Concrete piles tap into Edison’s ingenuity
Concrete piles might not live up to Thomas Edison’s vision of a single-part concrete house, but they benefit from much of the same logic that went into his 1917 patent.
In that year, Edison patented a system by which seamless concrete dwellings could be created, using a mould the size of a house to contain the concrete until it set.
Several examples of this approach remain in the area around Edison’s factory at West Orange – and show how the US inventor was as focused on single-material construction as his avant-garde European counterparts around the same time.
Now, Matt Burgermaster, an assistant professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, is using similar principles to design and build ‘ice houses’, igloo-like structures with excellent sustainability credentials.
He calls Edison’s single-pour, moulded concrete concept “a forward-thinking approach to the integration of building design and construction” and a source of inspiration for “the creation of a more sustainable built environment”.
While concrete piles are just one component in a structure, they can have similarly beneficial sustainability credentials.
For instance, CFA piles can be poured into a drilled hole and reinforced once in place, before they set – creating a single-pour foundation with excellent strength, and with minimal disruption to the surrounding landscape and environment.