Imagine combining the movable gangway employed for airplane passengers with the slender above-ground urban footprint of a subway station, and you have the basic concepts behind Gensler and Dror's proposed underground cruise operation in their masterplan for the Galataport in Istanbul. Using a... View full entry
The future of U.S. homebuilding depends on more people like Cyndicy Yarborough, a 26-year-old former Wal-Mart clerk with no background in construction. — Bloomberg
In modular construction plants across the nation, robots are putting together lengths of wall, floor and roof elements in panel form that are then shipped to construction sites to help speed up the onsite erection process. In the factories where this assembly takes place, a new breed of worker is... View full entry
Steelcase, one of the largest office furniture firms in the world, has partnered with MIT to create a new form of 3D printing that it believes could potentially change the way that furniture is designed and created. — Quartz
From hearts to pizza, many industries have been eager to investigate the potential usages of 3D printing since the technology first became an obsession. In the realm of architecture, companies have experimented with everything from 3D printed homes to bridges. However, the limitations – mainly... View full entry
Repurposing and renovation have gained greater appeal in the years since the overwhelming success of The High Line, extending to a variety of applications and structures. At the recent Milan Design Week, MAD took this to a new level by showcasing their proposal for a new masterplan of Milan, which... View full entry
Good walls make good neighbours – but not, it seems, when they are made entirely of glass. Five residents of the multi-million-pound Neo Bankside towers, which loom behind Tate Modern like a crystalline bar chart of inflated land values, have filed a legal claim against the museum to have part of its viewing platform shut down. They claim that its 10th-floor public terrace has put their homes into a state of “near constant surveillance”. — The Guardian
In an apparent case of art interfering with life, the owners of the apartments next to the Tate Modern's viewing platform are trying to legally erect some kind of visual barrier between them and the visitors of the museum (although the exotic technology of curtains has apparently not yet made it... View full entry
From a Circadian Daylight Metric and Design Assist Tool to Trashwalls, the AIA has announced the five projects it has selected for its 10th annual Upjohn Research Initiative grants, and they're all fairly promising. Speaking broadly, the projects each propose investigating a particular aspect of... View full entry
Every architect has to contend with gravity—but when David designed the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the challenges of that elemental force went far beyond the ordinary. How can a design acknowledge, and embody, the weight of this monumental history and yet transcend it right before your eyes? — Time
It feels like this is going to be yet another great year for David Adjaye. The architect, who back in January became Sir David Adjaye after receiving the Knights Bachelor award from the Queen of England, is the only architect on this year's "100 Most Influential People" list (a distinction... View full entry
Glass and carbon fiber-reinforced composites have uniquely high tensile strength while remaining lightweight. As a result, they open up a wealth of new building opportunities. The ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion is meant to demonstrate and explore these potentials using long-range machines with limited... View full entry
Since April 1 a large number of the bars, pubs and liquor shops across India has gone out of business, thanks to a Supreme Court order that the outlets should be at least 500m away from state and national highways...The Aishwarya Bar in North Paravoor, a Kochi suburb has built a 250m-long maze-like walkway to the entrance, theoretically making it more than 500m away from the highway. — India Times
In a move that has even delighted the bureaucrats who initially drafted the rule that no bar could be within 500 meters of a highway, an Indian bar has managed to stay in business by virtue of building a 250 meter long maze that, like the snaking lines at an amusement park, greatly expands the... View full entry
You simply start drawing your best version of a pizza, or house, or dog, or birthday cake and the algorithms try to figure out what it is that you’re trying to draw. It then tries to match your squiggles with drawings in its database, and if it finds any possible matches, it’ll show them in a list at the top of your virtual canvas. If you like one of those options, you simply click on it and AutoDraw replaces your amateurish creation with something a bit slicker. — techcrunch.com
The new AutoDraw tool is part of Google's A.I. Experiments sandbox and pairs machine learning with artist drawings from a growing, crowd-sourced library. "AutoDraw’s suggestion tool uses the same technology used in QuickDraw, to guess what you’re trying to draw," states the tool's About page... View full entry
By creating a machine that extrudes shaped clay, Assemble have created a factory that places an emphasis on the physical creation of one's environment (as well as the spontaneous ideas that can develop from working with materials and processes). It's a throwback to the late 19th/early 20th century... View full entry
Despite receiving a substantial drubbing from architectural critics, the Petersen Museum has managed to garner a 2017 American Architecture Award from the Chicago Athanaeum Museum of Architecture and Design (among 78 other finalists). The award, which has been given out since 1994, recognized the... View full entry
According to a listing on Zillow, Jose Oubrerie's visually complex, materially innovative Miller House is now on the market for $550,000. Each room is a study in unusual and exactingly executed detail; cabinets transition seamlessly into L-shaped shelving, while doors become hosts for... View full entry
California’s Central Valley is best known for supplying nearly 25% of the country’s food, including 40% of the fruit and nuts consumed each year. Yet today, backcountry places such as Patterson, population 22,000, are experiencing an increase in homelessness that can be traced, in part, to an unlikely sounding source: Silicon Valley. — The Guardian
As home prices rise staggeringly high in Silicon Valley and San Jose, aspiring homeowners have increasingly headed inland to the agricultural regions of the Central Valley, which lie alongside the I-5. In towns like Patterson, rents have risen from $900 to $1,600 over three years, forcing more and... View full entry
After serving two influential five-year terms, USC's Qingyun Ma will remain on the faculty but step down as the Dean of The School of Architecture on July 1st, when he will be replaced by Milton Curry. According to the L.A. Times:Curry arrives from the University of Michigan Taubman College of... View full entry