LiTraCon: Light-Transmitting Concrete
While researching innovative ways in which to use concrete, Hungarian architect Aron Losonczi’s light-transmitting concrete caught our eye. Called LiTraCon, the material is a mixture of fine concrete and glass optic fibers mixed in like an aggregate and comprising four percent of the total volume.
One of the first uses of the material was for a sunshade wall in a Budapest, Hungary, home designed by Foldes & Co. Architects. Principal architect Laszlo Foldes met Losonczi when the LiTraCon inventor was defending his diploma work at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics and Foldes was his opponent. The two kept in touch via email when Losonczi went to Sweden to work on scholarship, Foldes says, and he remembers receiving an email from Losonczi saying he had invented light-transmitting concrete.
LiTraCon sunshade (in Szilasa-brook house) at far left
When Losonczi returned to Hungary, Foldes was in the midst of building the Szilas-brook house in Budapest. One of the windows opened to the busy street and he was searching for a way to filter the view; a LiTraCon pillar proved the perfect solution.
Iberville Parish Veterans Memorial in Louisiana
Since the installation of the Szilas-brook home sunshade in 2004, LiTraCon has been used in a number of projects, from the Hungarian Embassy in Paris to the Iberville Parish Veterans Memorial in Louisiana. What draws your attention to it, Foldes says, is its simultaneous lightness and weightiness.
For more information, visit litracon.hu and foldesarchitects.hu.
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This is a very interesting invention. I am very interested in this field, am currently practising in civil engineering myself, studying concrete. It helps me be more creative and work on my own ideas in inventing in this field.
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