Uploaded on 2018-04-16 by Peter Angliongto

This is a picture of my house under construction. It's in the tropics, subject to typhoons and earthquakes. We chose to build with I beams rather than more common Reinforced Concrete for a number of reasons partly which included sustainability since cement has a high CO2 content so we used very little of it in the house. Ironically enough the I beams were sourced far away from Korea. From a techno economic standpoint it made a lot of sense since it was much faster than reinforced concrete and time was an issue. From a sustainability stand point the idea was that steel was much greener since it can be recycled and the walls and floor boards were local straw cementitious boards. Still a big value of the house is imported, not even counting the other architectural and mechanical items many of which come from different parts of the world. Definitely a sign of globalization in terms of materials.