itself! The self-healing concrete develops many hairline fractures when bent, distributing the pressure over its area. The tiny cracks will seal themselves with calcium carbonate when exposed to rainwater and carbon dioxide. With this new material, bridges can be constructed without expansion joints. Buildings made of it will also be safer during earthquakes. Link -via Unique Daily

Light-Transmitting, See-Through ... Concrete?!

This is real, construction-grade concrete. It is not totally transparent, but the optical fibers embedded within it allow the concrete to transmit sufficient light to allow for some interesting (and useful) applications.

The fibers can transmit light up to 50 feet, and because they take up only a small portion of the block, they do not affect the structural integrity of the building material. 

Filled with optical fibers that run from one end of a poured piece of concrete to the other, these prefabricated blocks and panels effectively transmit light from one side to the other. Colors and light remain remarkably consistent from end to end, but with a natural variation from the pouring process that actually softens the effects considerably.

Link – via darkroastedblend

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Minnesotastan.

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Brutalist Architecture

I learned something new today: the ugly concrete building style of the 50s to the 70s, exemplified by Le Corbusier, has a name. It is called Brutalist Architecture (the term brutalist originates from the French béton
brut or "raw concrete," but the name does fit the style
well):

The movement was initiated by French architect Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris, known more popularly as Le Corbusier. The Brutalist approach was marked by an unashamed display of building functions and construction using poured concrete in a way that did not disguise the rough materials with which buildings are made. Brutalism [sic] completely rejected the classical norms of beautification and decoration for hard angles, rough surfaces, and exposed plumbing and machinery.

Link | Brutalist Architecture at Wikipedia | Brutalist Architecture Flickr pool

(Photo: Barbican Centre in London by GarySmith70 [Flickr])

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