Concrete Creations

Over 45 elegant concrete designs for your beautiful, modern home with just a bag of ready-mixed concrete, water, and a few items you can find around the house. Concrete is in. And no wonder: it's inexpensive, durable, and makes unique, stunning pieces with which to decorate your home. With just a bag of ready-mixed concrete, water, and a few utensils and molds you can find around the house, you can create beautiful, minimalist items in no time at all; from clocks, vases, lampshades and bowls through to jewelry, wine coolers, and desk organisers. Each project is equipped with easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions and tips, and all can be made with very little know-how-- making it a perfect craft for beginner concrete artisans, as well as the more experienced mason. A perfect mix of power, presence and practicality, bring concrete into your home today and discover a new-found love for this often overlooked but remarkable building material.

For gardeners and backyard do-it-yourselfers, concrete is a revelation. It's durable, weatherproof, impossible to steal, and it provides much-needed insulation for outdoor plants. Concrete weathers beautifully, softening around the edges, developing moss, and becoming more picturesque with age. Concrete Garden Projects takes advantage of concrete's numerous assets, showcasing an inspiring array of creative options. The step-by-step instructions for dozens of easy, do-it-yourself décor ideas include containers of all shapes and sizes, elegant benches and stools, miniature ponds and birdbaths, stepping stones, a barbecue, and a fire pit. The authors use a variety of molds easily found or made, household items like bowls and baking pans, and simple wooden frames and boxes. At pennies per pound, and so simple to use—just mix with water and pour—concrete is the key to hand-crafted backyard décor.

Expressive Minds and Artistic Creations: Studies in Cognitive Poetics presents multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research papers describing new developments in the field of cognitive poetics. The articles examine the complex connections between cognition and poetics with special attention given to how people both create and interpret novel artistic works in a variety of expressive media, including literature, music, art, and multimodal artifacts. The authors have diverse disciplinary backgrounds, but all of them embrace theories and research findings from multiple perspectives, such as linguistics, psychology, literary studies, music, art, neuroscience, and media studies. Several authors explicitly discuss empirical and theoretical challenges in doing interdisciplinary work, which is often considered as essential to future progress in cognitive poetics. Scholars address many specific research questions in their articles, including most notably, the role of embodiment and simulation in human imagination, the importance of conceptual metaphors and conceptual blending processes in the creation and interpretation of literature, and the function of multiperspectivity in poetic and multimodal texts. Several new ideas are also advanced in the volume regarding the cognitive mechanisms responsible for artistic creations and understandings. The volume overall offers an expanded view of cognitive poetics research which situates the study of expressive minds within a broader range of personal, social, cultural and historical contexts. Among other leading researchers, many contributors are world-famous scholars of psychology, linguistics, and literature, including Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., Zoltán Kövecses, and Reuven Tsur, whose defining papers also survey the roles and significance of conceptual mechanisms in literature.

Creations made of concrete about seventy projects from recent years present the new face of concrete in architecture. They show how architects knead concrete structures and which amazing qualities can be developed by the usage of exposed concrete. The publication Concrete Creations of the series Architecture & Materials demonstrates by using plans, drawings as well as pictures and texts that the popular construction material has more to offer than it is usually assumed and that it does not necessarily need to be grey.

Nanomaterials can markedly improve the mechanical properties of concrete, as well as reduce the porosity and enhance the durability of concrete. The application of nanotechnology in concrete is still in its infancy. However, an ever-growing demand for ultra-high-performance concrete and recurring environmental pollution caused by ordinary Portland cement has encouraged engineers to exploit nanotechnology in the construction industry. Nanotechnology for Smart Concrete discusses the advantages and applications of nanomaterials in the concrete industry, including high-strength performance, microstructural improvement, self-healing, energy storage, and coatings. The book Analyses the linkage of concrete materials with nanomaterials and nanostructures Discusses the applications of nanomaterials in the concrete industry, including energy storage in green buildings, anti-corrosive coatings, and inhibiting pathogens and viruses Covers self-healing concrete Explores safety considerations, sustainability, and environmental impact of nanoconcrete Includes an appendix of solved questions This comprehensive and innovative text serves as a useful reference for upper-level undergraduate students, graduate students, and professionals in the fields of Civil and Construction Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, and Nanomaterials. Dr. Ghasan Fahim Huseien is a research fellow at the Department of Building, School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore, Singapore. He received his PhD degree from the University of Technology Malaysia in 2017. Dr. Huseien has over 5 years of Applied R&D and 10 years of experience in manufacturing smart materials for sustainable building and smart cities. He has expertise in Advanced Sustainable Construction Materials covering Civil Engineering, Environmental Sciences and Engineering. He has authored and co-authored 50+ publications and technical reports, 3 books, and 15 book chapters, and participated in 25 national and international conferences/workshops. He is a peer reviewer for several international journals as well as Master’s and PhD students. He is a member of the Concrete Society of Malaysia and the American Concrete Institute. Dr. Nur Hafizah Abd Khalid is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Civil Engineering, Universiti Teknologi, Malaysia (UTM), and is a research member of the Construction Material Research Group (CMRG). She is currently a Council Member of the Concrete Society Malaysia (CSM). She earned her Master’s degree on structure and materials in 2011 from the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. She received a Young Women Scientist Award (representing Malaysia) in 2014 in South Korea by KWSE/APNN. She is currently appointed as an Inviting Researcher at Hunan University, China, funded under the Talented Young Scientist Program (TYSP). Her research interests focus on concrete structural systems, advanced concrete technology (green concrete technology and fibre reinforced concrete), civil engineering materials, polymer composites, and bio-composites. Professor Dr. Jahangir Mirza has over 35 years of Applied Research and Development (R&D) as well as teaching experience. He has expertise in Advanced Sustainable Construction Materials covering Civil Engineering, Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Geology, and Architecture departments. He has been a Senior Scientist at the Research Institute of Hydro-Quebec (IREQ), Montreal, Canada since 1985. He has been a Visiting Research Professor for the Environmental Engineering program at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada since 2018.

Concrete: We use it for our buildings, bridges, dams, and roads. We walk on it, drive on it, and many of us live and work within its walls. But very few of us know what it is. We take for granted this ubiquitous substance, which both literally and figuratively comprises much of modern civilization's constructed environment; yet the story of its creation and development features a cast of fascinating characters and remarkable historical episodes. Featuring a new epilogue on the Surfside condominium collapse and the current state of infrastructure in America, this book delves into this history, opening readers' eyes at every turn. In a lively narrative peppered with intriguing details, author Robert Courland describes how some of the most famous personalities of history became involved in the development and use of concrete-including King Herod the Great of Judea, the Roman emperor Hadrian, Thomas Edison (who once owned the largest concrete cement plant in the world), and architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Courland points to recent archaeological evidence suggesting that the discovery of concrete directly led to the Neolithic Revolution and the rise of the earliest civilizations. Much later, the Romans reached extraordinarily high standards for concrete production, showcasing their achievement in iconic buildings like the Coliseum and the Pantheon. Amazingly, with the fall of the Roman Empire, the secrets of concrete manufacturing were lost for over a millennium. The author explains that when concrete was rediscovered in the late eighteenth century it was initially viewed as an interesting novelty or, at best, a specialized building material suitable only for a narrow range of applications. It was only toward the end of the nineteenth century that the use of concrete exploded. During this rapid expansion, industry lobbyists tried to disguise the fact that modern concrete had certain defects and critical shortcomings. It is now recognized that modern concrete, unlike its Roman predecessor, gradually disintegrates with age. Compounding this problem is another distressing fact: the manufacture of concrete cement is a major contributor to global warming. Concrete Planet is filled with incredible stories, fascinating characters, surprising facts, and an array of intriguing insights into the building material that forms the basis of the infrastructure on which we depend.

Materials for Architects and Builders provides a clear and concise introduction to the broad range of materials used within the construction industry and covers the essential details of their manufacture, key physical properties, specification and uses. Understanding the basics of materials is a crucial part of undergraduate and diploma construction or architecture-related courses, and this established textbook helps the reader to do just that with the help of colour photographs and clear diagrams throughout. This new edition has been completely revised and updated to include the latest developments in materials research, new images, appropriate technologies and relevant legislation. The ecological effects of building construction and lifetime use remain an important focus, and this new edition includes a wide range of energy saving building components.