Development
The ICF construction technique was first developed in Europe following the second world war as an inexpensive and durable way to rebuild damaged structures. The first modern ICF forms were developed in the late 1960s with the advent of modern foam plastics. Canadian contractor Werner Gregori filed the first patent for a foam concrete form in 1966 with a block measuring 16 inches high by 48 inches long with a tongue-and-groove interlock, metal ties, and a waffle-grid core.
The adoption of ICF construction has steadily increased since the 1970s though adoption has been hampered by lack of awareness, building codes, and confusion caused by many different manufacturers selling slightly different ICF designs rather than focusing on industry standardization. Data from the National Association of Home Builders shows 48,000 ICF homes and 10,000 to 15,000 commercial structures were built using ICF in 2002. Since 2002, sales of ICFs have increased 30% annually. ICF construction is now part of many building codes and accepted in most jurisdictions in North-America.
Read more about this topic: Insulating Concrete Form
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“The Cairo conference ... is about a complicated web of education and employment, consumption and poverty, development and health care. It is also about whether governments will follow where women have so clearly led them, toward safe, simple and reliable choices in family planning. While Cairo crackles with conflict, in the homes of the world the orthodoxies have been duly heard, and roundly ignored.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“A defective voice will always preclude an artist from achieving the complete development of his art, however intelligent he may be.... The voice is an instrument which the artist must learn to use with suppleness and sureness, as if it were a limb.”
—Sarah Bernhardt (1845–1923)
“Somehow we have been taught to believe that the experiences of girls and women are not important in the study and understanding of human behavior. If we know men, then we know all of humankind. These prevalent cultural attitudes totally deny the uniqueness of the female experience, limiting the development of girls and women and depriving a needy world of the gifts, talents, and resources our daughters have to offer.”
—Jeanne Elium (20th century)