Archinect - News

IAAC team 3D prints a zero-waste housing prototype using local earth

2022-09-12T18:13:00-04:00

Barcelona's Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) and Italian 3D printer manufacturer WASP have created a building they say is the first made entirely of local materials and 3D printing technology in Spain.

Called "TOVA," the project was developed by a team of students and researchers from the 3D Printing Architecture (3DPA) postgraduate program of IAAC. The endeavor was born out of the institution’s ongoing research to find new ways of facing the social and environmental challenges of the future through its various education and research programs. The structure was conceived as a prototype for sustainable housing that could be built anywhere in the world.

Photo by Gregori Civera

TOVA was constructed at the Valldaura Labs facilities on the outskirts of Barcelona and is part of a larger project in collaboration with WASP that envisions a complete house. Together the teams are exploring the future of housing solutions as the threat of a global housing emergency loom...

Mud, the world's ancient building material, deserves to have a bright future

2022-07-21T18:23:00-04:00

Even though the buildings in Sana'a are thousands of years old, they remain "terribly contemporary", says Salma Samar Damluji, co-founder of the Daw'an Mud Brick Architecture Foundation in Yemen. Damluji says it is easy to see why these mud buildings have not lost their appeal – they are well-insulated, sustainable and extremely adaptable for modern use. "It is the architecture of the future," says Damluji.

Yemen’s largest city Sana'a may even supplant Franis Kéré's home country as the world’s leading rammed earth capital, with a host of stunning, UNESCO-protected sites scattered around its Old City area. The material is one of many in an arsenal of alternatives being used to combat high temperatures and reduce global carbon footprints, a scant 5% of which can be attributed to all 54 African nations, as the Pritzker Prize winner pointed out last week in a preview of his own locally-sourced designs for the Triennale di Milano.

Earlier on Archinect: Francis Kéré and others are attempting to muddy up the rising use of concrete in West Africa

Elsewhere in the world, the BBC's Future Planet offers Austrian architect Anna Heringer’s Aga Khan Award-winning METI handmade school design in Bangladesh as a contemporary example of its successful export and application. As she and others pointed out, mud's ability to circumvent the need for more air-conditioning on a warming planet is a huge selling...

World’s first 3D printed raw earth house to be showcased at COP26

2021-10-26T12:54:00-04:00

TECLA, the world’s first raw earth house constructed using 3D printing, is to be exhibited as one of 17 projects in the Build Better Now virtual exhibition at COP26. As we previously reported, the exhibition will also feature a sustainability-focused 360-degree virtual pavilion designed by Make Architects, forming the exhibition’s centerpiece.

Image: Iago Corazza

Originating in Italy, and designed by MC A (Mario Cucinella Architects) and WASP (World's Advanced Saving), TECLA features an innovative circular housing model that combines vernacular architectural principles with advanced building technology. The scheme also takes inspiration from one of Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities,” with its attention to whole life cycles evoking the idea of a city in continuous construction.

Image: Iago Corazza

“It is an almost zero-emission project,” explains MC A. “Its envelope and the use of a locally sourced material have made it possible to reduce waste and scrap. The local clay is quarried...

Artist Sebastian Errazuriz to project livestream of Earth in 20-foot “blu Marble” installation in Manhattan

2019-03-11T20:27:00-04:00

Known for his interdisciplinary, experimental works, New York-based artist, designer, and activist Sebastian Errazuriz created a 20-foot public artwork called “blu Marble” that will show a livestream of planet Earth from outer space. The installation will be on display at 159 Ludlow Street in Manhattan starting March 13. And for one night only during the launch, blu Marble will be projected onto the New Museum.

Rendering of Sebastian Errazuriz's “blu Marble” at the New Museum. Image courtesy of the artist.

Visible throughout the day and night, the installation features a custom-made LED screen that projects Earth in real time from outer space. To do this, Errazuriz's team created a bot that stitches together live photos of Earth from a NASA satellite.

“Blu Marble is a reminder of our miraculously fragile existence. It places our very existence in perspective at a global level — as a tiny spec in space — beckoning us to live fully with an awareness and mindfulness of our limited time...

Boring Company to start selling LEGO-like interlocking bricks made from tunneling rock

2018-03-27T12:18:00-04:00

Elon Musk announced that the Boring Company will sell LEGO-like interlocking bricks made from rock that his tunneling machines excavate from the earth. Musk stated these bricks will be sold in "kits" and will be rated to withstand California's earthquakes.

The date of availability or cost of this latest product is unknown. While his company has only started digging shorter tunnels there is not enough upturned rock to begin making these bricks yet.

A lush, photographic tour of the Icelandic Turf House

2017-07-27T14:08:00-04:00

The Turf House Tradition of Iceland was nominated for UNESCO World Heritage status in 2011. “The turf house is an exceptional example of a vernacular architectural tradition, which has survived in Iceland,” according to the nomination. “The form and design of the turf house is an expression of the cultural values of the society and has adapted to the social and technological changes that took place through the centuries.”

Although living walls are still considered to be somewhat noteworthy in contemporary design, Iceland's architecture has been overgrown with the technique for hundreds of years. Along with a history of turf as a building material (and the pressures of modernism on Iceland's architecture in the 20th century) this National Geographic article showcases the haunting beauty of the Icelandic turf house, where the climate is pretty much rainy and picturesquely contemplative for the entire year.

Image: Thomas Ormstom via Flickr

MIT team wins NASA challenge to design luxury hotel in low Earth orbit

2017-06-29T13:07:00-04:00

The MIT project — the Managed, Reconfigurable, In-space Nodal Assembly (MARINA) — was designed as a commercially owned and operated space station, featuring a luxury hotel as the primary anchor tenant and NASA as a temporary co-anchor tenant for 10 years. NASA’s estimated recurring costs, $360 million per year, represent an order of magnitude reduction from the current costs of maintaining and operating the International Space Station.

Left to right: Caitlin Mueller (faculty advisor), Matthew Moraguez, George Lordos, and Valentina Sumini are some of the members of the interdisciplinary MIT team that won first place in the graduate division of the Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts-Academic Linkage Design Competition Forum.

Part luxury hotel, part future Mars explorer, MIT's MARINA has a modular design that works not only to provide a bar, restaurant, gym,and eight rooms for low orbit guests, but can be reconfigured to create an "interplanetary Mars transit vehicle that can enter Mars’ orbit, refuel from locally produced methane fuel, and return to Earth." At last: a luxury hotel at which it would be appropriate to charge sky-high prices.

One of the best long reads of 2016 explores the demise of a medieval U.S. city

2016-12-14T18:20:00-05:00

Each generation likes to think it is unique, or at least living on the cutting-edge; but archaeologists have long known that history has a way of repeating itself. Although North America is often considered to be part of the "New World," inhabitations on this continent date back millennia. In this fascinating piece by Annalee Newitz for Ars Technica (whose length is perfect for plane reading) archaeologists uncover new sections of the lost city of Cahokia, which flourished between 1100 and 1400 A.D. in an area that is currently known as East St. Louis. A city of 30,000 that was more populous than Paris at the time, the pyramid and earthern-mound laden city went through all the statutte-endowed stages of societal refinement before taking the low road into ritual sacrifice and random trash fires. Sound familiar?

For more on the ancient world:

Maya Lin says the Earth has lessons to teach us

2012-02-20T18:39:00-05:00

the exhibition at the Carnegie is not about the Vietnam memorial or other moving memorials she has done since. Instead, this is a straightforward presentation that wants to lead us to meditate about rivers, seas, lakes, land forms and other elements in the natural environment. What we see here are her persistent efforts to find sculptural forms that will get us to care more about the world around us. All of her recent work, in fact, seems to be an outpouring of her concerns for the environment.