When Uber picked this former Rust Belt town as the inaugural city for its driverless car experiment, Pittsburgh played the consummate host. [...]
Nine months later, Pittsburgh residents and officials say Uber has not lived up to its end of the bargain. [...]
The deteriorating relationship between Pittsburgh and Uber offers a cautionary tale, especially as other cities consider rolling out driverless car trials from Uber, Alphabet’s Waymo and others.
— nytimes.com
"Starting later this month," wrote Bloomberg less than one year ago, "Uber will allow customers in downtown Pittsburgh to summon self-driving cars from their phones, crossing an important milestone that no automotive or technology company has yet achieved." Since then, Pittsburgh appears to have... View full entry
Since the company’s introduction, many (including Futurism) have speculated that the tunnels’ true purpose was to work in tandem with the Hyperloop. This is the real clincher here. It seems like The Boring Company isn’t just going to be for cars. “The electric skate can transport automobiles, goods, and/or people. And if one adds a vacuum shell, it is now a Hyperloop Pod which can travel at 600+ miles per hour,” the site explains. — Futurism
Back in December, the business magnate Elon Musk tweeted his frustration of being stuck in LA traffic along with a half-joking suggestion of building a tunnel to fix his gridlocked woes.Well as it turns out... View full entry
As with any Apple product, its shape would be determined by its function. This would be a workplace where people were open to each other and open to nature, and the key to that would be modular sections, known as pods, for work or collaboration. — Steven Levy for WIRED
Since 2009, Foster and Partners have been working on a new headquarters for the tech giant Apple, originally in close collaboration with Steve Jobs, its founder, who saw it as one of his last crucial contribution to his legacy. Even though dramatic photographs of the ring-shaped structure have... View full entry
Engineers have to ensure the bridge will remain buoyant when a pair of 300-ton trains pass each other, and that the high-voltage current that powers the trains won’t stray into the bridge’s pontoons and corrode its steel rebar. They spent $53 million just to design the section across Lake Washington. — The Seattle Times
The Lacey V. Murrow Memorial Bridge is a floating bridge that stretches across Lake Washington, connecting Seattle and Bellevue through Interstate 90 freeway.This April the final design promising to replace the center express lanes of I-90 with full speed light rail was signed off. Subject to... View full entry
The conclusions of the SSG research are clear: megacities are unavoidable, they are potentially the most challenging environment the Army has ever faced, and the Army is unprepared to operate in them...by 2030 there will be 662 cities around the world with at least one million inhabitants (compared to 512 today) and 60 percent of the world’s population will live in cities. The potential for operations in dense urban areas will rise correspondingly, presenting a challenge the Army cannot ignore. — https://mwi.usma.edu/army-megacities-unit-look-like/
Back in February, Maj. John Spencer made the case for why It's Time to Create a Megacities Combat Unit. A few days ago, he fleshed out the concept, by detailing "What would such a unit look like?"Interesting to note, that rather than the more au courant image of a generic middle eastern/Arab... View full entry
Arckit is expanding from house models into entire cities and master plans, or at least will if they meet their Kickstarter goals.The Kickstarter showcases a series of models with various components including contoured top pieces, textured walls and even transparent, glass-like modular... View full entry
Blending elements of brutalism and pronounced geometric framing, the Murray Music House designed by Carazo Arquitectura is technically a single family home, designed for two parents and three children. The fundamental concept underlying its design is "Living Through the Experimentation," which... View full entry
The list of materials that can be produced by 3-D printing has grown to include not just plastics but also metal, glass, and even food. Now, MIT researchers are expanding the list further, with the design of a system that can 3-D print the basic structure of an entire building. — MIT
According to the researchers, structures built with this tech will be faster to make and cheaper than traditional construction. They'll be customizable and enable forms otherwise difficult to manufacture. "Even the internal structure could be modified in new ways," they write, "different materials... View full entry
While there's no word on what would happen if someone skinned their knee on this bacteria-infused concrete, the premise is certainly intriguing in theory: concrete that patches cracks in itself for up to 200 years after its initial formation. Here's a brief video outlining the process: View full entry
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
