Week 2: Division 3: Concrete

As mentioned in my previous week 2 blog, concrete is not, typically, the choicest product to use in premanufactured housing design....or is it?  We are an innovative group of individuals, so I have provided some information on concrete here that, if you decide to include it, could be useful to your design.

As quoted from Wikipedia, "The environmental impact of concrete is a complex mixture of not entirely negative effects; while concrete is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, recycling of concrete is increasingly common. Structures made of concrete can have a long service life. As concrete has a high thermal mass and very low permeability, it can be used for energy efficient housing."

As a rule, concrete has offers high compressive strength and weak tensile strength.  Concrete can provide up to 19,000psi and is available in Detroit for construction.

Though the building of forms in which to pour the concrete is the most time/labor intensive, it may be possible to move this step indoors into a prefabricated situation.  Once designed and built, the forms can be moved to the site and connected.  The process of pouring the concrete is quick, so both monitoring the quality of the crete and the timing of pours is important.

Here, the National Assembly Building in Dhakar, Bangladesh by Louis Kahn is formed by poured concrete.  The white joint you see are strips of marble that conceal the location of cold-joints formed between pours during construction.  It is easy to imagine each of these sections being preformed offsite then stacked in place to form walls and other design features instead of the on-site construction done here.

Concrete construction practices