Transparent Concrete

[gfish]

Several years ago, I saw an article about concrete with parallel row of fiber fiber optics embedded inside. When the faces were smoothed off, these fiber transmitted light from one side to the other. Enough to see silhouettes. I think it was pretty cool and looked forward to seeing it used.

Two years ago I went to DC to help my brother move there for an internship. While taking in the sights, I stopped by the National Building Museum. They had an exhibit on concrete. 'Cool,' I thought, 'maybe they have some of that fiber optics concrete!' (This was shortly followed by, 'Wait, am I really the kind of dork that goes to a concrete exhibit at the National Building Museum? ...yes. Yes I am.') And at the very end of the exhibit, after seeing hundreds of examples of architects desperately trying to make concrete look less like ugly grey massiveness, there it was. A monolith of light transmitting concrete. It was one of the few times in my life that the reality of an innovation lived up to my dreams. Backlit, it didn't look like concrete. It didn't look like anything hard, dense and heavy. It looked like a paper screen. You could make load-bearing structures that had the visual impact of a gauze curtain! Surely this would be picked up immediately by architects all over the world!

Just now, I stumbled across a link to www.litracon.hu/, the people who make the stuff. It had a products page! ...which includes this, a freestanding light fixture made out of light-transmitting concrete. For 570 Euros. (Plus what I can only assume is some fairly noticeable shipping.) 570 Euros! For a concrete lampshade! No wonder no is using the stuff. The people who own the patents are insane. I sure am glad we have such an excellent set of IP laws to encourage innovation. :(

Comments

[ilmarinen.livejournal.com]

My suspicion is that is fairly expensive to make. And, most architects are pretty conservative. Or, more properly, contractors/builders would probably have to retool to an entirely new material. I don't know how they get the fibers parallel, nor how tidy the shearing process needs to be. But, suspect both steps are non-trivial.

Not so expensive that the lamp shade represents a realistic material unit price, but any household "art" object is going to grossly overpriced, transparent concrete or not. If it was to be used on a building, there would be some sorta of licensing negotiation plus real cost of manufacture. I'd be very surprised if the Co. wasn't willing to cut a pretty sweet licensing deal to the first large-scale building project to come to them. What better marketing than a building like you are describing? However, they probably won't (and can't) underwrite massive real construction costs. Wonder if it could be applied to poured-in-place structures.

If such a project happens, I predict it will be in Dubai. From all accounts, a damn impressive place.

Very cool material though.

-B.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Casting on site would be difficult, but I was just thinking of using premade bricks. The fiber management techniques shouldn't be radically different than any composite material. It's just a weird kind of fiberglass, really.

Dubai will probably build an entire stadium out of this stuff.