As CNN reports, “For thousands of years, the humble clay-fired brick hasn’t changed.” In fact, there’s very little difference between those from ancient Babylon to the thousands and thousands that surround us right now. Engineers Gabriela Medero (a professor of geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland) and Sam Chapman established Kenoteq to change that. And their debut product, the K-Briq, is 90% …
Working in collaboration with developer Buřinka (aka Stavebni Sporitelna Ceske Sporitelny), sculptor Michal Trpák has designed a 43-square-meter concrete house called Prvok—a structure that can be 3D-printed in just 48 hours and will float on water. The first of its kind in the Czech Republic, the house’s building process not only cuts construction costs, reduces CO2 emissions by 20% and minimizes waste, but the resulting …
Since the cost of shipping resources to the moon remains prohibitively high, planning for long stints—or even habitation—requires savvy, as the rugged surface (aka regolith) restricts growth. Earlier this year, researchers found that, when mixed with moon dirt, astronaut urine could be a remarkably useful building material. When urea, “the second-most common compound in human urine after water” is blended with the dirt, the resulting …
