At last, somebody understands Mark Zuckerberg, and it's an artificial intelligence app that speaks with the wisdom and patience of Morgan Freeman. Partially an internet of things melded with a changeable, celebrity-cameo Siri (Arnold Schwarzenegger makes a brief aural appearance), Zuckerberg's... View full entry
The six planned factories will use British light gauge steel framing to produce panelised components for residential developments that are “at least 75% off-grid” thanks to solar power and energy efficient design, renewables developer Welink said in announcing the joint venture today (19 December). [...]
The UK government greeted the news enthusiastically, as it tries to lure innovative entrants to the UK housing market to help it deliver its objective of 1 million new homes by 2020.
— globalconstructionreview.com
More pre-fab on Archinect:SHoP-designed Brooklyn tower – now world's tallest modular building – opens its doorsJean Nouvel's prefab 'Simple' home can be reconfigured from the inside outTo solve a housing crisis, invest more in modular constructionA Parisian architect's plan to solve housing... View full entry
Opening on Thursday, January 12 at the Yale School of Architecture in New Haven, “Archaeology of the Digital: Complexity and Convention” is a new exhibition that considers the integration of digital technologies in architecture practice during the 1990s and 2000s. The exhibition, which is... View full entry
With all the drone construction videos of the new Apple Campus 2 (AC2) circulating on the interwebs, it's easy to lose track of what the progress has been on this Foster-designed Goliath of a project just in recent months.Luckily this latest 4K video by Matthew Roberts on YouTube provides a handy... View full entry
The hottest Airbnb deals are—surprise!—a little bit out of the way.
The home-and-room rental platform has revealed the top 17 neighborhoods whose bookings grew the most this year, based on 140 million arrivals at 3 million homes. Peppered throughout are terms like “off the usual tourist path” or “a tranquil outpost” and “though detached from city proper.” [...]
While smaller than many of Airbnb’s major markets, these neighborhoods could be in for even more growth in 2017.
— qz.com
In a data analysis report unveiled yesterday, Airbnb summarizes what travelers are allegedly looking for this year: "In cities like Miami and Seoul, travelers to this year’s trending neighborhoods can connect with Experience hosts for local access you won’t find in typical tourist guides: In... View full entry
At each elevation from the third through 17th floors, the floor plates in Bjarke Ingels Group's new Grove at Grand Bay rotate three feet, creating a twisting set of luxury residential towers that from the ground resemble the splayed bellows of dueling concrete accordions. Indeed, these 20-story... View full entry
French website Mac Generation has obtained photos of newly completed portions of the Apple Campus 2 as designed by Foster + Partners. The exterior, which in renderings possessed a certain monolithic frisbee quality, is far more vivid in real life. Here are photos of both the interior and exterior... View full entry
What better way to teach high school-age students how to tackle the problems of urban planning than with Legos? This was the thought of the Urban Land Institute, which according to this article in Metro News put on a workshop for an 11th grade class in Toronto to help them plan a city that, while... View full entry
In a robot-proof education, we have to focus on what humans do that robots cannot do: think creatively, work with others, think about ethics. For instance, suppose a scenario where a self-driving car can either hit three people and hurt the passengers, or save the passengers but hit 10 people. What is it going to do? Who’s going to program that? Who’s going to decide? You. — Northeastern President Joseph E. Aoun
In a Q&A between Northeastern University President Joseph Aoun and George Thrush, founding director of the School of Architecture, the two educators touched on the implications of automation for architectural education, among other things. "Creative thinking and innovation... View full entry
The tiny house is just one example of the lengths to which people will go to create a sense of home even when they lack the means for it. It’s just one symptom of a much wider and intensifying search for belonging, which makes home as important to politics as the idea of class or rights – especially now, when so many people feel displaced, both literally and figuratively, by life in innovation-driven, high-tech, networked capitalism. — Aeon
Related stories in the Archinect news:Humans and other things that nestHow Tadao Ando defines his own "home for the spirit"The downsides of the charming "holdout" houses View full entry
China's once-celebrated Traffic Elevated Bus (TEB) has been left abandoned in the middle of a Hebei city road, not having moved once in over two months. Originally touted as the futuristic solution to urban traffic jams, the "straddling bus" is currently causing them.
A local reporter recently checked up on "the future of public transportation" at its testing site in Qinhuangdao, only to find it forgotten in a rusted garage, covered in dust.
— shanghaiist.com
"To test its invention, the company actually leased part of a city road in Qinhuangdao. Since the bus now remains exactly where it was abandoned , it continues to block three lanes of traffic, annoying residents to no end."The 'road-straddling bus' previously in the Archinect news: Public transit... View full entry
Biodegradable bamboo filament makes up the globe's largest 3D printed object, an installation for this year's Design Miami Fair designed by SHoP Architects called "Flotsam & Jetsam" that will make a subsequent appearance as a site for performances and educational programs in the Jungle Plaza... View full entry
Imagine driving into London not on surface streets, but rather in an underground tube with automated, moving tracks designed specifically for electric cars. Like a kind of subterranean track-laden ferry, which drivers would be able to individually join and exit at numerous points, this "CarTube"... View full entry
A lot has changed since 1984. That much is made clear with Google’s fun new toy, an interactive timelapse of Google Earth that stretches back 32 years. Constructed with 33 cloud-free annual mosaics, the tool was made interactive by Carnegie Mellon University CREATE Lab’s Time Machine... View full entry
The Royal Institute of British Architects announced today four winners of the 2016 President's Awards for Research, which recognizes top-quality architectural research from academics and practitioners...This year's competition received 75 applications from 14 countries on five continents, making it the most competitive to date... — Bustler
The winning research projects this year are:History and Theory: Dr Edward Denison, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, UK; Medhanie Teklemariam and Dawit Abraha, Asmara Heritage Project, EritreaProject: “Asmara – Africa’s Modernist City: UNESCO World Heritage Nomination”Cities and... View full entry
