Archinect - News

Sculptural Façade of Zaha Hadid Architects' Shenzhen Institute of Financial Technology takes shape

2024-12-13T16:40:00-05:00

Zaha Hadid Architects’ upcoming Shenzhen Institute of Financial Technology Tower is taking shape. Construction work on the 46-story structure’s sculptural façade has begun.

Image: Xue Liang

Located on a narrow site in the center of Shenzhen’s Futian district, the tower aims to accommodate the Institute’s ongoing expansion to serve China’s growing fintech industry.

Image: Xue Liang

The roughly 818,000-square-foot building will house research and development laboratories, technology exchange, data centers, and a training campus, together with management, support, and administrative departments.

Image: Xue Liang

The tower’s composition is defined by its surrounding urban environment. Its volume features set-backs, which were determined by mapping and modeling the annual paths of sunlight across the site. The set-backs optimize the amount of direct sunlight that reaches the surrounding streets, public plazas, and buildings. In addition, the tower’s envelope is set to incorporate high perfo...

On the impact of newer buildings on urban air pollution

2024-10-25T17:47:00-04:00

In hermetically sealed buildings, less fresh air gets in. [...] Eventually, this polluted indoor air – which is making more than a third of the planet sick – is expelled into the surrounding environment. This raises the question of how buildings pollute the air around them, what pollutants they produce, and whether this expelled air is sufficiently diluted once outdoors.

As the article mentions, the World Health Organization had previously pointed to a "lack of monitoring of air pollution levels, sources and consequences on public health" as a present danger for cities.

To fix it, authors César Martín-Gómez and Arturo H. Ariño of the Universidad de Navarra say: "A detailed understanding of how buildings contribute to pollution in cities is essential. This will give public authorities, decision-makers and managers the tools to establish strategies to, for example, minimise pollution through devices similar to the catalytic converters required on all combustion-powered vehicles. Eventually, we may even be able to recover useful components of domestic air, such as waste methane, which could be redirected to energy generation."

You can read more about the compounding effects of poor indoor air quality via our 2021 feature on urban air pollution here.

Market for digital twin buildings projected to reach $20.2 billion by 2032

2024-10-09T10:59:00-04:00

The global market for digital twin buildings is now on track to reach a projected market size of $20.2 billion by the year 2032, skyrocketing via a 32.6% CAGR from its current market of $1.6 billion. This is according to the latest reporting from Astute Analytica. The companies leading the charge include Siemens, AG, IBM, Microsoft, General Electric, and Dassault Systèmes SE. Asian countries will be among the key drivers for growth due to their accelerated pace of urbanization.

White House ACHP debuts draft alternatives for National Historic Preservation Act compliance

2024-08-27T18:52:00-04:00

The White House’s Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) has proposed its first Draft Program Comment aimed at providing federal agencies with alternatives to complying with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act.

If fully approved and adopted, the recommendations will take precedence over a number of key areas that impact the architecture industry, namely housing, transportation, and the acceleration of decarbonization efforts in the building sector.

Architect and ACHP Chair Sara C. Bronin, who spoke to Archinect on the topic of housing desegregation in 2021, said: "Today’s action aims to position our historic places at the center of affordable, accessible, climate-resilient, equitable, and interconnected communities and to ensure new investment reaches people who live in, use, and enjoy our historic places. I am looking forward to engaging Indian Tribes, Native Hawaiian organizations, and the public on the best ways to ensure historic preservation strateg...

The GSA's emerging building technologies chief talks about the advent of its Green Proving Ground program

2024-07-29T15:28:00-04:00

During two decades with GSA, [Kevin] Powell has had a front seat view of how technologies in facilities have evolved over the years. As electrification and decarbonization efforts continue to emerge for buildings, Powell remains excited about seeing the future of buildings unfolding.

The architect behind the U.S. General Services Administration’s Green Proving Ground program is Berkeley CED graduate Kevin Powell, who spoke recently with FacilitiesNet about emerging technologies and decarbonization efforts in the building sector. As the manager of the country’s largest portfolio of buildings (the GSA has some 8,400 nationwide), Powell is in a unique position. He says his office has proven 30 new products, touting the program as a "once-in-your-career moment" that will augur positive trajectories for building standards for the next generation.

"The program really helps a lot of the industry innovators bridge what folks call the Technology Valley of Death because we’re really taking that first user risk," Powell told the outlet. "We’re the first buyer, and then we’re validating that it works, and that helps both us and the commercial real estate industry. The facility community can have confidence in what to invest in, and that’s what it’s all about."

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Study finds that AI is key to maximizing the benefits of smart buildings

2024-06-20T13:01:00-04:00

The value of smart building deployments is projected to grow by 95 per cent to $14bn by 2026 globally. This growth, up from $7bn in 2024, will be driven by sustainability initiatives and the need for cost reductions in building management, said Juniper Research, which has published the report.

As reported by Smart Cities World, the study found that artificial intelligence-based building management solutions will be key to both achieving sustainability and energy goals and securing a return on investment in smart buildings. Through in-depth data analytics, AI is capable of identifying potentially expensive issues, before they occur, which can increase safety and decrease operational costs. Additionally, the report predicts that through the integration of internet of things (IoT) networks and sensors with AI systems, the automation of building functionality in real-time can result in major savings and emissions reductions.

The study found that buildings, such as warehouses, factories, and agricultural buildings, could benefit the most from AI-based smart building technology as they tend to have high operational costs.

International WELL Building Institute CEO Rachel Hodgdon on the rise of building health ratings

2022-08-29T14:16:00-04:00

The adoption of WELL Certification during the past eight years has been nothing short of incredible—the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) has just crossed the 4 billion mark for square footage enrolled to pursue WELL Certification, which means more than 36,000 spaces in more than 120 countries, serving more than 17 million people every day.

Rachel Hodgdon, President & CEO of the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) and former U.S. Green Building Council Knowledge SVP and Center for Green Schools Director, shared with Multi-Housing News that the institute is currently in development of a single-family residential certification and will soon debut its new WELL Equity Rating, which Hodgdon says is “designed to empower organizations to create places where everyone can feel welcome, seen, and heard.”

Previously on Archinect: New WELL Performance Rating aims to recognize smart, healthy buildings

She also commented on the rise in green building certifications across all building types that has been recorded since the pandemic, providing statistics that support the organizational tide change that the updated rating systems are meant to engender.

“Not only has the WELL Health-Safety Rating been hugely popular, with 2.8 billion square feet enrolled since its launch just two years ago, but we are also finding that most of...

New WELL Performance Rating aims to recognize smart, healthy buildings

2022-04-15T15:29:00-04:00

The International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) has announced the launch of the WELL Performance Rating, a new rating that recognizes building owners and operators for achieving excellence in healthy building performance that enhances the well-being of their inhabitants.

The rating was developed in collaboration with industry leaders in smart building technologies and with input from IWBI Performance Advisory, WELL Performance Testing Organizations (PTOs), and WELL Enterprise Providers (EPs). It provides a roadmap for organizations to demonstrate excellence in occupant experience and building performance across key indoor environmental quality indicators related to air quality, water quality, thermal comfort, acoustics, and lighting.

With this rating, organizations can now gather intelligence to develop better business performance through the use of sensor networks, onsite tests, and surveys that assess employee perceptions of their health, well-being, and performance while in th...

SOM completes mixed-use smart office tower in Chicago's Fulton Market District

2022-04-11T15:21:00-04:00

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), along with real estate investment firms QuadReal and Thor Equities, have announced the completion of 800 Fulton Market, a 326-foot-tall, mixed-use office tower that stands out for its wide range of pandemic-responsive design features.

Photo © Dave Burk | SOM

The building is located in one of Chicago’s fastest-growing neighborhoods, the Fulton Market District. It relates to the neighborhood’s historic low-rise streetscape and Chicago's downtown high rises through a series of stepped, landscaped terraces. The 19-story building sports a façade of brick, glass, and exposed structural steel bracing, which also draws from the area's industrial character.

“We set out to design a building that would feel like it had always been part of Fulton Market’s historic, industrial character, but also recognized the pressures and concerns of the new vibrant neighborhood,” said SOM Consulting Design Partner Brian Lee. “This sensitivity informed everything from our ma...

Micromirrors in glazing could transform building performance

2021-05-14T11:16:00-04:00

Researchers at the University of Kassel in Germany have published their findings on the potential for smart glazing to transform building energy use. With buildings responsible for 40% of primary energy consumption, and 36% of total CO2 emissions, the team led by Harmut Hillmer sought to explore how changes in the material composition of universal architectural elements could reduce the impact of the built environment on climate change.

The research, published in the Journal of Optical Microsystems, details the major energy savings to be gained by incorporating a system of tiny micromirrors into architectural glazing. “Our smart glazing is based on millions of micromirrors, invisible to the bare eye, and reflects incoming sunlight according to user actions, sun positions, daytime, and seasons, providing a personalized light steering inside the building," Hillmer explains.

SEM micrograph of vertically standing, flat micromirror array with an inset of magnified area. Image: Hillme...

UNStudio proposes a new meaning for 'smart living' with their latest residential project in Munich

2021-02-10T20:29:00-05:00

Conversation around the future of housing is a topic commonly discussed within architecture and urban planning circles. Firms large and small have postulated where issues within housing schemes lie and how the industry can address them. However, as architects continue to dance around solutions for "smart housing" and urban living, there are reservations on what that looks like specifically.

While housing issues vary worldwide based on their social, political, and environmental factors, firms like MVRDV, Sidewalk Labs, among others, have presented ideas that aim to reimagine residential developments and their so-called "smart" components. Recently, UNStudio announced the introduction of their latest residential project in Munich called Van B. They claim their prototype for modern city-dwelling will "cater to changing demographics and multiple family constellations. With its highly flexible apartments, outdoor and shared communal spaces, and striking facade, Van B offers a new form o...

Ultra-thin materials are poised to transform technology

2020-01-22T12:21:00-05:00

two-dimensional materials will be the linchpin of the internet of everything. They will be “painted” on bridges and form the sensors to watch for strain and cracks. They will cover windows with transparent layers that become visible only when information is displayed. And if his team’s radio wave-absorber succeeds, it will power those ever-present electronics. Increasingly, the future looks flat.

Amos Zeeberg of The New York Times takes a look at the wide world of super-thin materials, a growing class of substances that have the potential to reshape humanity's technological capabilities.

The materials include graphene, an incredibly strong and conductive "2-D form of carbon" that can be used to create electronics, including fast-charging batteries and hydrogen fuel cells. Other materials, like molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), can be embedded within concrete to create stress sensors or "painted" on to surfaces to, for example, convert table tops into battery charging membranes.

"Increasingly," as Zeeberg puts it, "the future looks flat."

High-end homes are going biometric

2019-06-24T19:11:00-04:00

Little by little, new biometric technologies are making inroads into the domestic sphere.

The Wall Street Journal reports that digital fingerprint lock and facial-recognition systems have become a fact of life for some of the wealthiest homeowners and now come standard for many high-end developments.

The Diller Scofidio + Renfro-, Rockwell Group-, and Ismael Leyva Architects-designed 15 Hudson Yards tower, for example, comes equipped with fingerprint scanner technology, according to the article.

Meanwhile, 2000 Ocean, a TEN Arquitectos-designed condominium tower in Miami, goes one step further by using a "passive facial-recognition system" in its lobby to alert the concierge that you have arrived. "Once you are in the elevator," the project's developer, Shahab Karmely of KAR Properties, told WSJ, "you have to use facial-recognition or a fob to get to the private landing of your unit." Karmely adds, "It’s a different level of security. You can leave your fob behind, someone can ...

Why 'smart homes' aren't really that smart yet

2018-09-14T15:38:00-04:00

Today you can have a fully connected home complete with sensors to monitor temperature, humidity, air quality, energy usage, and more, and check in on almost any appliance from anywhere in the world with just a smartphone. But even with all of the various connected appliances, virtual assistants, and copious sensors that can be installed in a modern smart home, the “smart” side of things is still rather lacking.

The Verge senior editor Dan Seifert asks: Wouldn't it be cool if my home could figure everything out on its own?

David Chipperfield and CALQ Architecture to design 'Reinventing Paris' scheme

2018-09-05T14:11:00-04:00

Bouygues Construction subsidiary Bouygues Bâtiment Ile-de-France has secured a contract worth €146m from Emerige to renovate 17 Boulevard Morland in the 4th arrondissement of Paris. ‘Morland Mixité Capitale’ is one of the first projects launched under the ‘Reinventing Paris’ programme. Designed by David Chipperfield Architects and CALQ Architecture, the 44,000m² floor space complex will consist of a 161-room hotel, a youth hostel, shops, a nursery, a cultural amenity and 199 homes.

ALS-stricken landscape architect designs home controlled by his eyes

2016-12-22T18:46:00-05:00

After being diagnosed with ALS, a disease of the nervous system that gradually takes away motor control, breathing, and speech, 38-year-old landscape architect Steve Saling decided to invent a home that he could control with eye movements. As CNN.com explains:

With a grant of $500,000 from Berman, Saling went to work. He started by designing an electronic automation system called a Promixis Environment Automation Controller, or PEAC. The system uses a wireless signal to allow Saling and other patients to open and close doors, call an elevator, and operate the TV and lights. They carry out these tasks with small movements of their eyes -- or, for some patients, using brain waves.

Saling laid out the facility to maximize social interaction and designed the garden with a reinforced layer so wheelchairs wouldn't damage the lawn. His goal was to create a nursing residence that felt like home.

For the latest on smart-home design:

Mark Zuckerberg unveils a home operating AI app called "Jarvis...

Losing yourself in the smart city

2015-12-03T18:35:00-05:00

Thanks to Big Data, it is now next to impossible to reside anonymously in a modern city. Why? Because data anonymization itself is almost impossible without using advanced cryptography. Our every transaction leaves a digital marker that can be mined by anyone with the right tools or enough determination.

A city for the future but devoid of people

2015-10-06T18:07:00-04:00

In the arid plains of the southern New Mexico desert, between the site of the first atomic bomb test and the U.S.-Mexico border, a new city is rising from the sand. Planned for a population of 35,000, the city will showcase a modern business district downtown, and neat rows of terraced housing in the suburbs. It will be supplied with pristine streets, parks, malls and a church. But no one will ever call it home.

Planned by the telecommunications and tech firm Pegasus Global Holdings, the CITE (Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation) is a $1 billion plan to build a model city to test out and develop new technologies.

With specialized zones for agriculture, energy, and water treatment, the city would also play host to tests for new tech like self-driving cars, responsive roads, and "smart homes" of all kinds.

CITE would have built-in sensors throughout, as well as a central control room to oversee operations.

CITE does not plan to have humans inhabiting the city to allow for faster testing and fewer potential mishaps. But that presents its own issues: after all, these technologies are ultimately intended for social use, and even "smart cities" have to be populated by humans.

"The inhabitants of cities are not just interchangeable individuals that can be dropped into experimental settings," Professor Steve Rayner, co-director of the Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities, tells CNN. "Th...

Rem Koolhaas on the Smart Landscape and Intelligent Architecture

2015-04-01T13:25:00-04:00

Architecture has entered into a new engagement with digital culture and capital—which amounts to the most radical change within the discipline since the confluence of modernism and industrial production in the early twentieth century. Yet this shift has gone largely unnoticed, because it has not taken the form of a visible upheaval or wholesale transformation. To the contrary: It is a stealthy infiltration of architecture via its constituent elements.

In this brief but sweeping consideration of the place of architecture under today's "digital regime," Koolhaas displays (again) his unique insightfulness.

Here are some highlights:

"For thousands of years, the elements of architecture were deaf and mute—they could be trusted. Now, many of them are listening, thinking, and talking back, collecting information and performing accordingly."
"The tech world’s gradual colonization of architecture is taking place without the collaboration of its host. As technology triumphs, architecture is simply left behind."
"With safety and security as selling points, the city is becoming vastly less adventurous and more predictable. To save the city, it may have to be destroyed. . . ."
"In the service of the ubiquitous digital regime, a hyper-Cartesian order is being imposed on the countryside, paradoxically leaving the city to take on the poetic and arbitrary appearance once reserved for the pastoral."
"If the digital is about to deliver us to a sensor cul...

Smart buildings: Architects using brain science for design guidance

2015-02-26T12:14:00-05:00

The push is on to incorporate brain science into design and architecture... Hopefully, the days of windowless classrooms to prevent vandalism and distraction are over.

Science once agains confirms what we already know, and architects turn it into a marketing tool.

Hackers Present Threat to Internet of Things

2014-08-08T13:16:00-04:00

A hacker with a smartphone can unlock your front door [...] Criminals and intelligence agencies grab data from your home thermostat to plan robberies or track your movements. According to computer-security researchers, this is the troubling future of the Internet of Things, the term for an all-connected world where appliances like thermostats, health-tracking wristbands, smart cars and medical devices communicate with people and each other through the Internet.

Going up? The elevator of the future may know the answer before you.

2014-01-22T19:57:00-05:00

Microsoft researchers have enabled elevators in a company building to detect the likelihood that a person walking by will want to board it. The camera in a Microsoft Kinect — positioned in the ceiling — tracked for months the behaviors of people who got on the elevators vs. those who bypassed the elevators on their way to a nearby cafeteria. That data fed an artificial intelligence system, which taught itself to identify the behaviors indicating who wanted to board an elevator and who didn’t.