The housing is in flux; in China they are 3D printing houses out of concrete and in North America and Europe they are building high-rises out of wood. A hundred years ago Thomas Edison tried to mass-produce houses out of poured concrete; that google street view above is one in Montclair, New Jersey. Rebecca Onion writes in Slate:
US Patent 1219272/Public DomainUnlike how concrete is usually poured today, floor by floor, Edison did it all in one shot. Reading the patent issued in 1917, the process is described where the mold or formwork is built of a double wall of cast iron sections held together by bolts. It is all done in one pour, slowly enough so that the concrete at the bottom is hard before the pour reaches the second floor so that there is not that much pressure on the lower parts of the form, which makes the formwork less expensive. “ An important feature of my invention consists in so regulating the rate of pouring the cement into the mold, ‘taken in connection with the hard-setting used.”
Unlike modern construction, everything was built into the formwork; “all its parts, including the sides, roofs, partitions, bath tubs, floors, etc, being formed of an integral mass of a cement mixture.”
Edison with model/Public Domain
According to Adam Goodheart, writing for Discovery,
Alas, that formwork was expensive, “nickel-plated iron forms containing more than two thousand parts and weighing nearly half a million pounds. A builder had to buy at least $175,000 in equipment before pouring a single house.“ That’s a lot of money even today in a business where all you really need is a nail gun and a magnetic sign on your truck.
Edison also developed a lightweight concrete mix that he was going to use for furniture, including bedroom sets and even concrete pianos. This, fortunately, never caught on either; when designers tried to bring it back a few years ago I wrote that we should nip this design trend in the bud.
See also Archdaily.
