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Author: Vaclav Smil Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 1118697960 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 263
Book Description
How much further should the affluent world push its material consumption? Does relative dematerialization lead to absolute decline in demand for materials? These and many other questions are discussed and answered in Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization. Over the course of time, the modern world has become dependent on unprecedented flows of materials. Now even the most efficient production processes and the highest practical rates of recycling may not be enough to result in dematerialization rates that would be high enough to negate the rising demand for materials generated by continuing population growth and rising standards of living. This book explores the costs of this dependence and the potential for substantial dematerialization of modern economies. Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization considers the principal materials used throughout history, from wood and stone, through to metals, alloys, plastics and silicon, describing their extraction and production as well as their dominant applications. The evolving productivities of material extraction, processing, synthesis, finishing and distribution, and the energy costs and environmental impact of rising material consumption are examined in detail. The book concludes with an outlook for the future, discussing the prospects for dematerialization and potential constrains on materials. This interdisciplinary text provides useful perspectives for readers with backgrounds including resource economics, environmental studies, energy analysis, mineral geology, industrial organization, manufacturing and material science.
Author: Vaclav Smil Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 1118697960 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 263
Book Description
How much further should the affluent world push its material consumption? Does relative dematerialization lead to absolute decline in demand for materials? These and many other questions are discussed and answered in Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization. Over the course of time, the modern world has become dependent on unprecedented flows of materials. Now even the most efficient production processes and the highest practical rates of recycling may not be enough to result in dematerialization rates that would be high enough to negate the rising demand for materials generated by continuing population growth and rising standards of living. This book explores the costs of this dependence and the potential for substantial dematerialization of modern economies. Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization considers the principal materials used throughout history, from wood and stone, through to metals, alloys, plastics and silicon, describing their extraction and production as well as their dominant applications. The evolving productivities of material extraction, processing, synthesis, finishing and distribution, and the energy costs and environmental impact of rising material consumption are examined in detail. The book concludes with an outlook for the future, discussing the prospects for dematerialization and potential constrains on materials. This interdisciplinary text provides useful perspectives for readers with backgrounds including resource economics, environmental studies, energy analysis, mineral geology, industrial organization, manufacturing and material science.
Author: Robert Courland Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 163388869X Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 425
Book Description
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.
Author: Christopher Sneddon Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 022628445X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 283
Book Description
Water may seem innocuous, but as a universal necessity, it inevitably intersects with politics when it comes to acquisition, control, and associated technologies. While we know a great deal about the socioecological costs and benefits of modern dams, we know far less about their political origins and ramifications. In Concrete Revolution, Christopher Sneddon offers a corrective: a compelling historical account of the US Bureau of Reclamation’s contributions to dam technology, Cold War politics, and the social and environmental adversity perpetuated by the US government in its pursuit of economic growth and geopolitical power. Founded in 1902, the Bureau became enmeshed in the US State Department’s push for geopolitical power following World War II, a response to the Soviet Union’s increasing global sway. By offering technical and water resource management advice to the world’s underdeveloped regions, the Bureau found that it could not only provide them with economic assistance and the United States with investment opportunities, but also forge alliances and shore up a country’s global standing in the face of burgeoning communist influence. Drawing on a number of international case studies—from the Bureau’s early forays into overseas development and the launch of its Foreign Activities Office in 1950 to the Blue Nile investigation in Ethiopia—Concrete Revolution offers insights into this historic damming boom, with vital implications for the present. If, Sneddon argues, we can understand dams as both technical and political objects rather than instruments of impartial science, we can better participate in current debates about large dams and river basin planning.
Author: Atlas Portland Cement Company Publisher: Courier Dover Publications ISBN: 9780486427331 Category : Concrete houses Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
More than 140 photographs of early-20th-century homes and apartment houses, most of them accompanied by floor plans. Depicted, among others, are over 100 elegant homes built in the suburbs of New York and Boston as well as in Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Rhode Island, and Maine. 58 halftones; 38 black-and-white line illustrations.
Author: Thomas J. Campanella Publisher: Chronicle Books ISBN: 1568989482 Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 337
Book Description
China is the most rapidly urbanizing nation in the world, with an urban population that may well reach one billion within a generation. Over the past 25 years, surging economic growth has propelled a construction boom unlike anything the world has ever seen, radically transforming both city and countryside in its wake. The speed and scale of China's urban revolution challenges nearly all our expectations about architecture, urbanism and city planning. China's ambition to be a major player on the global stage is written on the skylines of every major city. This is a nation on the rise, and it is building for the record books. China is now home to some of the world's tallest skyscrapers and biggest shopping malls; the longest bridges and largest airport; the most expansive theme parks and gated communities and even the world's largest skateboard park. And by 2020 China's national network of expressways will exceed in length even the American interstate highway system. China's construction industry, employing a workforce equal to the population of California, has been erecting billions of square feet of housing and office space every year. But such extensive development has also meant demolition on a scale unprecedented in the peacetime history of the world. Nearly all of Beijing's centuries-old cityscape has been bulldozed in recent years, and redevelopment in Shanghai has displaced more families than 30 years of urban renewal in the United States. China's cities are also rapidly sprawling across the landscape, churning precious farmland into a landscape of superblock housing estates and single-family subdivisions laced with highways and big-box malls. In a mere generation, China's cities have undergone a metamorphosis that took 150 years to complete in the United States. The Concrete Dragon: China's Urban Revolution and What it Means for the World sheds light on this extraordinary chapter in world urban history. The book surveys the driving forces behind the great Chinese building boom, traces the historical precedents and global flows of ideas and information that are fusing to create a bold new Chinese cityscape, and considers the social and environmental impacts of China's urban future. The Concrete Dragon provides a critical overview of contemporary Chinese urbanization in light of both China's past as well as earlier episodes of rapid urban development elsewhere in the world--especially that of the United States, a nation that itself once set global records for the speed and scale of its urban ambitions.
Author: George Penelis Publisher: CRC Press ISBN: 1351578774 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 821
Book Description
Reinforced concrete (R/C) is one of the main building materials used worldwide, and an understanding of its structural performance under gravity and seismic loads, albeit complex, is crucial for the design of cost effective and safe buildings.Concrete Buildings in Seismic Regions comprehensively covers of all the analysis and design issues related
Author: Ken Nolan Publisher: ISBN: 9781572182370 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 286
Book Description
This comprehensive concrete manual has the information you need, both the tried-and-tested methods and materials, and recent innovations. It covers styrofoam forming systems, fiber reinforcing adjuncts, and architectural innovations. Forming, one of the most important elements of concrete work, gets special attention. Every chapter provides detailed, step-by-step instructions for each task, with hundreds of photographs and drawings that show exactly how the work is done.
Author: Adrian Forty Publisher: Reaktion Books ISBN: 1861899335 Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 338
Book Description
Concrete has been used in arches, vaults, and domes dating as far back as the Roman Empire. Today, it is everywhere—in our roads, bridges, sidewalks, walls, and architecture. For each person on the planet, nearly three tons of concrete are produced every year. Used almost universally in modern construction, concrete has become a polarizing material that provokes intense loathing in some and fervent passion in others. Focusing on concrete’s effects on culture rather than its technical properties, Concrete and Culture examines the ways concrete has changed our understanding of nature, of time, and even of material. Adrian Forty concentrates not only on architects’ responses to concrete, but also takes into account the role concrete has played in politics, literature, cinema, labor-relations, and arguments about sustainability. Covering Europe, North and South America, and the Far East, Forty examines the degree that concrete has been responsible for modernist uniformity and the debates engendered by it. The first book to reflect on the global consequences of concrete, Concrete and Culture offers a new way to look at our environment over the past century.
Author: Mark West Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317380924 Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 565
Book Description
Concrete is the most used man-made material in the world and is the fundamental physical medium for most of the world’s architecture and construction. The character of concrete is largely the product of the rigid moulds that have shaped it since its invention in antiquity. The advent of flexible moulds, however, marks a radical break from conventional practice – and conventional concrete architecture. The Fabric Formwork Book provides the first comprehensive handbook on the emerging technology of flexible moulds for reinforced concrete architecture. Written by the foremost expert in the field, this book takes a comprehensive and generous approach that includes technical, historical and theoretical aspects of the subject. The book: concentrates on simple flat-sheet formworks contains detailed technical descriptions of how to construct a wide range of formworks for various applications features case studies from around the world critiques the difficulties and advantages in each case it covers provides instruction and guidance on how to model and design fabric-formed structures includes the most comprehensive history of fabric formwork yet published features essays from guest expert authors, which explore the theoretical, historical, and poetic significance of flexibly formed architecture and structures discusses fabric formwork as an exemplary approach to sustainable construction through its simplicity and efficiency. Beautifully designed and illustrated with a superb range of images, diagrams and technical drawings, the book both informs and inspires. Speaking directly and plainly to professionals, students and academics, the language used is both clear and precise, and care is taken to avoid opaque technical or academic jargon. Technical terms, when used, are clearly described and a special glossary is included to make the book as widely accessible as possible.
Author: Norbert Delatte Publisher: CRC Press ISBN: 0203961080 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 389
Book Description
Addressing the interactions between the different design and construction variables and techniques this book illustrates best practices for constructing economical, long life concrete pavements. The book proceeds in much the same way as a pavement construction project. First, different alternatives for concrete pavement solutions are outlined. The desired performance and behaviour parameters are identified. Next, appropriate materials are outlined and the most suitable concrete proportions determined. The design can be completed, and then the necessary construction steps for translating the design into a durable facility are carried out. Although the focus reflects highways as the most common application, special features of airport, industrial, and light duty pavements are also addressed. Use is made of modeling and performance tools such as HIPERPAV and LTPP to illustrate behavior and performance, along with some case studies. As concrete pavements are more complex than they seem, and the costs of mistakes or of over-design can be high, this is a valuable book for engineers in both the public and private sectors.
Author: Vaclav Smil
Author: Vaclav Smil
Author: Robert Courland
Author: Christopher Sneddon
Author: Atlas Portland Cement Company
Author: Thomas J. Campanella
Author: George Penelis
Author: Ken Nolan
Author: Adrian Forty
Author: Mark West
Author: Norbert Delatte