Researchers at MIT have invented a new kind of brick that could change how buildings are built.
According to Interesting Engineering, the scientists have created "multilayered glass bricks similar to figure eights," designed to seamlessly interlock, which will expedite the assembly process.
The bricks are made from melted glass bottles layered in patterns to create bricks. The soda-lime glass is similar to that found in glass-blowing studios, and the bricks feature round studs, similar to Legos, allowing them to interlock.
Material can be placed between the bricks during construction to avoid scratching or breaking, and when a structure needs to be taken down, the bricks can easily be melted and reshaped, making them fully recyclable.
"Glass is a highly recyclable material," Kaitlyn Becker, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, said. "We're taking glass and turning it into masonry that, at the end of a structure's life, can be disassembled and reassembled into a new structure, or can be stuck back into the printer and turned into a completely different shape. All this builds into our idea of a sustainable, circular building material."
On top of that, structural tests of the material revealed that the glass could withstand similar pressures to concrete blocks, meaning they could easily replace the material in construction.
As we move toward a greener society, advances in construction are pushing the boundaries to help achieve that. A company recently unveiled bricks made from recycled plastic and wood byproducts, stronger than cinder blocks, for use in disaster relief. Researchers in London have created a form of concrete from sugarcane byproducts, further pushing the green envelope.
For their part, Becker and Michael Stern, a former MIT graduate student who founded Evenline, the company helping to produce the bricks, think they could become a regular part of construction soon.
"We have more understanding of what the material's limits are and how to scale," Stern said in the press release. "We're thinking of stepping stones to buildings and want to start with something like a pavilion — a temporary structure that humans can interact with, and that you could then reconfigure into a second design. And you could imagine that these blocks could go through a lot of lives."
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