This September the first ever London Design Biennale will take place at Somerset House with featured projects from over thirty countries. The inaugural show is themed 'Utopia by Design' and celebrates the 500th anniversary of the publication of Sir Thomas More's classic, Utopia (1516).Turkey's... View full entry
Researchers at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have invented a new type of concrete that is flexible yet stronger than traditional concrete. Named ConFlexPave, the concrete "allows the creation of slim precast pavement slabs for quick installation, thus halving the time needed for... View full entry
[Jorge Mañes Rubio] plans to 3D print portions of the temple; other sections will incorporate an existing boulder, creating a cross between a building and a cave...The work will engage with a wide swath of architectural history, including the Pantheon, Mayan temples, and the Egyptian pyramids, [he] says. But when considering the possibilities on the moon, 18th-century French utopian architects like Étienne-Louis Boullée or Claude-Nicolas Ledoux have been the most influential. — Artsy
For his current endeavor called Peak of Eternal Light, artist Jorge Mañes Rubio is working with the ESA to build a temple on the moon, as a way to “examine the potential social and anthropological aspects of colonizing celestial bodies”. More on Archinect:ESA proposes a village on the... View full entry
Among the discoveries in the magical realist-flavored experiential series of smartphone games from the Triennale Game Collection is just how compelling this format is for exploring the nuances of architecture, even if that architecture pushes the limits of physics (and is often heavily layered... View full entry
This post is brought to you by PPI. If you are on the path to becoming a licensed architect, you may already be aware that the Architecture Registration Exam (ARE) is being updated starting November 1st, 2016. You may not know that there could be significant benefits in store for you if you... View full entry
“if augmented reality really catches on, and an internet environment overlaid on our real world surroundings becomes common, what will be the rules around using that augmented space?" [...]
Could you sell, lease, or subdivide the digital rights to your own home, yard, or lobby? Could you extract a toll, tax, or commission from virtual usage?
— bldgblog.com
Referencing multiple, international cases of private property disputes over the mega-popular Pokémon Go game, Geoff Manaugh floats the idea of zoning regulations for virtual and augmented reality instances.As players wander through public and private spaces alike to catch 'em all, they inevitably... View full entry
Why place individual solar panels on top of a pre-existing roof when you could just build an entire roof with solar technology integrated into it? Elon Musk, CEO of the financially underperforming Solar City and Tesla, sees it as an obvious solution. According to CNNMoney, he said that "If your... View full entry
computer vision and artificial intelligence are the keys to a debate behind a door that’s been locked for a long time: the social impact of design in cities. [...]
"Now that we have new tools to measure aesthetics, we can estimate its consequences" [...]
[MIT Media Lab associate professor Cesar Hidalgo] wants to develop more empirical ways to study cities and the way they’re perceived—and, in turn, provide better science to the policy-makers who shape legislation.
— fastcodesign.com
More on neural networks and aesthetic quantification:Mark Zuckerberg's resolution for 2016: build an at-home AI "like Jarvis in Iron Man"Further strides made in Nobel-winning research on the neuroscience of navigationArchinect's Lexicon: "Neuromorphic Architecture""Sculpting the Architectural... View full entry
Nicholas Korody interviewed a class of SCI-Arc students who led by faculty member Darin Johnstone got to design and build their IVRV House in collaboration with Habitat for Humanity. While acknowledging that "it's always easier to build affordable housing when stuff is donated like money, time... View full entry
“The best way to describe what we’re trying to create is a ‘biomechanical cow’s stomach’,” said Rachel Armstrong, coordinator of the Living Architecture (LIAR) research project. LIAR's aim is to develop a building block material that uses living microorganisms to clean wastewater... View full entry
This post is brought to you by BQE ArchiOffice. Many architects struggle with staying on top of their finances. After all, they were trained to draw and design, not how to run a business. Here are seven bookkeeping tips to help you better manage your finances with innovative tools. 1. Get... View full entry
"Spark a blackout, fix a pipe, or clog the toilets. Test your building’s engineering when dinosaurs invade, lightning strikes, or the earth quakes. Find out what keeps skyscrapers standing tall and people happy in them all." So says the description of the newly launched Skyscrapers by Tinybop, a... View full entry
Just months after its spectacular design was unveiled, the Transit Explore Bus had its inaugural run this week on 300 metres of specially constructed test track in Qinhuangdao [...]
The vehicle, which goes up to 60km/h (37mph), runs on tracks with passenger spaces standing two metres above the road so that two lanes of cars can pass undisturbed underneath, helping to alleviate the notorious traffic jams of China’s biggest cities.
— theguardian.com
More transportation News on Archinect:China plans to build an underwater "space station" in the South China SeaTake a look at the rapid urbanization of China's Pearl River Delta'Jet-like' maglev pods are coming to Abu Dhabi's Yas IslandBjarke Ingels Group + AECOM join forces with HyperloopAerial... View full entry
We are overloaded daily with new discoveries, patents and inventions all promising a better life, but that better life has not been forthcoming for most. In fact, the bulk of the above list targets a very specific (and tiny!) slice of the population. As one colleague in tech explained it to me recently, for most people working on such projects, the goal is basically to provide for themselves everything that their mothers no longer do. — Allison Arieff | the New York Times
Last year Allison Arieff served as a juror on our competition, Dry Futures. Revisit some of the winners of the competition:And the winners of Archinect's Dry Futures competition, "Pragmatic" category, are...And the winners of Archinect's Dry Futures competition, "Speculative" category, are...And... View full entry
San Francisco's Millennium Tower has been sinking at a rate of two inches per year since it was completed in 2008, which is about ten inches more than the builders had anticipated the building settling for its entire lifetime. Not to be boring, the tower is also tilting slightly to the northwest... View full entry
