Prefabricated concrete is widely used in the process of construction of building of civil and industrial use. This material allows to reduce the time of construction of the building what saves labor and financial resources.
Further, there is another type of concrete products – monolithic. The question arises: “What is the main difference between monolithic and prefabricated?” The difference lies in a method of manufacturing and the sphere of application. For example, monolithic concrete is produced solely on the construction site. This method is very popular because an architect can plan custom and extravagant designs. However, this same technology is characterized with high cost and labor input.
Prefabricated concrete products are manufactured entirely in a different way. They are made at the plant in a special technology process. In accordance with it, the production of prefabricated concrete is more technological and economical. What is more, the term of concrete products manufacturing shortens. Next, concrete units are delivered to the construction site ready-made and assembled according to the architect`s draft. The only disadvantage of this technology is the ability to manufacture prefabricated concrete modules only of well-defined shapes and sizes. Thus, the scope of application of this material for non-standard designs is rather limited.
I obtained this information from the Websites which I found on Google when I was completing the weekly discussion assignment. I started my searches with “prefabricated concrete” and got Wikipedia as a first search result, which, though I had to omit from the reasons well-known. I continued studying search results and came one more Wikipedia article, article on prefabrication from World Housing Encyclopedia and a Youtube video which had no relevance for me. The first useful Website for my research was concretenetwork.com, which provided me with information about advantages and disadvantages of concrete application in construction, in particular – of precasting. The next useful article was the one on Kerkstra.com (Website of the concrete-manufacturing company). It gave me general ideas about prefabricated concrete constructions. Further there were similar Websites selling concrete constructions (bibm.eu, drmprefab.com, hycrete.com, pcine.org, and weiler.net), which provided me also with general information about prefabricated concrete products summarized above. All of these Websites were targeted at constructors, developers and businessmen active in building construction.
Next I decided to expand my research and use some other keywords. I tried the search with “prefabricated concrete in architecture”. Google showed at first Wikipedia article and Websites selling concrete constructions at the top, but I wanted to get new information from new angles. The first article that was giving fresh view on the topic was article “Prefabricated Architecture” by Alyn Griffiths published at Architonic Website. From this article I got to know that production of prefabricated concrete structures is only one step of the process. Further, they shall be duly protected afterwards. For that purpose engineers cover concrete structures with the polymer mixtures that produce on the material surface invisible film that protects against all kinds of environmental influences. Further the author provide examples of modern building completed with prefabricated concrete – with photos of such constructions.
Next were 2 books available on Google Books. The first one was “Structures and Architecture” by Paulo J. da Sousa Cruz, and the second one – “Concrete Architecture” by Catherine Croft. I “thumbed” through these books quickly to find that they might be important sources for thorough research of this topic. In addition to picturesque illustrations showing outstanding architectural decisions completed with prefabricated (as well as monolithic) concrete structures, they were extremely informative and expanded my reseach further. In particular, I got to know the following: currently high-rise residential, office buildings, architectural objects for civil, industrial and sports purposes are built with the help of prefabricated concrete constructions. Next, as both authors predicted, because of technological and economic efficiency of this method, there will be further growth of the popularity of this building method in the future.
Answering the last set of question about the differences between interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, the following can be said. Interdisciplinarity implies a simple "borrowing" of techniques and methods from other fields of science, whereas transdisciplinarity involves functional synthesis of methodologies and creation of completely new research concepts on their basis. The research about prefabricated concrete may be considered as transdisciplinary from that account that modern architecture is largely united with construction process which influenced Google searches that showed mostly not resources in the field of architecture, but those related to the construction.
Works Cited
bibm.eu. 2016. Web. 24 Jan. 2016. <http://www.bibm.eu/precast-concrete/10-reasons-for-choosing-precast-concrete?id=1058>.
concretenetwork.com. 2016. Web. 24 Jan. 2016. <http://www.concretenetwork.com/precast-concrete/advantages.html>.
Croft, Catherine. Concrete Architecture. Laurence King Publishing, 2004.
Cruz, Paulo J. da Sousa. Structures and Architecture. CRC Press, Jun 27, 2013.
drmprefab.com. 2016. Web. 24 Jan. 2016. <https://www.drmprefab.com/cement-home>.
Griffiths, Alyn. “Prefabricated Architecture”. Architonic. N.d. Web. 24 Jan. 2016. <http://www.architonic.com/ntsht/prefabricated-architecture/7000680>.
hycrete.com. 2016. Web. 24 Jan. 2016. < http://www.hycrete.com/>.
kerkstra.com. 2016. Web. 24 Jan. 2016. < http://kerkstra.com/faq>.
pcine.org. 2016. Web. 24 Jan. 2016. <http://www.pcine.org/index.cfm/products_systems/architectural>.
weiler.net. 2016. Web. 24 Jan. 2016. <http://www.weiler.net/en/index.php/precast_concrete_products>.
