Architect Santiago Calatrava has had a tough year . He ’s being sued bymany , manyclients — include his hometown , where an opera house he builtis now in slaughterhouse . Now , a company trade graphene paint want to hold open it .
Graphenano , an Alicante - base manufacturer of graphene products , has send out a marriage proposal to city administrators in Valencia arguing that one of their products could save Calatrava ’s much - lauded ( and quickly deteriorate ) City of Arts and Sciences , which opened only eight years ago .
picture : Josep Tomàs / CC .
Despite its $ 455 million toll tag end , a badly - design detail on the opera household ’s curving facade induce plenty of white tiles to flake off off and fall away during gamy winds . In the metre since , the building has been close and all of the roofing tile stripped away , leaving its skeleton - like tease expose — and Valencia has sued Calatrava for the indemnity .
But according toEl Mundo , the monetary value of future haunt could be hugely reduced if the new frontal is surface in a ace - strong graphene - based paint . The product is calledGraphenstone , and it ’s made from a mixture of limestone powder and graphene , which “ acts as a confirm interlocking at the molecular level . ” It will not only keep the construction ’s tile on mean , it will also intimately stand firm the environmental changes — like raging and inhuman temperatures — which led to the trouble in the first plaza . The paint is already being sold , and it ’s been used on old buildings in Spain before .
The idea comes after Calatrava ’s firmproposed three alternative solutionsat the death of January , including plainly replacing the tiles or smoothing over the bare frontage with putty — none of which go exactly ideal , and all of which will be hugely expensive ( more than $ 4 million ) .
It ’s a terrible office for everyone involved — but by fixing it with an incredible engineering that has n’t reckon much actual - world use , Valencia could , in hypothesis , turn lemons into graphene - cake lemonade . [ El Mundo ]
mental image : AP Photo/ Fernando Bustamante .
computer architecture
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