Concrete But Different #2: Inflatable Houses

Posted by: Aart van Bezooyen on Sunday, March 30 2008

We featured "Concrete Curtains" earlier but what does concrete have to do with lightweight architecture? Researchers at the Kassel University are exploring new synergies of constructions and materials - including a combination of membrane constructions and concrete.

To create this lightweight building out of concrete, a flexible skin with an embedded membrane structure is inflated with air and filled up with a special concrete mixture such as UHPC (Ultra High Performance Concrete). Once the substance is hardened a solid concrete skeleton allows the building to be finished from the inside.

Instant housing such as these concrete-based Concrete Canvas Shelters are made to save lives in refugee camps. If Kassel's research works out well, building a solid house might become as quick and easy and as blowing up a big balloon?

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It's kind of a geodesic dome, isn't it? Buckminster Fuller would be proud.

heres the thing.....its inflatable wich means air has to stay inside and the people in it would eventually suffocate from lack of oxygen. and if they make windows for sunlight to hit plants inside of it, it would eventually get extremely hot,like a oven inside. but if it is like jus concrete embeddedon a elastic surface wich would be torn down after the concrete hardens and then added to would most likely work

Here is an example of the same building method being experimented with over 60 years ago.

http://www.bookofjoe.com/2007/03/wallace_neffs_s.html

More info on this house can be found in a book called "Homes by the Million" published in 1946.

didn't a student from the RCA do this a few years ago?

Now this type of thinking I like a lot. I've been advocating for change in home building for quite awhile and I am helping to train our youngsters in our schools to think "out of the box." Something of this order will have to be done with our Martian Colony and quickly to protect those we are going to send there. Good Article.