Light-transmitting concrete is kind of endearingly creepy looking – it reminds me of one of those tiny hypoallergenic dogs with no fur except in pale tufts on its oversized head.  I’m jarred by the fact that light can shine through something designed to be massive and essentially made out of rocks.  Glass fibers are embedded in the concrete in parallel, so that light is transmitted from one side of a block of the concrete to the other.  The technology is not brand new;  I saw light-transmitting concrete featured at the National Building Museum some …

Your friendly neighborhood scientists are messing around with nanoparticles.  They’re doing it because materials take on new properties and even behave differently at such small sizes.  If you want to learn more about nanotechnology before we dive into liquid glass, take a look at this video from KQED:

Now let’s consider glass.  We are most of us by now fairly familiar with the material;  its primary ingredient is silica, it’s brittle, at earthly operating temperatures it tends to be fairly solid, and it loves long walks on the beach, horseback riding, and watching the sunset.  But when …

It’s probably not a good idea for another architect to be spreading the word about a “building in a bag” developed by architects and Concrete Canvas co-founders Peter Brewin and William Crawford, but it’s just such a clever and useful concept that I can’t keep it to myself.  Besides, they’re not very pretty (the buildings – I haven’t laid eyes on Peter Brewin or William Crawford) so I don’t think we’ll be officing or living in Concrete Canvas Shelters except under the most extreme circumstances:  the local design review board starts experimenting with peyote for example, or suddenly people only …