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Ollie's avatar

Could a whole new lightweight structural approach become feasible with industrialisation? Early cars were built much like horse drawn carriages in some senses, but as tools and components evolved in tandem over decades we can now see stamped aluminium chassis which were inconceivable once, yet are capable of travelling at hundreds of miles per hour, turning corners, remaining watertight etc.

Cover seems to be experimenting with a stamped metal system. It would be nice to think the future still holds one or two huge leaps forward in building technology!

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Drossophilia's avatar

I see how cheap water is per cubic foot, and I can't help but wonder if it could be used as a building material somehow? Surely, someone's already thought of this, and there's probably many problems with it, but if you want to just add mass to a building, water seems to be the cheapest thing just in terms of bulk costs. There's an article on ice architecture here https://www.architectmagazine.com/technology/the-future-of-ice-architecture_s - "reinforced ice construction" is a phrase I'd never thought I'd see - and here's one on where the walls are made of water curtains, though that's probably less applicable: https://sap.mit.edu/article/standard/building-made-water

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