Jh Williams

arianna higgins wrote:

Michael Cox wrote:OK, I get that it is interesting that we might be able to reproduce "roman concrete". I'm just not sure why that is significant. It just seems like a slightly "better" form of modern concrete (and I'm not clear why it is better).  It is relatively easy to design smaller projects (eg homes) without large amounts of conventional concrete anyway, and that will still be an environmentally better option than less-bad alternative form of concrete.

But where concrete gets used on massive scales, this is a non-starter. Architects won't be designing large projects around it's use because it is insufficiently consistent in it's behaviour to be guaranteed safe and predictable in it's behaviour.

At best I think this will be a niche concept for individual enthusiasts.

Ever hear of the Parthenon? Roman concrete held for MILLENNIA. Our concrete only holds for maybe a century at most.

https://news.mit.edu/2023/roman-concrete-durability-lime-casts-0106

They think it's something about the calcium in seawater having self healing properties, havent done ll my reading yet.

Yes, I have heard of the Parthenon.

It's a GREEK Temple, built in Athens, Greece, around the 5th Century BCE using marble, granite and other stone. It was a key fixture in Athenian culture in the Greek Empire.

It predated Roman Concrete by about 300 years.

The Ten Books On Architecture by Vitruvius (Roman Military and Civilian Engineer) c.20 BCE

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ten_Books_on_Architecture

Here be the paper...

https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/sciadv.add1602