Build a model of the interior of your new house out of big inflatable blocks (like bouncy castles but more regular shapes). Stick on smaller inflatable blocks where you want the doors and windows to be. Spray the whole thing except for the door and window blocks with Shotcrete (concrete, pumped at high pressure). Leave it to set and then deflate the blocks. The rounded shapes of these blocks will give the resulting house a pleasing adobe house appearance.

All the doors and windows will then have to be custom made and none of the walls will be straight, but that's a small inconvenience when set against the fun aspect of spraying concrete onto something which looks like a bouncy castle.
-- hippo, Mar 03 2006

Foam Hulled Spacecraft Foam_20Hulled_20Spacecraft
See phidauex's note of Aug 13 2004 -- "...Consider monolithic domes which are made here on earth. They inflate a fabric hemispherical skin, and spray polyurethane foam on the inside of it. When the foam sets, they release the air pressure from the skin, lay some rebar on the inside, in a basket formation, and then spray in shotcrete (sprayable concrete)..." [ldischler, Mar 03 2006]

(?) Rachel Whiteread http://www.bbc.co.u...wread/rwstud3.shtml
Pioneer of building with negative space. Or something. [wagster, Mar 03 2006]

Inflatable concrete shell structures http://www.binisystems.com/binishell.html
similar, but different [Worldgineer, Mar 03 2006]

Shotcrete in home construction http://www.mountain...dome.com/House4.htm
For [bacon] [Worldgineer, Mar 03 2006]

Rapid Prototyping in Concrete http://www.contourcrafting.org/
For [gtoal] - It's called contour crafting and yes, it's cool. If you have the bandwidth, watch the animation. [Worldgineer, Mar 03 2006]

my earlier foam version http://www.halfbake...ermanent#1225995215
[Arcanus, Dec 22 2009]

Diy Shotcrete http://www.mortarsp....com/diy-shotcrete/
Diy Shotcrete - Hippo, You can do this ! [mortarsprayer, Jul 07 2010]

Lloyd Turner Balloon Form home http://www.mortarsp...ction/lloyd-turner/
Also note the "How to build a Lloyd Turner Balloon form" link [mortarsprayer, Jul 07 2010]

Trampolin House House serves as home and as trampoline [pashute, Jul 26 2010]

concrete canvas http://www.concretecanvas.co.uk/
might be more useful than shotcrete [Sandbach, Jul 26 2010]

[+] Bunnage. I'm a big fan of squirting concrete at things - a fan of round, blobby houses, and a huge fan of building affordable structures using clever methodologies. Can we had some kind of rubberised expanding foam to the concrete mixture? It needs to be slightly sproingy (in order not to develop cracks due to temperature changes) and also in order to be integrally water-proof. Plus expanding foam would provide a level of integrated insulation too.
-- zen_tom, Mar 03 2006


Won't you end up with sprue holes between floors and ceilings?
-- coprocephalous, Mar 03 2006


"Hey, Rosita-come queek-down at the cantina they giving green stamps with tequila!!"
-- po, Mar 03 2006


"Hey Gringo, I keel you for my seeester"
-- zen_tom, Mar 03 2006


Would this gonflable interior, not make it difficult for hammering nails into the walls for hanging pictures of famous French people difficult?
-- skinflaps, Mar 03 2006


//of famous French people difficult// "famous difficult French people", shirley?
-- coprocephalous, Mar 03 2006


Great! For the doors/windows, you could board over the openings , connecting the two boards with a regular rectangular block, and pour in plastic wood type compound, thus forming a regular frame within the irregular opening. Installing window frames would be no more difficult than in a normal house.

Hanging the curtains (window treatments) would be interesting.
-- egbert, Mar 03 2006


..."One day son, all this will be yours."
-- ConsulFlaminicus, Mar 03 2006


I'd like to do this to Rachel Whiteread +
-- xenzag, Mar 03 2006


I'm not at all sure this is an original idea, but I can't find any pictures.
-- DrCurry, Mar 03 2006


Pykrete would be more interesting.
-- jellydoughnut, Mar 03 2006


For those confused by [jellydoughut]'s comment: pykrete is similar to shotcrete but prepared in pye tins and thrown at the target by clowns.
-- wagster, Mar 03 2006


I am totally digging this scene. I would embellish only slightly. The best arrangement would be where the contours of the house merge with the contours of a skateboard park. Then you could skateboard off your roof into an awesome halfpipe. What a surreal existence -- kind of like Dr. Suess architecture.
-- pathetic, Mar 03 2006


I will bun this just for the idea and how great it sounds in theory. But shotcrete actually needs some sort of permanent structure and/or foundation such as rebar or a brick wall for it to maintain any amount of strength. If you decided to shotcrete a series of big balloons it would collapse under the stress of its own weight.
-- Jscotty, Mar 03 2006


It's been done for spherical homes. I can't find a link right now, but it was more fancy than shown in the Binisystem link.
-- baconbrain, Mar 03 2006


Link for you [bacon]. It's not uncommon, but I haven't heard of it being done using inflatable pieces.
-- Worldgineer, Mar 03 2006


How about a huge version of a 3-D printer. Basically a large frame like an X-Y plotter on stilts, with the 'print head' being a pipe from the Concrete mixer, which can build any arbitrary shape on the fly from a computer model. Of course it would look crude and have rough edges, but if its good enough for Frank Lloyd Wright it should be good enough for us.

I hope concrete housing technology has got better since Fallingwater, it really is a shoddy piece of work, though it was undoubtedly a cool hack for its time.
-- gtoal, Mar 03 2006


[jscotty] has a valid argument. In a way this was baked back in the 70's, what with big balloons being sprayed with lots of polyurethane foam. That yielded a very lightweight but relatively sturdy structure, but one summer's exposure to sunlight will do enormous damage to exposed polyurethane foam. Add a few inches of concrete, and the UV problem goes away. You can add a layer of wire mesh directly onto the foam as it is foaming and curing, then shoot crete onto it, thus tying the two materials together. Add another layer of mesh, and another of concrete, then send a bunch of college students (WILL WORK FOR BEER) all over the structure with trowels to smooth things down. Hey Presto!

Basically it's a sound idea. Add the tried and true step of the polyurethane and it ought to work very well.
-- elhigh, Mar 07 2006


This would be very strong and stable. A friend of mine lives in a cast concrete house built in the 1920s, I think. Very rare for its period. It was the only house in its street not to suffer damage in an earthquake in the 1950s. The lack of sharp angles would probably make this even stronger.

The polyurathane should go near the outside so most of the thermal mass is inside of the insulation, where it belongs. You could add the bulk of the concrete from the inside after removing the mould.

I like free-form building ideas. I thought of using an inflated balloon as the mould for a domed pizza oven - cover baloon with papier mache, then cob or whatever. Paper burns away the first time it's lit. (+)
-- spidermother, Mar 07 2006


Sorry to say but this just wont work. Shotcrete needs a backer as was mentioned previously. Shotcrete is a very effective water tight coating but is not structural in nature(poor compressive strength)
-- jhomrighaus, Mar 07 2006


Hello Hippo, You are on the right track and this is better than a half baked idea. I had a great conversation a few years ago with Lloyd Turner. He is one of the founders of balloon formed construction. In his presentation was a picture of a bunch of the hot air balloons like you would see in a parade. His point was that you can build a home out of any of the shapes you could make with a parade balloon. By combining DIY Shotcrete with low pressure balloon forming, you can have your bouncy house shotcrete castle! If you get to a point that you want to build, I can help with advice to go forward with the project.
-- mortarsprayer, Jul 07 2010


Shotcrete needs rebar as 2 othes mentioned.

In no way congruous? With adobe.

I think shotcrete also needs welded wire fabric to which the weight of itself is supported, inside and out

I'm not sure, though.

There is this stuff they use for cold weather concrete pours I believe that is some sort of fiber that can develop tension that might get around the need for a wwf exterior cage, but I don't know.
-- Zimmy, Jul 09 2010


This was thoroughly baked in the architecture of Roger Dean in the 70's.

Door and window frames can be placed against the inflatable mould before concrete is applied, removing the need for cutting holes and fitting frames later.
-- Twizz, Jul 09 2010


This obviously already exists (see the link posted by Worldgineer.

The only question I have is: why aren't more architects/construction firms doing this?
-- django, Jul 10 2010


By the way: check out underground egg dome home - also uses shotcrete but then with some polymer added to it. See link.
-- django, Jul 10 2010


//Shotcrete [...] is not structural in nature(poor compressive strength)//

I find that interesting, [jhomrighaus]. Do you mean that, even once dry, shotcrete has substantially different properties from, say, poured concrete? Or do those big concrete overhangs on Frank Lloyd Wright houses have concealed metal skeletons?

In either case, this would not bode well for my (as yet unposted) idea which requires shotcreting on to a disposable horizontal substrate of sacking, or possibly hessian wall weave.
-- pertinax, Jul 25 2010


//a wwf exterior cage// for pandas or wrestlers ?
-- marklar, Jul 25 2010



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