What is required and expected in the current realty market is fast, economical yet high-quality construction. Precast construction offers all of the above, but you need to keep a few things in mind to get its full benefits. Precast friendly architectural design Having a precast friendly architectural design is very important, this makes the building…
Category: Precast buildings
Why use hollow-core
Hollow-core slabs – pre-stressed floor slabs with either round or shaped voids – are one of the most popular, efficient and long span floor construction components that exist today. Due to long spans, less load-bearing structures such as columns and inner walls are needed. This results in increased architectural and structural freedom. Continue reading to…
Why sandwich panels?
Faced with the prospect of building a house that fronted on to a beautiful piece of bushland above the city of Adelaide in South Australia, I was determined to specify materials that would withstand the conditions. With a typically Mediterranean type climate, the Adelaide Hills area can see heat well into the 40s and strong…
Graphic Concrete: What, where, how?
In Finland precast concrete construction is quite commonly considered something ugly and cheap. This perception dates back to the 1970´s, when concrete element construction was largely introduced in housing. Already at the beginning of the eighties, the quality of these environments rose to be a common concern. This negative perception still prevails today, even though…
5 points that make the building outlook
What makes a good looking apartment building? That’s a good question for all the precast concrete manufacturers. Perhaps it would be easier to approach the subject the other way around by asking what a building definitely shouldn’t look like! In Finland, the precast concrete building method quickly became popular in the 60’s and 70’s, when…
How could America improve building efficiency?
Living in a land with so many natural enemies to buildings as the US makes me wonder why we are not better utilizing existing construction technology to manage the impacts of natural disasters better. Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, mass forest fires and other disasters almost always result in mass destruction of our “stick built” construction mentality….
Perfect match of precast and affordable housing in India
There is huge housing demand all over India. Already over 30% of India’s population, that is over 377 million people, lives in urban areas. The urban housing shortage has been estimated to be 25 Million residential units at the start of the 12th five year plan in the year 2012. Residential buildings have the highest…
Beautiful and safe precast in Russia – with Love!
Russia has been a central part of my life for the 21 years. My first experiences with this great country date back to 1990´s when I moved to St. Petersburg to work there. Since then many things have changed, but also many things have remained the same. Building construction in Russia In the early 90´s…
Can precast be inspirational and beautiful?
This question we are often asked. Our answer is definitely yes! I’m glad to notice that this thought is more and more widely accepted and also applied around the world. Since the late 1990s Graphic Concrete has been working with projects ranging from industrial buildings to schools, hospitals and commercial and residential buildings. Our core…
Precast production lifecycle, part 1
Setting-up a profitable precast production is not a piece of cake. Instead, it is a quite complicated puzzle with contradictory interests of city planners, architects, investors, builders, precasters and most of all – users of the buildings. Or is it so? Building construction planning Precast can be amazingly flexible building method. Cooperation of architects, structural…
Urban China – fast city development from scratch
While visiting Shanghai and Beijing last month I couldn’t stop wondering the speed of evolution of cities. Around every corner you could see massive building construction sites reaching the sky. At the same time, most beautiful urban quartiers showed the best of modern city life. China has more than 150 cities with over 1 million…
Precast concrete – mirror of the times
What comes to your mind, when you hear the word precast? Massive housing projects in Russia, charming Caribbean villas or maybe the tallest man-made structure of Burj Khalifa in United Arab Emirates? All three constructions – even so different – represent the society they serve. They are born from the visions and needs of local…