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Thursday, July 9, 2009

Going GREEN with rice concrete



Among the standard use for concrete fabrication, designers have a new edge for an industrial aesthetic. This is a new way to add greater novelty to concrete-countertops. Ash used from rice husks as a cement substitute is a new step to going GREEN with two very old building materials.

Michael Reilly reported "Rice husks form small cases around edible kernels of rice and are rich in silicon dioxide, an essential ingredient in concrete. Scientists have recognized the potential value of rice husks as a building material for decades, but past attempts to burn it produced an ash too contaminated with carbon to be useful as a cement substitute." To learn more click on the link below.
Rice concrete can cut greenhouse emissions - Discovery.com- msnbc.com



Monday, July 6, 2009

The Great Exhibition: Definition from Answers.com


The roots of modern architecture and design evolved from the start of the Technical Revolution in the Industrial Era of mass production for building material of glass and steel. The Crystal Palace
was the first glass and steel structure that was exposed to public masses as a new building type (other than a Green house). The open design, as illustrated below, exposes new ways of thinking and ways dealing with open interior space. Those who embraced this new media would take part in a new art that deliberately broke ties from traditional styles of the past.


Crystal Palace, building designed by Sir Joseph Paxton and erected in Hyde Park, London, for the Great Exhibition in 1851… One of the most significant examples of 19th-century, proto-modern architecture, it was widely imitated in Europe and America.
The Great Exhibition: Definition from Answers.com

Crystal Palace Commentary
"Built out of prefabricated and wrought-iron elements and based on a four-foot module, this 1,848-foot-long ferro-vitreous construction was erected to the designs of Joseph Paxton and Charles Fox, of Fox, Henderson & Co. Its interior volume was organized into galleries which were alternately 24 feet and 48 feet wide. The roof of these galleries stepped up by 20 feet every 72 feet and culminated in a central nave 72 feet wide. The 'ridge and furrow' roof glazing system specially devised for the occasion required 49-inch glass sheets capable of spanning between furrows 8 feet apart, with three ridges occurring every 24 feet."
— Kenneth Frampton and Yukio Futagawa. Modern Architecture 1851-1945 p11.