

Lego-like bricks for full-sized buildings - nealabq
http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/07/these-bricks-are-like-lego-for-full-sized-buildings/

======
brudgers
The idea of prefabricated concrete as a solution to sheltering the poor in
poor countries is a long standing pipe dream of architects. My mentor, The
late David Crane, FAIA told me his experience in the early 1960's. He had a
grant and designed wonderful prefabricated structures. Then he looked at
logistics. The solution was viable in Manhattan. Tooling ate up the budget.

The problem this solves is high labor costs. That's what most prefabricated
systems solve. The exchange is large capital investment and shipping costs for
onsite labor. High labor costs are distinctly not a problem in poor societies.
Moreover even in wealthy societies shipping heavy items is cheap compared to
shipping bulky items.

Lastly, concrete is in forgiving. Mistakes are literally cast in stone. Steel
can be welded, boards nailed. Nothing like that for concrete...I guess I
should add that high tech adhesives typically require a lot of prep,
controlled environmental conditions for application, and testing of
installation or at least monitoring by independent agents, i.e. more
infrastructure and expense.

This looks like a business person with Sketchup's idea. $3 million barely
covers a batch plant and forms, not worldwide distribution.

~~~
Someone
An alternative way to provide housing for the poor in developing countries is
the beer bottle: [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-heineken-
bot...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-heineken-bottles-were-
square-62138490/):

 _" In 1960, Freddy took a trip to the island of Curacao in the Caribbean Sea
and discovered that he could barely walk 15 feet on the beach without stepping
on a littered Heineken bottle. He was alarmed by two things: First, the
incredible amount of waste that his product was creating due to the region’s
lack of infrastructure to collect the bottles for reuse. (Back then, bottles
were commonly returned for refilling, lasting about 30 trips back and forth to
the breweries). Second, the dearth of proper building materials available to
those living in the impoverished communities he visited. So he thought up an
idea that might solve both of these problems: A brick that holds beer."_

That approach was less ambitious by aiming at building small houses only, and
had the advantage that distribution already existed, but failed, too.

~~~
e12e
The architect behind "earthships"[1] made a similar observation regarding used
tires -- finding it was the most readily available resource pretty much
anywhere. Fill a tire with packed sand, and you have a very good brick, making
a wall that has excellent properties wrt heat (either keeping it in, or out).

You can also use regular bottles for construction[2]: you need to cut them in
two, and fit them together, and layer them into clay/concrete/etc -- and you
have again a wall that lets in light, and has good isolation properties (due
to the air pockets in the empty bottles).

I recommend watching "Garbage Warrior" for more on real-world sustainable eco-
housing:

[http://www.garbagewarrior.com/](http://www.garbagewarrior.com/)

[1] [http://earthship.com/Designs/simple-
survival](http://earthship.com/Designs/simple-survival)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottle_wall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottle_wall)

------
msandford
This might work nicely as a wall system, and making it CNC-style construction
is REALLY nice.

But the tetris-style 2nd story floor they were doing is a non-starter. First
off, you couldn't hold the kind of tolerances necessary to make that floor
stay level -- rather than slowly curving downwards -- as it cantilevers out
from the wall. And second, even if you could somehow (and you can't!) that's
not how concrete works. Concrete is strong in compression and weak in tension.
The only way that floor cantilevers out is through a lot of both tensile and
compressive strength. That's how horizontal beams work.

This is a concept, not a reality. It looks like it was done by someone who
understands a lot about the problems that face architects and builders, but
not much about the structural engineering required to make a building actually
stand up.

But if you're willing to forego the brick-together build-a-floor/ceiling it
seems like there's a lot of good design in it. Design, not engineering.

~~~
warfangle
The illustrated second story floor is a non-starter, to be certain. Could not
crossbeams be manufactured in the same style? The article mentions hollow
bricks with slots for reinforcement. I would assume a crossbeam style brick
with a reinforced core would fit the bill just fine.

~~~
msandford
Maybe you could do that?

I think you'd be much better off making "hardpoint" bricks where you can slot
actual steel or concrete beams. Monolithic ones, not something that
snaps/clips together.

One of the reasons that beams work is that they're basically unbroken over
their length. If you want to take two halves of beams and bolt that together
into a single beam you're going to lose strength because the joints are often
weaker than the unbroken beam. Introducing more joints reduces strength a bit
further, but the first one is the killer.

Ultimately you're much better off buying steel beams which are long enough (or
too long and cutting them down) and placing them in whole. Or getting concrete
beams pre-cast somewhere and shipped to the site. Yes they're not plug-n-play
the way you'd like. But the extra materials that it would take to make the
click together type of system work will substantially increase costs to the
point where you can overrun the labor savings. The point of this system is
that it's (theoretically) cheaper.

It's kind of like saying "well we'll just index EVERYTHING on disk and that'll
make all the queries fast!" Yeah that might work in some cases but at some
point there are diminishing returns to further indexing and if you're in a
write-heavy enough environment more indexes can actually slow things down.

Engineering tradeoffs are everywhere.

------
bane
I don't want to come across as being too obtuse, but what's the significant
advantage of this over regular old rebar reinforced concrete blocks? I'm far
more interested in that comparison than with the Lego one.

It looks like these blocks have significantly higher material costs than CMUs,
require completely different tooling to manufacture, deliver and construct,
and apparently needs some kind of robot.

In areas that need rapid, cheap and sturdy construction, concrete blocks are
pretty proven technology. For example, you'll find concrete block housing all
over the Caribbean (hell, all over the world) because the structures are
relatively cheap to put up, last near enough forever, and stand up extremely
well to natural events like hurricanes.

They have good thermal properties already, can be filled in with all manner of
insulation, conduits, whatever; have excellent compression properties (a great
many building foundations are just regular old CMUs). And are easy enough to
put a nice looking facade over that most of us would probably have a hard time
picking out a concrete block building if he had to.

I mean, I get that these don't need a welder to work the rebar, or a masonry
guy to do the mortar, but you'll still need good footing to work off of.
Construction estimates for material _and_ labor to build with regular old
concrete are something like <$2.50 per block or something like $50/m^2.

------
spitfire
This has long been a dream for architects.

Back in the 60's Fritz Haller produced a building system for the Swiss company
USM. If you've ever played with the fischer-price toy Construx you know
exactly what it was like.

The USM building system consisted of three sizes of connections, interfaces
and panels. Each panel would be surrounded on four sides by four connection
beams, and four interfaces at the corners. Build up enough of these together
and you could put together a building.

Sadly, the building system was too far ahead of its time. But they did build
furniture for inside the factory, which was a huge seller.

If you speak German, there's a great talk about the USM systems history.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZNbJoI2DuE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZNbJoI2DuE)

------
aidenn0
I wonder if it's significantly cheaper than using AAC[1] which also uses
interlocking blocks (it uses thin-bed mortar, I couldn't find any details on
the Kite Bricks site for what adhesive you use).

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoclaved_aerated_concrete](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoclaved_aerated_concrete)

------
DavidAdams
I built my house using insulated concrete forms (ICF), which work just like
giant foam lego blocks that you fill with concrete after assembly. They're
already in wide use and have been for decades. The material described in this
article is different. I can't judge whether it's better, but ICFs work pretty
darn well. Their big downside is that you get a very strong, very well-
insulated concrete house, but it costs a lot of money to make a concrete
house, and unless you live in a hurricane or tornado area, you might be better
off building a flimsier house.

~~~
copperx
Concrete houses are required by banks in some countries, for example, Mexico.
You can't get away with a wood house there.

------
tshadwell
This doesn't seem very realistic. Looking at the tires of they're robot, it
would be almost impossible to manoeuvre on that kind of surface.

If you look at Lego vehicles for example, they all have to have
disproportionately wide wheels to be able to navigate the studs on the bricks
without getting caught.

In addition, there are the problems of forming non-rectangular and non 90
degree walls anywhere in the house, the problem of recognising and targeting
the bricks correctly with the robot, the 'spray on' cement that seems a
fantasy.

------
lightblade
"It's ultra scalable!"

lol, I'm just joking. Well, half joking. But this kind of thing does looks
very scalable for mass building.

I wonder what kind of problem is it aiming to solve? Does it solves the
homeless problem by way of mass building? Does it solves urbanization problem
by allowing buildings to continuously add more floors? If so, can these blocks
scale to support hundreds of floors above it?

~~~
sanswork
My guess is it lowers time and cost for pumping out subdivisions. You don't
need bricklayers or framers if all you have to do is slot together blocks.

~~~
jorgis
A lot of the cheaper subdivisions already use prefabricated wall panels.
Framing in those jobs is more about following the paint-by-numbers plans and
cutting MDF.

------
Bob_Sheep
This idea reminds me a bit of insulating concrete formwork, where you use
interlocking bricks made from something like polystyrene to make a form. This
is then filled with concrete to give it strength.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulating_concrete_formwork](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulating_concrete_formwork)

------
EvanAnderson
It's not the same thing, but I'm reminded of Edison's concrete houses:
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/06/14/thomas_ediso...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/06/14/thomas_edison_the_inventor_s_patent_for_the_construction_of_all_concrete.html)

------
pling
They're building a block of modern flats over the road from me at the moment
not too dissimilar to the one in the video.

It took 9 months to build the foundations and about 3 months to get the
superstructure up (concrete) and another 9 months now doing internal and
external decoration. They're now tidying it all up.

That begs the question: this product saves the 3 months bit. That is only 14%
of the time on such a structure. Is that worth saving? Is it viable on those
grounds?

Laying a stable foundation (your Lego board) for this must be pretty hard as
well to stay in tolerance.

Having done the electrics on an old Victorian house, I do rather like the
built in conduit system though although another question: do the bricks break
their structural strength if you make a whole in the skin to run
cables/faceplates)

------
sellweek
Well... This seems pretty similar to:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panel%C3%A1k](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panel%C3%A1k)
. Are there any fundamental differences or is this essentialy the same idea,
just more modern?

------
thisjepisje
I immediately thought of these things: [http://www.infraenbouw.nl/wp-
content/gallery/megablokken/meg...](http://www.infraenbouw.nl/wp-
content/gallery/megablokken/megablokken-0003.jpg)

------
Aardwolf
I like it, and I like the machine.

I guess the only thing I disklike is that the title is "These bricks are like
Lego for full-sized buildings" rather than e.g. "Lego-like bricks for full-
sized buildings".

~~~
dang
Your wish is our command.

Use of "these" and "this" in titles is a linkbait device, so this change is
covered by the HN guidelines.

~~~
Aardwolf
Who is it supposed to bait? It makes me less likely to click the link. Here
the words "Lego" and "Full-sized buildings" overruled it though :)

~~~
dang
Presumably these tricks have been a/b tested to the hilt by the Upworthies of
this world, so whoever they're supposed to bait, there's a lot of them.

------
alloyed
FYI, when an ars article ends with the wired logo, that usually means it's a
reprint. The original can be found at
[http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-07/01/kite-
bricks](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-07/01/kite-bricks)

