SUBSTITUTING AGGREGATES IN CONCRETE
By Chad Cross on October 10th, 2010
This is a study in "sustainable" materials, but more importantly "upcycled" materials – those which are put to use in a way other than that which was intended. To begin, I experimented with the process of making concrete. I chose to use the traditional method of a 1:2:3 ratio of portland:fine aggregate:coarse aggregate to use as a control. Then I substituted half of the coarse aggregate with shredded plastic grocery bags. The last test was substituting half the fine aggregate and half of the cement with fly ash. The process and results follow...
Rolling carpet
By Chad Cross on April 13th, 2010
When thinking of plasticity, we began thinking more about the possibility for multiple uses of an object without altering its state. This differs from elasticity, which we believe refers to an object/material's ability to be molded into new forms and shapes, altering its initial structural state. We looked at one of the largest amounts of plastic waste, carpet, and started to think of news ways to use this everyday object. With 5 billion pounds of carpet thrown out per year, there is a lot of material that is available to be up-cycled. Carpet is walked on everyday, lining the floors of spaces with various uses; it is not common to see carpet being used as a structural material to sit on...
plastic creature
By Chad Cross on March 5th, 2010
We were given a project to take a plastic artifact, cut it (and 20 identical others) up into various pieces or sections, and then reform the pieces into some sort of creature. The exercise was one in creating systems or structures through the use of repetition, with recognizable body parts as a by-product. I decided to use a toy Lamborghini car, and created a creature that sort of resembles a mutalisk...
fossil foam-cast models
By Chad Cross on February 18th, 2010
An exploration into alternative uses for post-consumer plastics, this project involved finding various post-consumer plastic containers, building a sort of scaffolding, arranging the containers within the scaffolding, and using spray-foam insulation as a binding agent. The task was then to reveal spaces and relationships by making various sectional cuts through the containers and the foam, thus creating what can be described as fossilized plastic remains...
Aurora Robson
By Chad Cross on February 4th, 2010
Check out some of Aurora's work, she's an artist out of Brooklyn who has also worked with post-consumer plastic. She has found a great use for over 30,000 plastic bottles in her art work, saving the bottles from adding to our landfills and polluting our environment. Her sculptures are very impressive and resemble organic creatures not of this world...
eco gram
By Chad Cross on February 4th, 2010
The idea behind an eco-gram is to convey a particular science of industrial ecology in a 9-square grid with no words. The study behind this eco-gram was annual U.S. lead use vs. blood levels...
