LiTraCon - Environmentally Friendly, Light Transmitting Concrete

Accounting firm Ernst and Young recently awarded a prestigious award for innovation to the inventor of LiTraCon - a relatively recently-developed and hi-tech building material that could revolutionise the construction industry, and that has environment benefits too.

LiTraCon, or light transmitting concrete, is basically concrete containing optical glass fibres – a combination that allows light to pass through. Tougher than glass, but with attractive aesthetic appeal – LiTraCon is highly regarded by many architects.

Fibre Optic Concrete

Builders have been using concrete for thousands of years but, despite its popularity, it can’t really be called inspirational. The introduction of fibre optics into the mix gives the concrete a modern twist. While LiTraCon contains thousands of these fibres, their total weight as a percentage of each concrete block is four per cent, meaning that a wall constructed purely of the material should be equal in strength to one formed of regular concrete.

LiTraCon is the brainchild of Áron Losonczi, an architect working in Hungary, who developed it eight years ago with colleagues at Budapest’s Technical University.

It is now made by LiTraCon Bt, whose headquarters are situated close to Csongrad, Hungary, and is available in a variety of sizes. Among its applications are as sheathing on the Freedom Tower – the skyscraper being built in New York in light of the loss of the Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001.

Five years ago, Time Magazine lauded LiTraCon as 2004’s most significant new product, while it has won multiple other awards in addition to the Ernst and Young one.

Electricity and the Environment

Future buildings constructed out of LiTraCon won’t consume as much electrical energy during the daytime, when one takes into account the additional daylight factor. Linked to this is the fact that the light can pass through up to 20 metres thickness of the material without diminishing. In buildings like offices that have a daytime function, therefore, LiTraCon could substantially replace electricity.

A further corporate benefit is less tangible, but one associated with the connection between natural sunlight and human behaviour – a theory, basically, that people are happier when the sun is shining, and LiTraCon would exacerbate this effect.

LiTraCon Image provided courtesy of www.litracon.hu