Archinect - News

Environmental impact evaluation begins for Frank Gehry's Ocean Avenue Project

2019-01-02T20:20:00-05:00

The City of Santa Monica issued a notice of preparation for an environmental impact report for the Ocean Avenue Project...The project, as currently imagined, calls for the construction of mid-rise and low-rise structures, as well as the preservation of two landmarks homes fronting Ocean Avenue.

The City of Santa Monica issued a notice on December 21 to prepare an Environmental Impact Report for Frank Gehry's proposed Ocean Avenue Project. The mixed-use development includes retail/restaurant space, a public observation deck, cultural uses, that hotel tower (which had its height reduced to 12 stories), and more. The report will address multiple areas of potential environmental effects like water quality, land use and planning, noise, cultural resources and historic structures, and aesthetics and shade/shadow effects. The report is one significant step forward for the project, but a timeline is yet to be announced.

KieranTimberlake develops an app to analyze occupant experience in passive architecture

2018-05-08T15:51:00-04:00

Architecture studio KieranTimberlake used passive strategies to cool their new Philadelphia office building and installed 300 sensors to record data on how it was performing. Along with their network of sensors, the firm also developed an app called Roast for their employees to rate how they felt in the building.

The Roast app asks the user, “How are you feeling today?” allowing quick surveys pre-populated questions based on building industry standards.

The app offers an interactive online interface to analyze occupant comfort. Filter results to compare comfort acrosss space over time.

This kind of post-occupancy evaluation focuses not just on the building's stats, but also on how people are experiencing the space. Together with metric data and employe experience feedback, the firm was able to produce an overall better design. The building was awarded the AIA’s new Top Ten Plus Award this month, an annual honor given to a building with outstanding performance data.

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Guggenheim to host "Competing Intelligence" Digital Architecture Masterclass this Saturday

2015-03-04T20:40:00-05:00

Mark your calendars, The Guggenheim is hosting a free one-day "Competing Intelligence" Digital Architecture Masterclass this Saturday, March 7 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. All current architecture students and recent graduates (from within the past five years) in the New York metro area are encouraged to join!

This experiment will bring together human and artificial intelligence in evaluating design, as an interactive way to test the limits of artificial intelligence in an architectural context, specifically in the architecture competition. To make things even more interesting, the Stage One entries of the popular Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition will be used as the data set.

The one-day workshop will be led by Hugo Liu, principal scientist at eBay and a Ph.D. holder from the MIT Media Lab, and Troy Conrad Therrien, who is the curator of the Architecture and Digital Initiatives.

Results will be showcased in the forthcoming Guggenheim Helsinki Now exhibition at the Kunsthalle Helsinki a...