The Serpentine Pavilion 2017, designed this year by Germany-based architect Francis Kere, will be moved to Malaysia by early next year.
“Thanks to the generous donations by a group of philanthropists, Ilham Gallery now has a prestigious architectural commission in its collection.
“It was a surprising yet very welcome bit of news to be the new custodian of this exciting work,” said Ilham Gallery director Rahel Joseph.
— The Star Online
In an exciting and unexpected outcome, Francis Kere's serpentine pavilion will be given renewed life with a permanent move to Kuala Lumpur next year. With the final site still unknown, the transition was made possible by a plethora of donations and support. The short shelf life and physical... View full entry
In San Francisco, autonomous crime-fighting robots that are used to patrol parking lots, sports arenas, and tech company campuses are now being deployed to keep away homeless people. [...]
Last week, the City of San Francisco ordered the SF SPCA to keep its robot off the streets or be fined up to $1,000 per day for operating on sidewalks without a permit [...]
— Business Insider
When you're in Silicon Valley, everything looks like a tech solution. The same logic has been increasingly applied to San Francisco's overwhelming homelessness crisis where a growing legion of security robots — armed with lasers, sensors, cameras, and GPS — have been autonomously patrolling... View full entry
Airbnb announced today (Dec.11) that it’s experimenting with augmented- and virtual-reality technologies to enhance customers’ travel experiences. The company showed off some simple prototype ideas in a blog post, detailing how VR could be used to explore apartments that customers may want to rent, from the comfort of their own homes. Hosts could scan apartments or houses to create 360-degree images that potential customers could view on smartphones or VR headsets. — qz.com
Airbnb's vision for their new augmented and virtual reality app would also include a way for hosts to leave notes in certain locations as a guest moves through the space. This would make instructions more clear to guests, especially to those who do not speak the same language. View full entry
This isn’t a new phenomenon for 2017–see Tiananmen Square, North Korea’s totalitarian buildings, Nazi architect Albert Speer. But this year we were reminded of architecture’s enduring power to be used as political propaganda thanks to Trump’s proposed border wall. — Fast Co Design
Architecture has played a fundamental role in the propagandized rhetoric of the Trump Administration. The aim of any kind of propaganda is to promote an idea or an ideology, and Trump and his administration have used architecture to promote their own program and ideology with an... View full entry
During extreme storms, it's common for city infrastructure — from roads to subways to parking garages — to flood.
Architects from Danish firm Third Nature want to build garages that can cope with future storms. They designed a garage that could automatically move up and down as its water reservoir fills with and empties floodwater.
— Business Insider
Third Nature's conceptual garage structure, Pop-Up, consists of an underground water reservoir, five parking levels, and a pedestrian space on top. Most of this 30,460-square-foot structure could exist underground on dry days. On wet days, the structure would automatically pop up using hydraulics... View full entry
Architects know best, as they often claim. With conviction, they’re sure certain details will make a space more hospitable, more beautiful, more preferable, and more enjoyable...But an emerging field of research is now uncovering and quantifying our psychological response to buildings: cognitive architecture. The hope is that by better understanding through science what exactly it is people like or dislike about our built environment, designers can truly improve it. — Fast Co Design
What does it mean to see a building? As we approach a building, what is that calls our attention? The door? The entry? That corner detail that is doing something we have never seen before? Architect Ann Sussman and designer Janice M. Ward are two leading researchers studying how our brains see... View full entry
As a part of the Harvard Graduate School of Design's, Grounded Visionaries campaign, it has been announced that the school has received a $15 million gift from Ronald M. Druker (Loeb Fellow ’76) and the Bertram A. and Ronald M. Druker Charitable Foundation — the largest single gift in the... View full entry
This post is brought to you by Autodesk Pave the way to project success The AEC industry is changing. Technology is opening up new opportunities, but for a lot of firms, increased productivity seems just out of reach.But when you start to upgrade to a smarter way of working, you can easily break... View full entry
Excitement is building for the upcoming 2018 Winter Olympics and some of that excitement is for an actual building. Hosted in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the ceremonies kicking off on February 9th will include the unveiling of a colorless building, designed by the British architect, Asif Khan. To... View full entry
Jakarta is perhaps the truest realization of a post-colonial cosmopolis. Many former colonial capitals stage a rivalry between quaint traditional centers and desperation-driven peripheries. But Jakarta can be understood not as a dialogue with its former foreign overlords but rather as a fiercely insistent projection of Indonesian independence. — Places Journal
In his latest article for Places, Joe Day examines the contemporary architecture of Jakarta through the framework of the utopian terms of the Five Pancasilas, the founding principles of modern Indonesia. Day traces the development of Indonesian architecture from founding president Pak Sukarno's... View full entry
Following their research into the Droneport—a project that explores the potential of an ‘infrastructural leap’ using cutting edge technology to surmount the challenges of the future—Foster + Partners is now working with Be Tomorrow UK, the UK arm of a leading autonomous drone software... View full entry
The museum showcases failures to provide visitors a learning experience about the important role of failure for innovation and to encourage organizations to become better at learning from failure. — Museum of Failure
This December, corporate flops will be showcased when the Museum of Failure comes to Los Angeles. Don’t let the name fool you. The Museum of Failure is a celebration of history’s failed products and services and the lessons learned from them. Exhibited at the A+D Architecture and Design Museum... View full entry
Harmoniously weaving together the art of dance and the science of mechanical engineering, Huang Yi performs a man-machine dance duet with KUKA -- a robot he conceptualized and programmed -- set to stirring cello by Joshua Roman. — Ted Talks
During aTED Talk event in Vancouver, British Columbia, Taiwanese choreographer and engineer Huang Yi performed an absolutely gorgeous pas de deux with an emotionally responsive, intricately reticulating single arm robot affectionately named KUKA. For this performance, KUKA was programmed to move... View full entry
This post is brought to you by klokers PLEDGE UNTIL THE 7TH OF DECEMBER TO RESERVE YOUR KLOK-08 AT $229 INSTEAD OF $442! KLOK-08 pays tribute to the Sixties, from where it inherited the spirit and aesthetic codes. THE SPIRIT: FREEDOM & NONCONFORMITY The creative and audacious 1960s broke the... View full entry
Its forms are basic, totemic: Euclidean shapes dredged from the long memory of the field. It sometimes relies on modules or grids. It’s often monochromatic. It’s post-digital, which means it rejects the compulsion to push form-making to its absolute limits that overtook architecture at the turn of the century. As a result, it sometimes looks ancient or even primordial. It never looks futuristic. — LA Times
Famed LA Times architectural critic, Christopher Hawthorne, released his view of contemporary architecture that culminates in it being classified as boring, and yet, that might be exactly what the architectural discipline ordered. As a reaction to 'hyperactive form-making,' Hawthorne argues that... View full entry
