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 Innovative Building Materials

The construction industry continues to use a variety of classic materials – such as concrete, wood, brick and plaster – to build the sturdy structures that populate our communities. However, scientists are working hard to develop more efficient, eco-friendly solutions for building the houses and buildings of tomorrow.

Pioneering new materials and methods such as self-healing bioconcrete, 3-D concrete printers and a new generation of solar polymers will help construction become more sustainable.

•         Translucent wood, as new material developed by KTH

 A group of researchers from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, has recently developed Optically Transparent Wood (TW), a new material that could greatly impact the way we create architectural projects. According to an article published in Biomacromolecules, the journal from the American Chemical Society, it is a process that chemically removes lignin from wood, causing it to become very white. The resulting porous substrate is impregnated with a transparent polymer, evening out both of their optical properties. 

•       Walls that could replace air conditioning

The team at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia - IAAC lead by Areti Markopoulou have created a new material called Hydroceramics. It is made up of hydrogel bubbles that are able to retain up to 400 times their volume in water.hanks to this property, the spheres absorb liquid and on hot days their contents evaporate,reducing a space’s temperature.

•             Cigarette butts used to make more effective bricks

One man's trash is another man's building material. Researchers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (commonly known as RMIT University) have developed a technique for making bricks using cigarette butts. The team, led by Dr. Abbas Mohajerani, found that making clay bricks with percent of their volume being cigarette butts could completely offset the annual worldwide production of cigarettes and at the same time make a lighter and more efficient brick. 

•        Terreform ONE biodegradable furniture

What if your chair was made out of compost? This is the question posed by this series of experiments with biologically produced benches that are grown rather than manufactured. Together, Terreform ONE and Genspace have developed two bioplastic chairs through similar processes: The first one, a chaise lounge, is formed from a series of white ribs in a parametric shape, with a cushioned top. The second, a children's chair, consists of interlocking segments that can be used to twist the chair into different shapes.  

•       Pollution absorbing bricks

Breathe Brick is designed to be part of a building’s normal ventilation system, with a double-layer brick facade with specialized bricks on the outside, complemented by an inner layer that provides standard insulation. The concept behind Breathe Brick is Cyclone Filtration, an idea taken from modern vacuum cleaners, which separates heavy contaminating particles from the air and drops them into a removable hopper at the base of the wall.

•         TU Delft developed a bioconcrete prototype, concrete that repairs itself

The formula developed by the TU Delft goes beyond repairing merely aesthetic damages, because if cracks in concrete grow, they allow water to pass through and corrode the reinforced steel. This not only compromises the mechanical qualities of the structure but also forces engineers to use larger amounts of reinforced steel in their calculations, increasing final production costs. 

•        Radiant barriers

As the applications for radiant barrier technology took off in space, they also took off on Earth. The technology was made available in the public domain, and products across the world started incorporating the NASA-derived metallized material for everything from lightweight emergency blankets to insulation for homes and buildings. In 1996, the Space Foundation inducted the technology into its Space Technology Hall of Fame.

Garrett was already aware of the benefits of radiant barrier technology for insulating homes and buildings, but he was also aware of a significant drawback. Aluminum, the basis of the technology, has a .03 E-value, which means that it reflects 97 percent of radiant heat and absorbs 3 percent. The problem, describes Garrett, is that aluminum begins to oxidize when exposed to moisture.

•         Liquid granite

Liquid Granite offers a real breakthrough in reducing fire risk in buildings as, unlike concrete, it doesn't explode at high temperatures. It can also withstand high temperatures for longer periods, offering valuable minutes in the case of a fire.

The material is made up of between 30 and 70 per cent recycled material, mainly base products from industry. It uses less than one third of the cement used in precast concrete, which also reduces its carbon footprint.

•         Bendable concrete

Concrete may generally be a good choice for sidewalks, but it is a brittle material – this means that it needs to be poured thick, in order to keep those sidewalks from cracking under pressure. Scientists from Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, however, are developing an alternative. They've created bendable concrete that they say could be easily applied in the form of relatively thin, light paving slabs.

Ordinarily, concrete is made from a mix of cement, gravel, sand and water. The new material, known as ConFlexPave, additionally contains polymer microfibers. These are thinner than the width of a human hair, and serve to distribute loads evenly across the entire slab, instead of keeping them focused in one location.

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