Research & Innovation

Lafarge, by addressing architectural, technical and social challenges, is placing concrete at the heart of the future.
Thanks to innovations developed by the Group to optimize its durability, its energy costs, its attractiveness and its solidity, concrete is continuing to gain recognition as a benchmark in the construction of homes and finding a new lease of life.

Collaboration between researchers, engineers, architects and Lafarge are constantly pushing back the structural and aesthetic limitations of new concretes. Collaboration, complementarity, open-mindedness... For this seventh video in the epic history of concrete, find out about the special links between these various players and how these complex achievements give rise to materials which are creating the buildings and structures of tomorrow.

Contemporary concrete has come on a long way from the poor reputation it had in the past as a soulless gray block. The developments produced by the Lafarge research center are now enabling concrete to enjoy new purely artistic and esthetic uses, as a result of new advances in terms of color, shades, textures, etc. Discover architectural creations which really show off concrete's new estheticism!

As a way of remaining innovative while addressing the challenges of sustainable construction, Lafarge's architects and engineers have chosen prefabrication in concrete. This technique involves molding and preparing sections of concrete in the workshop or close to construction sites.
By further developing techniques and materials, architects are able to imagine works which are increasingly spectacular as well as environmentally-friendly and, above all, very pleasant to live in.

This video concentrates on one of the key focuses of Lafarge's research: the setting of concrete. The moment when concrete hardens and becomes more mechanically resistant has always been one of this material's major challenges. Researchers at the Lafarge research center have worked on a molecular scale to obtain almost total control over this setting. The Chronolia® range of concretes demonstrates the possibility of extending or accelerating the process.

This third video in the epic history of concrete focuses on the stronger resistance of modern concrete. Thanks to progress in research, these new concretes are up to 5 times more resistant than materials used in the 1980s. Concrete's strength and durability are at the center of Lafarge's innovations and provide buildings with life cycles of up to several centuries.

For this second video in the epic history of concrete, Lafarge focuses on the material's technical qualities. Since it must be able to meet ever more elaborate technical and esthetic requirements, concrete is moving forward with its associated constraints.
It must be hard-wearing and capable of supporting monumental structures, while being fluid enough to adapt to the esthetic, architectural and ecological requirements of modern urban planning.

Concrete is the most durable and economical building material. It makes it possible to address the needs of a growing and increasingly urbanized world population. Lafarge is working together with researchers and engineers to design a high-tech material which is ever more responsive to the imagination and needs of architects.

Concrete is apparently very simple. And yet what was until recently simply a convenient material tested empirically, concrete is now a product which is studied scientifically in the lab and which reveals considerable development potential. Concrete has entered a new high-tech era!

The last 20 years have seen the invention of very innovative high-tech concretes with extremely varied properties opening new perspectives for the use of concrete. This new technological era has been possible thanks to:

• The pooling of multidisciplinary scientific knowledge: chemistry, rheology, physics, mechanics of construction materials, micromechanics, etc.
• The entry into the digital age: nuclear magnetic resonance, electron microscopy, nanoindentation, atomic force microscopy, etc. These new instruments make it possible to expand our in-depth knowledge of concrete to the heart of the material, down to the nanoscale.