Concrete Houses 1919 and 2007
Posted on January 15, 2007 Comments (6)

Robo-builder threatens the brickie [the broken link was removed]
Brickie?: a search seems to indicate that is a bricklayer.
Edison patented a process for constructing concrete buildings in 1908 (1917 issued). Photo is of a concrete Edison house being constructed in one day in Union, NJ on October 9th, 1919. See more photos of concrete houses and much more at the great National Park Service Edison photo gallery [sadly the NPA broke the link and it has been removed].
Related: Thomas Edison’s Remaining Concrete House – Edison Patent List – Google Patent Search – UW- Madison Wins 4th Concrete Canoe Competition – Light transmitting concrete
More from the article:
The robots are rigged to a metal frame, enabling them to shuttle in three dimensions and assemble the structure of the house layer by layer. The sole foreman on site operates a computer programmed with the designer’s plans. The researchers in Los Angeles claim their robot will be able to build the shell of a house in 24 hours. “Compared to a conventional house, the speed of construction will be increased 200-fold and the building costs will be reduced to a fifth of what they are today,” said Khoshnevis.
The rival British system is likely to take at least a week but will include more sophisticated design features, with the computer’s nozzle weaving in ducts for water pipes, electrical wiring and ventilation within the panels of gypsum or concrete.
6 Responses to “Concrete Houses 1919 and 2007”
Leave a Reply
June 16th, 2008 @ 8:44 am
While Italcemente’s smog-eating cement has been used in Europe for several years, it was released in the United States only in 2007 under the name TX Active…
October 5th, 2010 @ 9:58 pm
Recycling is better than throwing things away. But reuse is better than recycling. And in fact, avoiding use is best…
June 23rd, 2013 @ 2:23 pm
Cutting greenhouse gas emissions is one powerful incentive for finding a better way to provide the concrete the world needs; another is the need for stronger, longer-lasting buildings, bridges, and other structures. Roman harbor installations have survived 2,000 years of chemical attack and wave action underwater. We now expect our construction to last 50 to 100 years…
February 26th, 2016 @ 1:56 pm
[…] There work is a great example how appropriate technology and architecture can be used to provide for the needs to communities. […]
June 18th, 2016 @ 11:07 am
[…] This shows a cool engineering innovation: canvas-like material that when it is saturated with water will set (over 5+ hours) into hard concrete. […]
May 20th, 2017 @ 12:40 pm
[…] The ultimate vision is “in the future, to have something totally autonomous, that you could send to the moon or Mars or Antarctica, and it would just go out and make these buildings for years,” […]