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Concrete But Different #2: Inflatable Houses

By Aart van Bezooijen - Mar 30, 2008

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UPENN UPENN

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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  • Materials

Aart van Bezooijen

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Aart van Bezooijen is a Dutch optimist and motivator for materials in design. He lives and works in Hamburg where he founded Material Stories (2005) to inspire and enable the best use of materials to make design more competitive, creative and sustainable.

2011 he explored sustainable solutions from around the world during the "It's Not Easy Being Green" project with graphic designer Paula Raché. He co-organized the Materials Café exhibitions at the Hannover Messe in Germany, the world's leading trade fair for industrial technology. Since 2012, he works as Professor for Material and Technology Transfer at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle growing a new materials library.

6 Comments

  • name
    9 years ago
    Z
    Z
    Reply
    Google monolithic domes You will find all you need to know.
    !Report as spam
  • Richard Williams
    10 years ago
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    Reply
    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.
    !Report as spam
  • luke
    10 years ago
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    didn't a student from the RCA do this a few years ago?
    !Report as spam
  • ruben
    10 years ago
    Z
    Z
    Reply
    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.
    !Report as spam
  • trey
    10 years ago
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    Reply
    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
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  • Berae McClary
    10 years ago
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    It's kind of a geodesic dome, isn't it? Buckminster Fuller would be proud.
    !Report as spam

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