Cool Stuff Archive

Pervious Concrete in Space

David Liguori, of Bay Area Pervious Concrete (BAPC), and team from the NASA Ames Research Center recently worked together to design a new form of pervious concrete that will be used during inflight missions. This new concrete will aid them in their synthetic tree concept, the Self-Adhearing Bioreactors (SABR).

Stealth, Atlanta

The 33-foot-high sculpture is made out of 52 cubic yards of concrete and 8 tons of steel reinforcing bars. The structure is founded on a 16 inch thick mat foundation which supports its 65,000 lb weight. Although Stealth has characteristics of steel, it is made entirely of solid black concrete.

Bamboo: Making Concrete Both Stronger and more Sustainable

Steel-reinforced concrete is the most common building material in the world, and developing countries use close to 90% of the cement and 80% of the steel consumed by the global construction sector. However, very few developing countries have the ability or resources to produce their own steel or cement. According to Future Cities Laboratories, steel however is not irreplaceable. There’s a material alternative that grows in the tropical zone of our planet, an area that coincides closely with the developing world: bamboo.