Making a knife from a chunk of concrete and an old shovel

Fashioning beautiful weapons from found objects is always so fascinating to see. How does a person look at a chunk of concrete and see an elaborately detailed knife handle? How can we turn a piece of a shovel into a really sharp knife? Watch John Heisz work his magic below. There are a lot of satisfying noises that… »6/12/15 6:45pm6/12/15 6:45pm

7 Endangered Examples of the Most Hated Architectural Style Ever

It’s hard to find a more polarizing architecture—even among scholars it’s most likely to be described as “ugly,” “unloved,” or even “hated.” I’m talking about Brutalism, the blocky unfinished concrete style which used to be very common in cities around the world, but is now being demolished at an astounding rate. »4/20/15 4:51pm4/20/15 4:51pm

Tokyo Has the Largest Underground Water Tank in the World

This enormous, cathedral-like building is the main water tank of the Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel facility in Kasukabe City, 19 miles north of Tokyo, Japan, which is one of the most famous water infrastructure complex in the world, and also the world’s largest underground flood diversion… »4/10/15 9:00pm4/10/15 9:00pm

A Room-Sized 3D Printer Will Make Freeform Concrete Design Easy


China used more concrete in 3 years than the US in 100 years

Bill Gates has an incredible statistic: According the USGS' cement statistics, China has used more concrete from 2011 to 2013 (6.6 gigatons) than the United States in the entire 20th century (4.5 gigatons). It blows my mind but, then again, as Gates point out, look at Shanghai's evolution in just 20 years... »2/22/15 2:00pm2/22/15 2:00pm

It Took 25 Hours of Continuous Concrete Pouring To Build This Aquarium

When the Miami's Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science opens in 2016, it's going to have an absolutely bonkers aquarium—imagine a giant camera lens, tilted on its side, that lets visitors walk below the tank and look up into it. Building it, as you might expect, entailed a feat of perfectly-timed engineering. »12/24/14 9:40am12/24/14 9:40am

This Pub Built With Concrete Pipes is Surprisingly Elegant and Cozy


