Let’s say you want to switch to solar—for ecological or economic reasons—but are a renter. Installing solar panels on your roof isn’t really an option unless you get permission from your landlord. Enter Solar Gaps, or photovoltaic solar blinds that can be installed easily, and temporarily... View full entry
[The] Digital Construction Platform (DCP) [is] a four-ton solar powered robot arm on tank tracks. And yet, it’s a working proof-of-concept that a machine can build a lot like a tree does, sourcing local energy and adapting to local conditions to construct a building out of local materials–anything ranging from dirt, to ice, to moon dust...The tip of the arm is fit with a nozzle that can mix and spray mud, foam, or concrete–basically any viscous building material you could imagine. — FastCo.Design
Designed by the MIT Mediated Matter group, the DCP robot is an “experimental enabling technology for large-scale digital manufacturing” that has shown impressive results in printing with various media, including light printing, excavation, welded-chain construction, and additive... View full entry
While Rem Koolhaas called smart homes “potentially sinister”, his former protege Bjarke Ingels seems to have no problem with them. BIG has partnered up with Friday Labs, a smart home product company, to design a smart lock.The door lock is connected to your smart phone so you can give access... View full entry
As he toured facilities for the poor in Ohio last week, Mr. Carson, the neurosurgeon-turned-housing secretary, joked that a relatively well-appointed apartment complex for veterans lacked “only pool tables.” He inquired at one stop whether animals were allowed. At yet another, he nodded, plainly happy, as officials explained how they had stacked dozens of bunk beds inside a homeless shelter and purposefully did not provide televisions. — The New York Times
In a recent visit to a public housing facility in Columbus, Ohio, HUD head Ben Carson reiterated his stance that anyone receiving Section 8 housing vouchers or federal assistance should not get too comfortable, as this would lead them to simply want to stay in their federally provided digs... View full entry
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
