Light Transmitting Concrete

Gaieus

Well, I am not an architect and only posting this because I also worked at the excavations where this was applied to the exhibition building:
http://www.litracon.hu/downloads.php
The entrance door is made of this concrete (kind of hard to open/close I have to admit...)

Paul Russam

Thanks Gai,
That truly amazing, we have a project that it could be ideal for and the details are bring passed to the client as I type.

Gaieus

Ha, nice to hear that!
Actually the whole concept was developed by one of the DLA (architecture) students aklso working on this archaeological exhibition building.

alexander

Its a verry nice product i've seen it 1,5 years ago
we did make the furniture for a material exhibition center
http://www.materia.nl and there was that material.
they also got a great library of new products.

Phil Rader AIA

Is this material weather tight? can it be used as an exterior cladding and still keep water out?

I don't have any plans to do so but I was just curious.

Gaieus

Well, Phil, not being an architect myself I cannot say any certain details unless the fact that that big entrance gate is opening to the exterior so it must (at lest to a certain extent) be weatherproof.

A sad thing is that shortly after it was installed, some graffiti was painted on the surface. They could get it off with no problem however and then put a thin layer of wax on top (the surface is very smooth - not like regular concrete at all) so that next time an a***hole paints on it, they can just wash it off with hot water (together with the wax layer) and replace the wax again.
To me it somehow shows that it must be in a way weather proof.

Another "proof" would be that I've seen plans of buildings where they were to apply this concrete as outside walls.

Jackson

A perfect example of the best ideas being the simplest- what a cool product! I don't know how you would go about manufacturing it, but imagine if you could jumble around the optic fibres so they weren't running laterally or parallel- you would get a jumbled up "shadow" of whatever (or whoever) was on the other side, with little or no recognisable features. Plato's slaves would have their work cut out interpreting those shadows!