Significant expansions to Disneyland, the fabled theme park in Anaheim, California, are not taken lightly among its designers and imagineers. Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, the newest 'land' at the park, has been hotly anticipated since it was first announced over five years ago. The 14-acre addition... View full entry
What's in a facade? For those outside the architecture and design profession, the function, importance, and commonality facades play in the built environment might not be so clear. But the exterior wall, or "face" of a building, in fact, plays a crucial role in conveying a building's structural... View full entry
McDonald's, the American fast food chain central to debates on overconsumption and sustainability, has started a few notable initiatives overseas. Over the last few years, several of their restaurants in Sweden have recently installed beehives on their rooftops to accommodate the globally waning... View full entry
What should we do with industrial sites after they have fulfilled their original purpose? Considering the fact that so many of the now disused sites are so close to city centers, the answer to this question can determine the quality of city life for many places around the world. Landschaftspark... View full entry
Tesla’s 2016 acquisition of SolarCity is looking worse and worse. And its $1 billion solar gigafactory in Buffalo, New York, which the state built, subsidized, and equipped for SolarCity, seems to be primarily operating as a Panasonic plant. [...] In the more than two years since Tesla acquired SolarCity, its overall solar installations have plummeted by more than 76%. — Technology Review
In 2016 Tesla purchased SolarCity for $2.6 billion. Much criticism and backlash had been pivoted towards Elon Musk's decision to acquire the company due to his own personal ties with the company and its co-founders. Although ambitious, much like most of Musk's ideas for an ideal world, the Solar... View full entry
Glass has always been an unlikely material for large buildings, because of how difficult it becomes to control temperature and glare indoors. In fact, the use of fully glazed exteriors only became possible with advances in air conditioning technology and access to cheap and abundant energy, which came about in the mid-20th century. And studies suggest that on average, carbon emissions from air conditioned offices are 60% higher than those from offices with natural or mechanical ventilation. — Fast Company
Philip Johnson, after building his own Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, had this bit of advice to offer others in the field: "Don't build a glass house if you're worried about saving money on heating." The advancement of modern architecture was predicated on the seemingly magical properties... View full entry
This week Ken and I are speaking with the leadership team responsible for the upcoming Brown University Performing Arts Center – Joshua Ramus of REX, Carl Giegold of Threshold Acoustics and David Rosenburg of Theatre Projects. Brown University Performing Arts Center, East... View full entry
Supporting applied research projects that 'enhance the value of design and professional practice knowledge', The AIA Upjohn Research Initiative funds up to six research grants of $15,000 to $30,000 annually for projects completed within an 18-month period. This year's grants... View full entry
Now, in 2019, Jeff Bezos wants his private space company to take over the public imagination about life in space. Bezos is the head of a retail empire, and he knows how to sell an image, but what he’s offering today is a watered-down version of nostalgia for yesterday’s future. Bezos’s proposal is a version of O’Neill’s project that somehow manages to look and feel less futuristic than its predecessor. — CityLab
The possibility of humans living in space is nothing new. Authors, scientists, and designers have all dreamed and formulated how this could be possible. Amazon founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, recently pitched his idea for space habitation and how his private space company Blue Origin would make this... View full entry
What if we could weaponize air conditioning units to help pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere instead? According to a new paper in Nature Communications, it’s feasible.
Using technology currently in development, AC units in skyscrapers and even your home could get turned into machines that not only capture CO2, but transform the stuff into a fuel for powering vehicles that are difficult to electrify, like cargo ships.
— CityLab
“Air conditioning,” Eva Horn once wrote, “is one of the oldest dreams of mankind. It means creating a world without heat or cold, rain or snow, without suffocating humidity or dusty winds.” However, when considering the challenges facing the current era, air conditioning yields a... View full entry
On top of being known as a man of architecture and a man of letters, Le Corbusier can now also be known as a man of photography. View of Charles IV Bridge, toward castle, Prague, May 1911. Photo by Le Corbusier.LC Foto, a book released by Lars Müller Publishers, is an archive of the architect's... View full entry
Yves Béhar, the founder of the San Francisco-based design firm fuseproject, has teamed up with building startup ICON and housing charity New Story to bring about what they describe as "the world's first 3D-printed community." Last year, ICON and New Story went to SXSW 2018 and announced the... View full entry
Last year, residents of Atlantic Plaza Towers, a rent-stabilized apartment building in Brooklyn, found out that their landlord was planning to replace the key fob entry system with facial recognition technology. [...]
But some residents were immediately alarmed by the prospect: They felt the landlord’s promise of added security was murky at best, and didn’t outweigh their concerns about having to surrender sensitive biometric information to enter their own homes.
— CityLab
"Housing complexes of low-income residents may be one early testing ground for residential applications of facial recognition technology," writes Tanvi Misra for CityLab. "But they’re not the only ones. Amazon’s doorbell company, Ring, is coming out with a video doorbell that incorporates... View full entry
Joseph Choma, founder of Design Topology Lab and an architecture professor at Clemson University, is pioneering work into the field of foldable structures and materials. For the past few years, Choma has been focused on developing a fabrication technique that allows fiberglass to be folded by... View full entry
A colourful mural of a 35m-tall tree in Mexico City is one of three environmentally friendly new public works made using Airlite paint, which purifies polluted air in a process similar to photosynthesis.
[...] the mural aims to increase oxygen levels in one of the western hemisphere’s most polluted cities, where ozone concentration levels remain high despite government regulations on fuel and cars.
— The Art Newspaper
Image courtesy of Boa Mistura."Airlite paint chemically reacts with pollutants in the air, turning them into inert compounds," reports The Art Newspaper. "The roughly 1,000 sq. m mural should neutralise the same amount of pollution created by around 60,000 vehicles a year."The artists responsible... View full entry
