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Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Architecture Dream of the Concrete Rooms

Posted by Charles Mudede on Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 4:46 PM

The concept:

The story:

[A]fter-dinner speech in New York City, Thomas Edison announced his latest brainchild to the world. Concrete homes, he said, would revolutionize American life. They would be fireproof, insect-proof, easy to clean. The walls could be pre-tinted in attractive colors and would never need to be repainted. Everything from shingles to bathtubs to picture frames would be cast as a single monolith of concrete, in a process that took just a few hours. Extra stories could be added with a simple adjustment of the molding forms. Best of all, the $1,200-dollar houses would be cheap enough for even the poorest slum-dwellers to afford.

Scarcely less extravagant were the claims of Edison's admirers. "The time will most certainly come when whole houses will be turned out in one piece," a biographer declared in 1907. When the molds were removed, he wrote, "a solid and almost bomb-proof house will be left behind."

...Undaunted, Edison announced that he was generously turning his invention over, free, to anyone who wanted to help humanity. Building contractors didn't exactly beat a path to his door. So in 1911, the inventor made another go of it. This time, he announced, he had discovered a product line for which concrete was ideally suited: home furnishings.

Using special lightweight "foam concrete," Edison proposed the manufacture of concrete phonograph cabinets and concrete pianos. Concrete bedroom sets — more durable and beautiful than those "in the most palatial residence in Paris or along the Rhine" — would cost a mere five or six dollars. Edison even planned to market concrete tombstones. "As to concrete dogs to stand warningly in the front yard and concrete cats to purr stonily under a concrete kitchen range, he made no announcement," noted the New York Times.

The world doesn't make men like Edison anymore. Men who see utopia as the stuff of one substance.

Comments (22) RSS

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Hmm ... I wonder why the concrete piano never made money.

Posted by yuiop on November 25, 2008 at 4:55 PM

This makes it dangerously easy to compare butter sculpters to Edison.

Posted by AJ on November 25, 2008 at 4:55 PM

Yes, I can see where the process of setting up forms for an entire house, bathtubs and picture frames included, would take just a few hours. After all, the stupid knee wall in my yard only took a frigging WEEK to form and pour.

Posted by Fnarf on November 25, 2008 at 5:01 PM

He was right. It's more expensive than wood here in the Pac NW but none the less he was right.

Posted by Sargon Bighorn on November 25, 2008 at 5:01 PM

Didn't John Galt want to house the poor in concrete too?

Posted by elenchos on November 25, 2008 at 5:09 PM

No. Roark. The other one. That guy.

Posted by elenchos on November 25, 2008 at 5:10 PM

I don't know, I think they can do some pretty cool stuff with it.

Posted by minderbender on November 25, 2008 at 5:13 PM

I stubbed my toe on a concrete bed once. Lucky for the other guy, it took me right out of the mood.

Posted by tomasyalba on November 25, 2008 at 5:15 PM

@7: That's pretty awesome.

As for Edison's idea... how exactly would you set up a form system for an entire house? At 150-160 lbs/cu. ft, the hydrostatic pressure of concrete is no joke. I don't see how you'd be able to pour two floors in one go without having an insanely strong outer and inner wall form set. Maybe if you cast the houses in a quarry?

Posted by Greg on November 25, 2008 at 5:45 PM

But Courtland was mine!

Posted by Banna on November 25, 2008 at 5:48 PM

Of course if Edison always had his way, there'd be a substation approximately every few thousand feet, all over America. Concrete homes might make more sense under those circumstances.

Posted by Dougsf on November 25, 2008 at 5:49 PM

Sounds like you were listening to KEXP this morning... or chances are you were remebering the part where Elvis slipped into the Bathtub without Shirley's Oscar.

Posted by d.b.kieneker on November 25, 2008 at 5:53 PM

There was a need for electicity with out the cape

Posted by danielbennettkeieneker on November 25, 2008 at 5:55 PM

Oh, please. All this was hardly motivated by any sort of Utopian idealism--Edison was just trying to create some sort of greater demand for concrete so that his Portland Cement Company wouldn't be a total financial loss.

Posted by Hoyt Clagwell on November 25, 2008 at 7:00 PM

Edison even came to Seatttle to pitch this idea

http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?Dis…

Posted by Alan Stein on November 25, 2008 at 9:31 PM

On the San Francisco Peninsula, William Nicholson used balloons to shape the concrete rooms of the "Flintstone House" thirty years ago.

http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_pr…

And of course, Gaudi was using concrete to make his curvy structures ninety years ago. He mixed pigment with the concrete to make buildings that never needed painting.

Posted by gaudi fan on November 25, 2008 at 11:35 PM

The world doesn't make men like Edison anymore. Men who see utopia as the stuff of one substance.

Sure it does. Some moron is always proclaiming that iTunes will be the end of television, or that Kindle will be the end of books, or whatever. Carbon fiber sports equipment? Resin polymer handguns? Nanotubes? There's a materials revolution every 10 minutes, and everyone who knows about them thinks each one is going to change the way we do everything.

Maybe you're too busy being a wino philosopher to read Popular Mechanics but, if you did, you'd see two or three of these things every year.

Posted by Judah on November 26, 2008 at 12:47 AM

Google Insulated Concrete Forms (ICFs) Its here and growing huge in popularity.

Posted by Tom on November 26, 2008 at 6:02 AM

Behold! Concrete City! It was supposed to be the ideal place for coal miners to live. It didn't quite work out that way.

http://forgottenpa.blogspot.com/2007/08/…

Posted by hank on November 26, 2008 at 8:35 AM

Irving Gill of San Diego had similar ideas about concrete. I recommend this book on Gill: http://www.amazon.com/Irving-Gill-Archit…
He actually got some utopian worker communities built in concrete, but they weren't very successful. He's an interesting figure nonetheless. Claimed to have become interested in concrete after watching his mother clean.

Posted by Emmakat on November 26, 2008 at 8:53 AM

tesla was better. at everything.

Posted by whomsRU on November 26, 2008 at 9:22 AM

Some of these houses were actually built and are somewhat difficult to live in. Repairs are very costly and renovation or remodel is a nightmare. "History Detectives" did a piece on one of the surviving sructures.

Posted by inkweary on November 26, 2008 at 10:35 AM