Archinect - News

Gensler Principal Steven Paynter further details office conversion algorithm in podcast sit-down

2023-08-17T14:37:00-04:00

Gensler Principal and Studio Director Steven Paynter sat down recently with financial news service Marketplace.org to detail his firm’s year-old proprietary office conversion metric, a unique tool that has become indispensable as the industry looks to position itself for the mass-scale nationwide surge in the conversion market expected for the coming decade.

Paynter had previously revealed the metric’s surprising findings that only about 30% of commercial buildings have the ideal structural prerequisites (e.g., window depth, floor plates, and ceiling heights), essentially doubling down on his original claims with added details as to the so-called “Goldilocks” zones architects look for when looking at structures for a residential conversion.

“[If] you took a typical floor plate, for example, in those the average unit size for your location or your city, it would divide that unit size by the quarter window depth, so very quickly say, OK, your unit ends up being 25 feet wide and 30 fe...

Gensler Principal Steven Paynter details new proprietary office conversion metric

2023-01-09T11:56:00-05:00

Now the algorithm he spearheaded collapses the survey process — which must be conducted to determine whether a commercial building can be turned into apartments — from months to hours. His work will help these conversions to be enacted on a mass scale. which is important given the urgency created by America's rising office-vacancy rates due to the pandemic's reshuffling of where and how we work. It could help bring people back to downtowns across North America as renters or homeowners

Gensler estimates that only 3 out of 10 office buildings are eligible for conversion. The pitfalls of mass-scale conversions remain impediments even as architecture firms are earning more from renovations than new buildings for the first time. In the last two years alone, office conversions have jumped by 25%, with an estimated 77,000 apartments currently under construction, according to November data from RentCafe.

"If we can find the perfect buildings for conversion, you start to be able to correct the market, you start to be able to bring people back to neighborhoods," Paynter said to Business Insider. "And then, actually, the demand for the remaining office buildings goes up, because you're creating scarcity by taking some out of the market."

Architects and designers are helping cities fight back against AI surveillance

2022-03-08T10:31:00-05:00

Cities are being overwhelmed by a top-down, algorithmically-enabled attempt to make them legible, quantifiable and replicable. Can a project of nonsense-making disrupt the seemingly inexorable march of "progress"?

Anti-digital mapping and other seriously stylish interventions have taken cues from protest groups like the Umbrella Movement. Many now see them as key areas in which architects can play a role alongside other designers and urbanists to halt the encroachment of certain proptech entities with software that can learn “the concept of gentrification itself."

Knott eventually tied anti-gentrification pushback against high tech real estate to the long-standing tradition of intervention into urban planning endeavors, saying that, in the end, it is up to communities of people who can utilize the notion in an all-out effort to prevent the wholesale creation of what he called the “algorithmic city.”

“Design alone won’t save neighbourhoods from the gentrifying tendencies of urbanism tech...

How corporations scooped up America's single-family homes

2020-03-04T13:20:00-05:00

Rather than protecting communities and making it easy for homeowners to restructure bad mortgages or repair their credit after succumbing to predatory loans, the government facilitated the transfer of wealth from people to private-equity firms.

A compelling long-read from Francesca Mari in T Magazine highlights the incredible transformation taking place within single-family housing market, where large investment firms like Blackstone Group have created a new investment vehicle by turning detached homes into rental properties.

The approach was born out of the Great Recession and has taken off over the last decade; Companies like Blackstone now own hundreds of thousands of single-family homes across the country in some of the nation's frothiest real estate markets, reaping high profits from a growing rental class.

Forensic Architecture's first American survey goes on view at Miami's Museum of Art and Design

2020-02-24T16:45:00-05:00

Forensic Architecture's first United States survey exhibition, Forensic Architecture: True to Scale, made its debut last week at Miami's Museum of Art and Design at Miami Dade College.

The exhibition, according to a press release, "explores a new understanding of architecture, a new evidentiary aesthetic, and a new form of coalition activism," and is going public as news surfaces that Forensic Architecture director Eyal Weizman was denied a visa to visit the United States for the exhibition's opening by Department of Homeland Security authorities. Weizman's visa application was denied because "an algorithm had identified a security threat that was related to him," The New York Times reports. Weizman published an open letter describing the situation on the Forensic Architecture website.

Investigation #31: the Seizure of the Iuventa (2018). Image courtesy of Forensic Architecture.

The exhibition in Miami highlights a collection of Forensic Architecture's recent research projects, whi...

Algorithm denies Forensic Architecture's Eyal Weizman entry into United States

2020-02-20T11:55:00-05:00

Last week Mr. Weizman confronted an unexpected mystery when he was denied a visa to enter the United States. An official at the U.S. Embassy in London told him, without elaboration, he said, that an algorithm had identified a security threat that was related to him.

According to a report by Colin Moynihan in The New York Times, Eyal Weizman, the director of research-focused investigative practice Forensic Architecture, was stopped on his way to attend the opening of the group's first American retrospective exhibition.

The exhibition, Forensic Architecture: True to Scale, is being displayed at Miami’s Museum of Art and Design.

A new start-up wants to use AI and algorithms to replace "expensive, architect-designed" homes

2020-01-29T11:59:00-05:00

Tech start-up Higharc aims to "reinvent home design for the digital age," reports the Financial Times. The company uses iterative design to create "custom" 3D models and plans. Algorithmic design isn't new to architecture, but it looks like Higharc seeks to do away with "expensive, architect-designed plans that take forever to produce."

According to the Financial Times, Marc Minor, founder and CEO of Higharc, said that the company's system is "faster than existing best-in-class design software for homes...there are sophisticated algorithms behind the scenes continuously determining crucial details that typically take hours of manual effort."

Additionally, Pamela Wallgreen, co-founder of a start-up called Finch 3D, "whose software that automates repetitive tasks and guides architects through the design process" through simulation and AI encouraged architects to take advantage of these new emerging technologies.

36-foot-tall television wall illuminates Charlotte's largest mixed-use development

2019-09-23T13:45:00-04:00

Legacy Union is a 10-acre mixed-use development that is intended to be a community gathering place that pays homage to the past of Charlotte, N.C. while celebrating the promise of its future, according to a press release. The project is designed by LS3P, HKS, and Landdesign. It stands 33-stories tall and comes in at about 950,000 square feet.

To accompany the project, Second Story has designed an algorithmically powered 4k monitor, called Unify, that never shows the same composition twice. It captures the essence and twinge of clouds and water, and explores color through a dynamic display of movement.

The monitor measures an impressive 64 feet wide by 36 feet high.

AI rising, in the single-family-rental industry

2019-06-24T17:32:00-04:00

Main Street Renewal is an arm of Amherst Holdings, a real estate investing firm with $20 billion under management. It owns or manages some 16,000 single-family homes, scattered across the Midwest and the Sunbelt. That portfolio makes Amherst one of the biggest, fastest-growing players in institutionally owned rental homes, a $45 billion subsector of the real estate industry that barely existed before the Great Recession.

Shawn Tully profiles Amherst Holdings and it's CEO Sean Dobson a "Texan data savant", who plans to use "digitally driven bargain hunting" and "Economies of scale" to "get to 1 million homes in the next 15 years or so."

House Flippers are Cashing Out

2019-06-11T18:22:00-04:00

The number of homes that were flipped was actually down 8% from the previous year to a three-year low. And the number of investors engaging in home flipping has dropped 11% over the past year.

Life is hard for a home-flipper these days. As real estate prices have ballooned across the country, profit margins for renovated and re-sold homes have narrowed. As a result, the number of homes being flipped has fallen markedly in recent years. What does it mean?

Todd Teta, chief product officer at real estate data firm Attom Data Solutions told MarketWatch, “While the home flipping rate is increasing, gross profits and ROI are starting to weaken. If investors are seeing profit margins drop, they may be acting now and selling before price increases drop even more.”

Optimizing floorplans via experimental algorithms

2018-12-21T14:13:00-05:00

Recent computational tools that model the simulation of traffic, acoustics and heat conservation, among others, are allowing a more quantitative objective evaluation of forms. The metrics could be expanded to include terrain maps, sun paths, existing trees and other environmental input, allowing the buildings to be highly adaptive to their context. The physics simulation could force certain boundary shape constraints.

Evolving Floorplans is an experimental research project created by a New York-based programmer, Joel Simon. When approaching floorplan design solely through the angle of optimization, a genetic algorithm arranges the rooms and the flow of people in a manner that minimizes things like walking time, the use of hallways, etc. The layout 'grows' from the encoding using methods such as graph contraction and ant-colony inspired algorithms, resulting in something 'biological in appearance, intriguing in character, and wildly irrational in practice'.

Coachella lineup created by a neural network generates new designers

2018-01-25T16:09:00-05:00

Move over Bureau Spectacular, Ball Nogues and LOC... robots are coming for your jobs.

Botnik Studios created a hilarious (and somewhat believable) Coachella lineup using their artificial intelligence RNN algorithm to generate a list of band names and installation designers. Located at the bottom of the poster, the new designer list reads:

With large-scale art installations by

Mr. Wall
Belly Legroom
Ed the Bjown
Benus Jackson
Melon Soxprane
Aunt Luke

Personal favorites: "Creepwell, Then Sleepwell", "Boy/Boys", and of course "Aunt Luke". Will a real Aunt Luke please come forward and grace the world with large-scale art installations? Thank you.

Robots designed my building: Zaha Hadid Architects employ algorithm to generate ideal facade for new Melbourne residential tower

2017-09-26T16:17:00-04:00

Zaha Hadid Architects just unveiled designs for the new 19-story Mayfair Residential Tower in Melbourne, Australia sporting the firm's trademark parametrically generated curves. According to ZHA's statement, various algorithms were at work to design a wavy facade that adapts to a host of different apartment layouts and also to minimize the number of unique facade panels needed in order to bring down costs.

Read on for renderings and a project description from the architects.

Rendering: VA

"Located within the established streetscape of St Kilda Road, the design enables residents to make full advantage of its excellent location within Melbourne. The fluid forms of the façade define large balconies for each apartment and spectacular views of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Port Phillip Bay, Albert Park and skyline of the Central Business District."

Rendering: VA

"For the seventh consecutive year, Melbourne has been listed as the ‘world’s most liveable city’. The design translates the many at...

How algorithms designed the sound of the new Hamburg concert hall

2017-08-30T18:30:00-04:00

Detached from the rest of the building for soundproofing reasons, the 10,000 panels that line the central auditorium are the result of parametric design, a process of creating multiple individual designs using algorithms. A million individual cells ranging from four to 16cm long are cut out from the panels [...] The ivory coloured gypsum fiber acoustic panels contain a seashell motif and were designed by Swiss architect Herzog & De Meuron with help from German studio One to One.

Interior view of the central concert hall. Photo: Iwan Baan.

"It would be insane to do this by hand," GCR quotes Benjamin Koren, founder of One to One, the studio that created the design algorithm for the concert hall's acoustic panels. "That’s the power of parametric design. I hit play, and it creates a million cells, all different and all based on these parameters. I have 100% control over setting up the algorithm, and then I have no more control.”

Photo: Johannes Arlt

Generating infinite alien cityscapes with algorithms

2016-06-03T18:33:00-04:00

“I set about programming algorithms to generate an imaginary city...One that I could populate with buildings and structures without having to draw or 3-D model.” [Daniel] Brown begins by plugging random numbers into the program, which uses fractal mathematics to create unique shapes that resemble a 3-D graph. He spends several hours “exploring” the terrain until he finds an interesting form. Brown isolates the shape, and tweaks it until he arrives at something he likes.