At e-retailer Amazon’s Seattle, Washington headquarters, three large glass dome structures have been built. Inside are 40,000 plants that grow above the concrete flooring. The 60-foot inside walls are covered in over 200 species of green plants. During the night the temperature of the spheres drops to 55°F with humidity up to 85% to protect […]
Read MoreEvery year in Britain, floods cause damage to houses. One solution to this issue could be to construct floating houses in flood-prone areas. To demonstrate the concept, the UK’s first floating house has been built on the River Thames in Marlow. The main structure of the house and the floors are made from Caltite concrete. […]
Read MoreThere has been an increase in buildings using large amounts of timber. Research by Oregon State University in the United States looked at how architects and builders can overcome the technical difficulties of designing and constructing largescale timber buildings. Normally, concrete flooring is used in high-rise buildings. The difficulty when using timber is that there […]
Read MoreThere were six nominees for the 2017 RIBA Stirling Prize for the best of British architecture, which was handed out at the end of October. The winner, Hastings Pier, is notable for its imaginative use of wood, but many of the nominees for the prize relied on concrete to create stunning visual effects. This year’s […]
Read MoreDue to the recent hurricanes in the United States, many thousands of homes have been flooded. This has ruined wooden floors and carpets, leaving homeowners with tough decisions about replacing their floors. Diane Cowen, writing on the website Chron.com, has questioned whether homeowners need to install new wooden floors. Instead, she suggests concrete flooring. She […]
Read MoreStudents and researchers at Washington University have constructed an eco-house built mainly from concrete to demonstrate that the material can be used in sustainable ways. Crete House is a solar-powered building constructed almost entirely from precast concrete. Water coils embedded in the concrete flooring and ceiling provide heating and cooling. Large gutters provide shade and […]
Read MoreConcrete is traditionally seen as a hard cold surface, but new office buildings are contradicting this perspective by using concrete flooring designed to create a warm atmosphere. Symantec, the computer security company’s office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is an example of how a building can use concrete flooring to promote a good atmosphere. The intention of […]
Read MoreFor a long time, concrete floors have been coated with a number of products, but new developments in concrete floor coatings point to how concrete floors will be coated in the future. Many concrete flooring installations requires several layers of coating, but decorative coating firm Byk is working on one layer coating systems. The coatings […]
Read MoreResearch is currently being undertaken to print 3D objects in concrete, perhaps literally paving the way for concrete flooring to be produced in an entirely different way. The building contractors Skanska is working with a number of partners to develop 3D printing of concrete. Loughborough University started researching 3D concrete printing in 2007 a year […]
Read MoreGothic cathedral architecture has inspired a new type of concrete flooring. Concrete flooring needs to be strong to support the necessary load. This usually requires floors to be at least 25 centimetres thick and be reinforced with steel bars or grids, making them too heavy an option in some cases. Researchers at ETH Zurich’s Technology […]
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