Archinect - News

Forensic Architecture's latest investigation is a dig at one-sided Israeli archaeological pursuits

2022-04-13T12:14:00-04:00

Fresh off its recent Peabody Award win, London-based Forensic Architecture (FA) has returned to one of its most popular research sites with a new project, called “Living Archaeology in Gaza,” examining the fate of an important archaeological site under assault in the Gaza Strip.

The site in question was tentatively added to UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites in 2012 but has since been closed off to further archaeological research and beset by damaging new construction. The group examined ten years' worth of data collected by the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem between 1995 and 2005 to produce 3D renderings of an ancient city called Anthedon that existed for two millennia until about the High Middle Ages.

Image: Forensic Architecture

What they discovered was that Israeli bombing and consolidation, combined with climate change-caused coastal erosion, has placed a considerable strain on the site, which counts among its ruins examples of building from the Byzant...

3D scanning is helping Ukrainians' risky fight to preserve their cultural heritage

2022-04-12T13:06:00-04:00

People in Ukraine are using 3D modeling tech to preserve cultural heritage sites — before they risk being destroyed by the Russian invasion. The project, called Backup Ukraine, was organized by smartphone camera capture app Polycam, which partnered with The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Vice Media Group, Danish non-profit Blue Shield Danmark, Ukraine’s Heritage Emergency Rescue Initiative, and the National Museum of the History of Ukraine.

Ukrainians’ makeshift efforts to hastily secure and protect vital sites across their country have become increasingly important given Russia’s well-documented pursuit of a Total War concept which has put civilian centers under the crosshairs with damage to residential infrastructure and cultural property becoming a frequent if not inherent result.

Users of the Polycam app can upload their scans to Backup Ukraine's project website, which will host the 3D replicas for a period of at least five years. Photogrammetry has been incorporated previously in conflicts like the Syrian Civil War that featured the deliberate targeting of monuments and other cultural relics. The U.S. Army is one prominent proponent. And it has been used recently in less-lethal disputes and the fight against climate change.

The British Museum is under fire after refusing Parthenon Marbles 3D scan

2022-04-04T12:16:00-04:00

The British Museum is facing legal action from one of the UK’s leading heritage preservation organisations over its refusal to allow the 3D scanning of a piece in its Parthenon marbles collection. The Institute for Digital Archaeology (IDA) said it would serve an injunction against the museum imminently, raising the stakes in the dispute between the two.

The 269-year-old institution is said to have refused a request from the Oxford-based Institute for Digital Archaeology (IDA) that would have reproduced a metope from the Acropolis’ south-facing facade for an important proof of concept. The scans are supposed to allow for a robotic replication process that can manipulate the original Pentelic marble material to “sub-millimeter” accuracy, according to the IDA.

Previously on Archinect: The UK is once again declining to change its stance on the Parthenon Marbles following a UNESCO statement

“Our aim is to give people a chance to see just how extraordinary a copy can be,” the Institute’s executive director Roger Michel told the Guardian. “Copies [of the Parthenon sculptures] in the past have been low-quality plaster casts. This will be orders of magnitude better. It will help people see and feel the potential of this technology in ways mere words can’t describe.”

The IDA nevertheless attempted last week to create a 3D scan using an “iPad ...

MIT researchers are 'upcycling' waste tree forks to offset the environmental impacts of new construction

2022-03-11T12:36:00-05:00

A team of academics working in the Digital Structures research group at MIT's Building Technology Program has combined local aesthetic desires with the recent international push to expend increasing amounts of mass timber elements into new construction.

Associate professor Caitlin Mueller is in charge of a group that spent the last four years strategizing the uses of upcycled tree waste as a base material for load-bearing structures in an effort to reduce the outsized emissions caused by the high-carbon systems.

Working together with the professor, the team set up a five-step design-to-fabrication process that combines the use of ascendant digital technologies to recreate the Y-shaped nodes typical in many architectural drawings. Mueller says the eventual goal is to replace many of the recently-felled trees in her area with custom-made functional structures that “recreate the atmosphere and spatial experience previously provided.”

With help from the nearby city of Somerville’s Urb...

Skydio releases autonomous drone software that can create detailed 3D models in real time

2021-06-04T19:15:00-04:00

Earlier this week, U.S. autonomous drone manufacturer, Skydio, launched Skydio 3D Scan, an adaptive scanning software that allows its drones to generate incredibly detailed 3D models of real-world settings with a very high degree of autonomy.

3D Scan is equipped with advanced artificial intelligence skills that automate photographic data collection and mapping functions for important tasks ranging from infrastructure asset inspection to digital twin generation as well as crime and accident scene reconstruction.

"Corsair Jet", an image of an old jet captured with 3D Scan and a Skydio drone. Image: Skydio

In real time, objects and locations can be digitized and explored. Bridges and roads that may be in need of structural repair, accident sites, and clients looking to inspect construction sites can receive explicitly detailed, 3D recreations of these scenes.

According to Skydio, the software has been tested by the likes of the North Carolina Department of Transportation for bridge i...

The New York Times R+D team dives into photogrammetry

2020-07-28T19:50:00-04:00

Visual journalists are always searching for new technologies to help them capture more detail and get the news out faster. But they’ve operated within the constraints of a camera lens, a two-hundred-year-old technology that gives readers a single, 2D representation of an event. What if we could break free of the rectangle and let readers experience a setting the same way the journalist did? Instead of just looking at a photo of a space, what if we could move through it?

The New York Times shares its research using photogrammetry for journalistic purposes. Dovetailing on the sophisticated and exacting approaches employed by investigative groups like Forensic Architecture to reconstruct contested and often tragic events, the NYT team instead harnesses the power of 3D-scanning to convey the spatial qualities of their stories, in this case, the destruction left in the wake of Hurricane Dorian and the interiors of an artist's residence, among other examples.

Cultural organizations band together to bring 3D scanned heritage objects into public domain

2020-02-27T15:31:00-05:00

27 cultural organizations, including the Smithsonian Institution, have signed on to an initiative that aims to bring their 3D scanned cultural heritage collections into the public domain.

The initiative, launched by Sketchfab, "allows museums and similar organizations to share their 3D data more openly" by having them release scans of objects, artworks, and other collection items into the so-called Creative Commons 0 Public Domain Dedication realm.

Side Chair by Smithsonian Institution on Sketchfab

The designation allows for these scans to be used in creative and commercial endeavors without requiring new users to request permission from these institutions if they follow certain guidelines.

According to Sketchfab, the license requires that one "must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made," it also allows for users to "copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without ask...

New Google Arts & Culture initiative documents the threat of climate change to Unesco World Heritage sites

2020-02-06T16:14:00-05:00

Google Arts & Culture has launched a new online initiative calling attention to five Unesco World Heritage sites under threat from climate change. The Heritage on the Edge series reveals how rising sea levels, coastal erosion and extreme weather patterns are endangering landmarks across the world [...].

The five threatened Unesco World Heritage sites featured in the online Heritage on the Edge exhibit are Easter Island's iconic moai statues of Rapa Nui; the Old and New Towns of Scotland's capital Edinburgh; the flood-prone mosque city of Bagerhat in Bangladesh; Tanzania's port city of Kilwa Kisiwani endangered by coastal erosion; and the pre-Columbian adobe metropolis of Chan Chan, Peruvian at risk of drought and storms.

Image via Heritage on the Edge

"Above all, the project is a call to action," writes Professor Dr. Toshiyuki Kono, President of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, in a recent Google blog post. "Heritage on the Edge collects stories of loss, but also of hope and resilience. They remind us that all our cultural heritage, including these iconic World Heritage Sites, are more than just tourist destinations. They are places of great national, spiritual and cultural significance."

Heritage on the Edge. Video via Google Arts & Culture on YouTube.

"The realit...

Contemporary art project opens in ancient ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii

2018-05-21T18:10:00-04:00

The House of the Beautiful Courtyard at Herculaneum and the House of the Cryptoporticus in Pompeii will each be the site of a new installation by artist Catrin Huber, as part of a Newcastle University project designed to create a new dialogue between contemporary art, Roman wall painting and archaeological remains.

Expanded Interiors at Herculaneum. Photo: Amedeo Benestante.

"By investigating two distinctive Roman houses, our project sets out an exchange of knowledge between old and new," the Expanded Interiors project website explains. "We are exploring what Contemporary painting and site-specific fine-art practice can learn from the often incredibly sophisticated and complex works of the Roman wall painters. In turn we investigate how contemporary fine-art practice can provide new perspectives on the spatial configurations of ancient Roman homes and the artefacts that adorned them. In so doing we will bring Roman artefacts (their replicas) back to the sites, while exploring new forms for displaying archaeological artefacts at Roman archaeological sites."

Expanded Interiors runs from May 17 – Jan 15, 2019 at Herculaneum and Jul 14 – Jan 15 at Pompeii.

The biometric identities of buildings

2018-04-20T13:37:00-04:00

[...] iPhoto confused a human friend of mine – I’ll call him Mike – with a building called the Great Mosque of Cordoba. [...] Rather than viewing this as a failure, I realized I had found a new insight: Just as people’s faces have features that can be recognized by algorithms, so do buildings. That began my effort to perform facial recognition on buildings – or, more formally, “architectural biometrics.” Buildings, like people, may just have biometric identities too.

Peter Christensen, Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Rochester, elaborates on his research with 'facial recognition' on buildings to unlock architectural secrets.

The new Monument Men: with 3D cameras and GPS data against cultural annihilation in Syria and beyond

2015-11-12T19:00:00-05:00

That’s why a team from the Institute for Digital Archaeology (IDA) is turning to the next best option—using technology to protect cultural heritage. Founded in 2012 by Roger Michel, IDA is a joint effort between Harvard University and Oxford University to create an open-source database of high-resolution images and three-dimensional graphics of things like paper and papyrus documents, epigraphs and small artifacts. Work on what IDA has named the Million Image Database began in early 2015.

The photo shows the Baal Shamin temple prior to its destruction. Volunteers of the Institute for Digital Archaeology were able to digitally archive the 2,000-year-old structure for the Million Image Database project just in time before ISIS fighters seized control of Palmyra's historic site.

Related on Archinect:

The "algorithmic dreams" of driverless cars, and how they might affect real-world urban design

2015-11-12T15:43:00-05:00

The sensory limitations of these vehicles must be accounted for, Nourbakhsh explained, especially in an urban world filled with complex architectural forms, reflective surfaces, unpredictable weather and temporary construction sites. This means that cities may have to be redesigned, or may simply mutate over time, to accommodate a car’s peculiar way of experiencing the built environment...

"...The flip side of this example is that, in these brief moments of misinterpretation, a different version of the urban world exists...If we can learn from human misperception, perhaps we can also learn something from the delusions and hallucinations of sensing machines. But what?"

As self-driving cars gradually integrate themselves into urban society, Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG spotlights emerging lidar (light + radar) scanning technologies that the cars use to navigate. He weighs the possible advantages and risks that these technologies — which still have their vulnerabilities — can pose on the built environment.

More recent news about driverless cars on Archinect:

Tokyo's 2020 Olympics won't have Zaha, but it's looking like there will be "Robot Taxi"

Dawn of the self-driving car: testing out Tesla's autopilot function

Milton Keynes invests in driverless cars over public transit infrastructure

Can a loss of driver autonomy save lives?

Japan's largest treehouse is also a high-tech engineering feat

2015-07-24T15:09:00-04:00

Completed in March of 2014, Kusukusu [...] is a marvelous feat of architecture, engineering and technology. Working with Hiroshi Nakamura of NAP Architects, the team came in and 3D-scanned hundreds of points on the tree. Based on that 3D data they then created a steel trellis that threaded through the tree, interlocking perfectly [...]. What’s amazing is that the treehouse in its entirety, never touches the tree. It’s completely self-standing so as to not harm the tree.

Here are a few more images of the stunner of a treehouse in Atami, Japan designed by master treehouse builder Takashi Kobayashi in collaboration with NAP Architects.

To learn more and see the complete set of photos, head over to Spoon & Tamago.

Photos by Koji Fujii/Nacasa & Partners Inc.

In other tree-hugging news on Archinect:

Singapore company launches world's first 3d printer/scanner hybrid

2015-02-16T19:18:00-05:00

Nanyang Technological University's (NTU Singapore) start-up Blacksmith Group today launched the world's first compact 3D printer that can also scan items into digitised models. Named the Blacksmith Genesis, this user-friendly device allows users without much knowledge of 3D software to scan any item, then edit the digitised model on the computer and print it out in 3D.

Funded through an Indiegogo campaign, the printer-scanner contains a 2-inch LCD display, Wi-Fi capabilities, an SD-card reader and a USB connection (but only weighs 6kg). The device utilizes a unique rotary platform and can print objects twice as large as similar-sized printers currently available. It's also fast: scans take only about 6 minutes.

The Blacksmith Genesis, which looks a bit like a coffee maker, is currently available for pre-order at US $2,200.

PBS' premiere of "Time Scanners" brings 3D digital preservation technology to a wider audience

2014-07-01T13:53:00-04:00

PBS taps into the growing presence of 3D digital preservation on their new show, Time Scanners, which will premiere its first episode tonight at 8 p.m. ET. The three-part series will peruse the ancient iconic sites of the Egyptian Pyramids, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, and the city of Petra in Jordan through the use of 3D laser-scanning technology.

Hosted by Dallas Campbell, each episode will follow Steve Burrows — the notable structural engineer known for working on the Bird's Nest Stadium at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics — and his team of investigators as they discover each landmark's physical and forensic history and scientific secrets.

Below are summaries of each episode:

July 1, Egyptian Pyramids: "The team travels to Egypt to scan the pyramids to find out how the necropoles evolved from simple mud-brick structures to the most impressive buildings in the ancient world. They use their laser technology to scan Djoser’s Step Pyramid at Saqqara, Meidum’s collapsed pyramid, the m...

Sochi Olympic pavilion will transform into giant 3D portraits

2014-01-14T15:18:00-05:00

London-designer Asif Khan's pavilion for the Sochi 2014 Olympics is essentially a building-sized pin screen, capable of transforming its facade into 3D projections of visitors' faces. Khan designed the pavilion for MegaFon, the general partner of the Sochi Winter Olympics and one of Russia's largest telecommunications companies. Visitors can have their photo taken at 3D photo booths stationed around the pavilion and throughout MegaFon retailers preceding the games, and then watch the facade shift into gigantic portraits.

Khan also designed the Coca-Cola Beatbox Pavilion for London's Summer Olympics in 2012. Check out a test-run of the pin screen in the video below.

Your phone could soon become a 3D scanner

2013-12-06T13:49:00-05:00

Most of us have gotten used to smartphones replacing long-established devices such as cameras and music players. Soon, however, they might be taking over the duties of something that is itself an emerging technology – the 3D scanner. Researchers at ETH Zurich have created an app that allows an ordinary smartphone to capture and display three-dimensional models of real-world objects, for subsequent finessing or even 3D printing.

CyArk's "500 Challenge" aims to digitally preserve 500 at-risk cultural heritage sites in 5 years

2013-10-23T15:14:00-04:00

Non-profit organization CyArk and its partners are on an ambitious mission against time to digitally preserve 500 cultural heritage sites around the world before they are destroyed by natural disasters, human aggression, climate change, urban sprawl, and other threats. The "CyArk 500 Challenge" officially launched on Oct. 21 at the Tower of London and will continue for the next five years to create a fully detailed digital archive that can be used for future educational and research purposes.

To survey the sites, CyArk uses a portable and precise 3D laser-scanning system invented by the organization's founder, Ben Kacyra, who launched the 500 Challenge. Ideally, the physical preservation of each of the world's cultural heritage sites would be possible. But as we all know, there isn't enough time or money and going digital has become the next best and quickest thing.

So far, CyArk has digitally preserved 40 cultural sites including the Tower of London, the statues of Easte...