Sustainability and Environment
20/01/2025
Trends and Innovations
03/03/2025
Sustainability and Environment
PREFABRICATED CONCRETE AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Sustainable building, green architecture and environmentally conscious design techniques are synonymous with what construction should be today and tomorrow.
From a life-cycle perspective, prefabricated concrete creates superior environmental and energy structures; at the end of its service life, 100% of the concrete can be recycled into aggregates. In addition, throughout its installation, precast concrete significantly reduces the environmental footprint of a construction site.
Durability and adaptability
Prefabricated concrete panels offer a long service life due to their durable and low maintenance surfaces. The insulated sandwich panel construction with exterior and interior concrete facades provides long-term durability both indoors and outdoors, and prefabricated concrete construction also offers the ability to move and reuse panels to renovate the building, rather than destroy it, if its use or function changes.
Thermal mass and energy performance
The thermal mass of the concrete makes it possible to move the heating and cooling loads in a structure to reduce the requirements of the mechanical system and the energy consumption through the building envelope.
Resistance to fire and natural disasters
The concrete is non-combustible and can contain a fire within its limits. As a separation wall, precast concrete prevents fire from spreading into a building or jumping from one building to another. Prefabricated concrete is resistant to wind, hurricanes and flooding.
Air infiltration
Prefabricated concrete panels have negligible air infiltration. Minimizing air infiltration between panels, floors and ceilings will provide a low air infiltration building. These effects will reduce energy costs and help prevent moisture problems.
Indoor environmental quality
Concrete contains low to negligible VOCs. Polished concrete floors do not require carpet and exposed concrete walls do not require finishing materials, which eliminates the presence of sanding particles in drywall sealing joints.
20/01/2025
Trends and Innovations
Montreal is well known for its historical buildings that all tell a story in their own way, however, KANVA (Achitecture studio) finds a poetic way to mix the present with the past in devising the Edison Residence near McGill University and tells its story through concrete!
In fact, this building was originally a 19th century stone house that was almost destroyed by fire. When designing the Edison residence, KANVA’s architect made it a priority to reflect the building's history onto its design. Their solution: outfitting the whole façade of the building with photo engraved precast concrete panels. This innovation technique (the Photo-Engraving-Link to the manufacturing technique) in concrete facade treatment , transfers photos onto concrete surfaces that are animated depending on the direction of the light. 3D formliners enable three-dimensional visualizations.
The images depicted on the building are taken from the film 'Montreal fire department on runners' because this film is about the actual fire that destroyed the original building. In addition, the name of the residence was chosen because the movie focuses on Thomas Edison who played a big role in the development of moving images film. This impressive photo-engraving process that was used on the concrete panels was made possible by the precast manufacturing process that gave the architects and designers the possibility to create breathtaking pieces of art!
Saramac worked hand in hand with KANVA to produce this piece of Art. We extend our invitation to designers and architects to challenge us with such mind provoking projects.
03/03/2025