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In the “Su vivienda” (“Your Home”) supplement of the newspaper El Mundo (28/11/2008) an interesting article appeared on the Intelligent Concrete System, or ICS. This is a project by Adriana Echauri and Virgilio Echauri, the two patent holders for this new, intelligent and efficient house building method. It is capable of erecting a block of 120 houses in less than two months, according to statements made to El Mundo by Adriana Echauri, the co-author of the Intelligent Concrete System and manager of the company ICS in Navarre. The key to this revolutionary automated construction method for buildings and houses, warehouses, colleges, sports arenas.... lies in the positioning of moulds with a robotic crane, so producing time and cost savings as compared to traditional construction methods. Furthermore, the block is erected extremely quickly and without the generation of rubble or waste, which contributes to the ecological nature of the project.

The ICS works as follows: a steel structure which houses a robotic crane transfers the pieces from the ground to the appropriate place in the building. First the double wall panels for the exterior facades are put in place, followed by the formwork for the interior. Once all of the components of the house have been put together, the interior of the double partition is injected with self-compacting concrete, the material which provides this system with part of its efficiency. This component simplifies the concreting tasks, improves acoustic insulation, leads to cost and personnel savings, and achieves high levels of impermeability and durability in the structures. Next the modules for the ceilings and floors are added, and so on and so forth until the required number of floors is reached for the building, which turns into an impeccable concrete structure with excellent energy efficiency and perfect acoustic insulation.

The ecological nature this intelligent construction method does not lie solely in the lack of energy losses due to the use of self-compacting concrete, but in the fact that the system as a whole provides savings in all phases of the process and avoids unnecessary costs. The pieces are made to measure at the worksite itself, and the method is designed so that the materials (tiles, floor tiles...) have precise measurements based on the dimensions of the walls and floors. ICS therefore functions without producing rubble and without the need for scaffolding. This avoids the need to remove the waste from the worksite, and its subsequent transport to places appropriate for its recycling, and improves worker safety by avoiding the need to work at great heights. The cost savings are also significant, and the adoption of this system will lead to a reduction in house prices. This is also something its creators have mentioned to El Mundo, stressing that one of the most positive features of ICS is that it will enable young people with little buying power to obtain access to housing. According the same sources, a contract has been signed with a Catalan company to build 340 houses of between 40 and 80 square metres in Abrera (Barcelona), the construction of which will begin in mid-2009.

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