It might sound like a plot cooked up by a cartoon villain, but a city in southwestern China is aiming to launch into space an artificial moon that could replace streetlights by bathing the ground in a “dusk-like glow.”
[...] the satellite’s mirror-like exterior would reflect sunlight down to Earth, creating a glow about eight times brighter than the moon. The artificial moon, which he said would orbit about 500 kilometers above Earth, could save $174 million in electricity from streetlights.
— NBC News
The capital of China's Sichuan province, Chengdu, could have its own illumination satellite 'moon' up in the skies by 2020, according to the People's Daily. Light pollution, and its documented health effects on humans and nocturnal wildlife, doesn't seem to be much of a concern to the officials... View full entry
Students at the University of Cape Town have developed a bio-brick that mixes sand, bacteria and human urine. Unsurprisingly, it is the world's first building material to be made from the liquid waste high in nitrogen and phosphorous. The brick is created through a process called microbial... View full entry
A privacy expert tasked with protecting personal data within a Google-backed smart city project has resigned as her pro-privacy guidelines would largely be ignored by participants.
“I imagined us creating a Smart City of Privacy, as opposed to a Smart City of Surveillance,” Ann Cavoukian, the former privacy commissioner of Ontario, wrote in a resignation letter to Google sister company Sidewalk Labs.
— Planet Free Will
Smart phones, smart cars, smart cities, but smart for who? View full entry
Five years ago we reported on a device invented by a group of students at MIT. This device, originally called "Wristify", was a small bracelet designed to heat or cool the wearer to achieve customized comfort, regardless of the surrounding environment. Today, after a few years of R&D, and with... View full entry
Out of the 1,171 architectural designs that Frank Lloyd Wright created in his lifetime, around 660 of them remained unbuilt. Using advanced visualization techniques, architect David Romero brings Wright's unbuilt designs one step closer to reality in a series of striking, computer-generated... View full entry
Polish based design studio Superhelix creates a green roof masterpiece that not only highlights the home's ecological design, but showcases what happens to buildings when they change over time. Located in Krakow, Poland the 189 square meter home's slanted roof was not built for aesthetics, but... View full entry
Los Angeles based architect Dan Brunn assembles a team of innovative energy efficient manufacturers to create a vision for contemporary net zero housing. The Bridge House LA, whose construction is soon to be completed in January 2019, is a project teeming with building systems manufactured product... View full entry
In Tonantzintla the smart cities proposal became a lightning rod for those concerned about a development that seemed to favour outsiders rather than residents...“They are ashamed of their roots,” [local resident Mercedes] Tecuapetla Quechol says. “They saw something they liked in the United States or in Europe, so they want to put it here.” — The Guardian
The Mexican town of Santa Maria Tonantzintla is caught in the all-too-familiar situation of preserving its centuries-old customs as newer smart-city technologies are being introduced. While city officials and planners argued that implementing new technology intends to benefit the community... View full entry
MIT's Mediated Matter Group has developed a construction robot that winds fiberglass filament into large structures. The research studio, led by Neri Oxman, has dubbed the little machines, Fiberbots, and hopes they can one-day be used to build complicated, large-scale structures. Credit: The... View full entry
On this week's episode of Archinect Sessions Paul chats with Keely Colcleugh. Keely has spent the last 18 years aggressively exploring the boundaries of architecture. After getting her B.Arch at McGill she worked at the prestigious offices of OMA and AMO, Bruce Mau Design, Skidmore Owings &... View full entry
What makes Dr. Oxman, the scientist, so unusual, said Paola Antonelli, the senior curator of architecture and design at MoMA, is her aesthetic sense. “She’s not afraid of formal elegance,” Ms. Antonelli said. “The reason why she is a gift to the field of architecture and design is that her science works, her aesthetics work, and her theory works. — The New York Times
Tenured professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, Dr. Neri Oxman's larger than life approach to architecture and design has continuously turned heads. Her impact in the world of architecture has led her to various breakthroughs in understanding the relationship and... View full entry
Google has started estimating greenhouse-gas emissions for individual cities, part of what it recently described as an ambitious new plan to deploy its hoard of geographic information on the side of climate-concerned local leaders. — The Atlantic
Google has launched a new online tool, the Environmental Insights Explorer, which tracks emissions inventory on a city scale. The program is still in beta mode and currently only provides data for five cities (Pittsburgh, PA; Mountain View, CA; Victoria, BC; Melbourne, AU; Buenos Aires, AR) but... View full entry
In the 18 months or so since dockless bike-share arrived in the US, the service has spread to at least 88 American cities. (On the provider side, at least 10 companies have jumped into the business; Lime is one of the largest.) Some of those cities now have more than a year of data related to the programs, and they’ve started gleaning insights and catering to the increased number of cyclists on their streets. — MIT Technology Review
Technology Review writer Elizabeth Woyke looks at ways how city planners in Seattle, WA and South Bend, IN use the immense stream of user-generated location data from dockless-bike-sharing programs to improve urban mobility — and how hackers could potentially access and abuse this (supposedly... View full entry
Coinciding with Beijing Design Week, the China House Vision exhibition asked ten Chinese and Japanese design studios to envision the future of living. Presenting a diverse range of living environments that address issues such as population crowding, space travel and climate change, firms such as... View full entry
Over the past couple of decades, artists and designers have developed augmented realities that propose vastly different, and often more radical perspectives of what a digitally enhanced public realm could look like. [...] many actually existing AR projects instead ask critical questions about the implementation of this novel technology and its potential to shift both the everyday experiences and political economies of architecture and cities. — Failed Architecture
In his latest Failed Architecture piece, Joshua McWhirter offers an insightful history of noteworthy augmented reality-powered works of art, activism, game design, and simulation while also issuing a warning call about the impending privatization and commodification of the virtual public space... View full entry
