Archinect - News

You can now play Tetris with Soviet-style housing blocks

2018-04-18T14:13:00-04:00

If you've been around the 'architecture-can-be-fun-too'-focused internet for a while, you may remember Sergej Hein's semi-viral gem of a video, Berlin Block Tetris, which was exactly that: an animated version of the video game classic using building blocks that resembled socialist-era residential high-rises.

Lithuanian designer Lukas Valiauga has now taken the idea to the next, interactive, level and created the mobile app Tower Block Game.

Tower Block Game by Lukas Valiauga

"This game is a playful tribute to a not so playful reality of monotonous and bleak cityscapes built out of same prefabricated concrete blocks," the app description explains. "Very specific for Eastern-Europe but evident everywhere else, too. These relic tower blocks usually mark failed social programmes and neighbourhoods planned as clumsy as some failed building block game… On that note, build and demolish one for yourself!"

Tower Block Game is available for Android from the Google Play store.

Not much of a gam...

Wallabot peers 4 inches through walls to identify pipes, wires, and other hidden objects

2017-06-01T12:47:00-04:00

The Android-only Wallabot device is apparently designed to help you avoid sawing through a waterline or prematurely snipping an electrical wire by virtue of showing you what lurks beneath your walls before you begin working. The device, which is demonstrated via video below, is paired with your Android and then pressed against the wall, where it renders various objects in a vivid purple, thereby transforming otherwise seemingly boring walls (and other solid objects) into virtual archaeological excavations:

Urban Planning in the iPhone Age

2011-11-03T20:30:57-04:00

... the next wave of mobile applications do more than that—they collect massive amounts of data about how people live, where they travel and what they want to see in their neighborhoods. And they connect all of that with the officials in position to make decisions. Apps, in other words, offer potential solutions for two of the trickiest parts of the urban planner's job: sharing data and engaging citizens.

OpenBuildings app now available on Android

2011-07-25T14:01:28-04:00

Our friends at OpenBuildings have just announced that their mobile app, already available for the iPhone, is now available for Android users. Go check it out explore the architecture around you!