Italcementi I.Light

Italcement I.Light Courtesy Italcement

Italcementi I.Light

At the World Expo in Shanghai this year, the Italian pavilion was concrete, yet light passed right through it. Engineers and architects have talked about producing translucent concrete for generations, but until now the closest attempts only dotted the surface with points of translucency, like pixels in a low-res image. Think of Italcementi’s material—cement and admixtures bonded to a transparent thermoplastic matrix that provides a consistent translucency—as high-resolution­. It’s cheaper, stronger and offers a wider visual angle than any competitor, and it means that even windowless concrete buildings could someday be daylit.