10 Cool Concrete Facts You Probably Didn’t Know
There’s no doubt concrete is one of the best building materials around. It’s super strong, durable, efficient, reusable, and even customizable. So it probably comes as no surprise that over history, concrete has been used for some pretty incredible projects. Here are a few of our favorites—along with a few fun facts that might surprise you!
Work by Oscar Niemeyer, located in Brazil (see #6).
The Ancient Roman Pantheon was built entirely of unenforced concrete. It’s nearly 2,000 years old.
The Seattle Space Needle required 5,600 tons of concrete poured for its foundation over 12 hours. At the time, this was the longest continuous pour of concrete ever attempted in the west. The foundation is 30 feet deep, and the Space Needle is 605 feet tall, to give you an idea of what concrete can do.
The word concrete is formed in Latin by the root words “con” and “cretus,” which appropriately translates to “grow together.”
There are about 2 tons of concrete for each person on earth, making it the most widely used building material in the world.
The world record for the longest concrete pour was 32,315.5 m³ (1,141,211.1 ft³) by Navayuga Engineering Company Limited at Polavaram Dam Project in India. They poured the concrete on January 7, 2019, at the spill channel to help provide irrigation and electricity to the region.
A modernist architect named Oscar Niemeyer designed the Cultural complex of Brazil to be made with concrete. It looks like a planet halfway embedded in the ground, and has a pool of water in the foreground creating a reflection of the other half of the planet. Niemeyer is famed for his creative use of architectural concrete. Photo source
Insulated Concrete Form (ICF) technology dates back to the late 1960s, but we’ve found evidence of ICF blocks going all the way back to 1907.
Cement, one of the main ingredients of concrete, was found in a 12 million-year-old natural deposit in Israel. It was formed through combustion reactions of limestone and oil shale.
The precursor to concrete was invented in 1300 BC, when builders from the Middle East coated the outside of their homes with a limestone wash that chemically reacted with the air to form the first known human-made iteration of cement.
Different recipes of concrete have been used by ancient cultures all around the world through time: China, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Europe, and more. Now, we’re just continuing to improve the mix, most specifically to find ways to reduce the carbon dioxide release. Here’s to sustainable innovation!
What’s the most intriguing thing you learned about concrete today?