"The idea that you can replace the 10 trips with one autonomous car and travel less distance, that’s the biggest misconception," says Fagnant. "You can get rid of vehicles, but not vehicle miles traveled. Without ridesharing, there's an 8 to 10 percent increase in vehicle miles traveled based on simulations we've run in Austin. You’re not replacing trips [..] the vehicle has to bounce between locations, and relocate to where it’s needed. Those in-between miles will create a lot of extra travel." — curbed.com
Related stories in the Archinect news:How prepared are American cities for the new reality of self-driving cars?The U.S. just got $4 billion to spend on self-driving carsMore Americans are becoming "mega-commuters", U.S. Census stats show View full entry
NBBJ and Visual Vocal will leverage current-generation VR and augmented reality (AR) systems, with a near-term focus on mobile VR platforms for optimal accessibility and scale. While a number of firms in the design industry have examined the promise of VR, this partnership marks the first instance of an established design firm incubating a VR startup inside its own offices and developing new tools to improve decision-making and remove waste from the design process. — 12newsnow.com
More from the VR-desk on Archinect:Virtually Inevitable – VR and AR, IRL on Archinect Sessions #51"A blueprint can give you an idea, but this cements it for you.” – VR's promising future in architectural communicationsAre virtual reality systems sexist?Using virtual reality to bridge the gap... View full entry
Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, a lobbying group with the express purpose of advocating autonomous driving. [...]
"Self-driving vehicle technology will make America's roadways safer and less congested," [David Strickland, a former administrator of the NHTSA] said [...]
"The best path for this innovation is to have one clear set of federal standards, and the Coalition will work with policymakers to find the right solutions that will facilitate the deployment of self-driving vehicles."
— theverge.com
Lyft has also been in talks with General Motors (which is not a part of the Self-Driving Coalition) to put out its own group of autonomous for-hire vehicles. Models for Google's vehicles include both bespoke prototypes and Lexus SUVs, and Uber is developing its own testing grounds for self-driving... View full entry
The observation deck won’t be finished for a few years yet. If you want to see the future of New York, walk north along the High Line, round the curve at the rail yards, and turn your back to the river. Amid the highway ramps and industrial hash of far-west Manhattan, a herd of cranes hoists I-beams into the sky. This is Hudson Yards, the largest private real-estate development in United States history and the test ground for the world’s most ambitious experiment in “smart city” urbanism. — Shannon Mattern | Places
Last year, I reviewed Mattern's book Deep Mapping the Media City, in which she delves into some of the issues surrounding so-called "smart cities." Check out the review here.For more on the implementation of surveillance and other technologies in the city, check out these... View full entry
All the radar systems, lighthouses, barracks, ports and airfields that China has set up on its newly built island chain in the South China Sea require tremendous amounts of electricity, which is hard to come by in a place hundreds of miles from the country’s power grid.
Beijing may have come up with a solution: floating nuclear power plants.
A state-owned company, China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, is planning to build a fleet of the vessels to provide electricity to remote locations [...]
— nytimes.com
Previously in the Archinect news:New satellite images show progress in China's island-building projectChina is busy building islands in the South China Sea View full entry
Harnessing the collective intelligence of plant behaviour, the reEarth project explores new forms of bio-cooperative interaction between people and nature, within the built environment.
Echoing the architecture of Buckminster Fuller, the geodesic sphere, is both exoskeleton and ecological iconography. Its core of twelve garden modules, each carrying native British species on outwardly-extending linear actuators allow the structure to become mobile by shifting its centre-of-gravity.
— interactivearchitecture.org
Find relating articles here: Science Nonfiction: bringing emerging technologies into the UK's architecture educationInnovation with a heart: Guto Requena's technological and emotional designsThis augmented reality helmet could revolutionize the construction site View full entry
Turku University of Applied Sciences has received a grant of 70,417 euros to see if hemp could be used more in construction projects.
The research will involve investigating the soundproofing and fireproof properties of the substance.
Researchers will also look at how hemp decomposes and to see how it could be used as fertilizer - in order to determine how eco-friendly hemp's waste materials are.
— YLE News
The article is careful to note that hemp has far less THC than marijuana and is therefore not a psychoactive substance (obviously) – but the news still feels topical. Hemp has been used for centuries for ropes, oils and textiles. But marijuana criminalization efforts in the 20th centuries... View full entry
A monumental recreation of the destroyed Arch of Triumph in Palmyra, Syria, has been unveiled in London’s Trafalgar Square.
The 1,800-year-old arch was destroyed by Islamic State militants last October and the 6-metre (20ft) model, made in Italy from Egyptian marble, is intended as an act of defiance: to show that restoration of the ancient site is possible if the will is there.
— theguardian.com
For more on the relating topics in this article check out these links:Palmyra after ISIS: a first look at the level of destructionBefore + after photos of Syria's devastated heritageAnother Grade II listed building loses its protected status in north east EnglandLondon's V&A to host a robot... View full entry
What happens in domestic interiors appears to be very relevant for our societies.
Bernd Upmeyer, Editor-in-Chief, April 2016
— http://www.monu-magazine.com/news.htm
What happens in domestic interiors appears to be very relevant for our societies. At least, that is what Andrés Jaque argues in our interview entitled "The Home as Political Arena" for this new issue of MONU. This issue, "Domestic Urbanism", deals with the domestic aspects of cities, and... View full entry
the city's council voted unanimously to create a program to "develop autonomous vehicles as public transportation."
The council's vision is for self-driving vehicles to provide "on-demand, point-to-point transportation," with citizens "requesting a ride using their smartphone." The shuttles wouldn't replace public transportation, but augment it [...]
Phase one of the city council's program includes reaching out to companies like Tesla and Google to explore "potential partnerships."
— theverge.com
Beverly Hills isn't the only city considering adding on-demand driverless vehicles to its transportation offerings – but given its small size, affluence, and well-maintained road infrastructure, it could be a prime zone for testing municipal adoption of autonomous vehicles.As an on-demand public... View full entry
This post is brought to you by Alucobond® Alucobond® aluminum composite material (ACM) has been used for exterior cladding products in the North American building construction market for over forty years. Throughout these years, we have continued to be on the forefront of all fire and building... View full entry
“A lot of people want to go back to something,” [said Ruth Gates]. “They think, If we just stop doing things, maybe the reef will come back to what it was. [...] Our project is acknowledging that a future is coming where nature is no longer fully natural.” [...]
The power of selective breeding is all around us. Dogs, cats, cows, chickens, pigs [...] But the super-coral project pushes into new territory. Already there’s a term for this sort of effort: assisted evolution.
— the New Yorker
“'In the food supply, in our pets, you name it—everywhere you turn, selectively bred stuff appears,' Gates observed. 'For some reason, in the framework of conservation—or an ecosystem that would be preserved by conservation—it seems like a radical idea. But it’s not like we’ve invented... View full entry
When Apple finishes its new $5 billion headquarters in Cupertino, California, the technorati will ooh and ahh over its otherworldly architecture, and Apple will pat itself on the back for yet another example of "innovation." ...But few are aware that Apple’s monumental project is already outdated, mimicking a half-century of stagnant suburban corporate campuses that isolated themselves—by design—from the communities their products were supposed to impact. — Fast Company Design
This fascinating article delves into the soul-sucking thinking behind isolated corporate behemoth design, which essentially captures the employee for the entire day and encourages a detached, "Who cares; I've got mine!" thinking towards maintaining urban infrastructure. Consider this:Connecticut... View full entry
Home-rental company Airbnb has “acqui-hired” the majority of the team behind ChangeCoin, a startup that runs a bitcoin-based micropayments service, according to four people with knowledge of the deal.
The alternative lodging site has been looking at a few bitcoin and blockchain startups, according to two sources, to study what the technology could do for its services.
— Quartz
Have you heard of bitcoin but still can't get your head around the technology behind them?Last fall, I sat down with FOAM, a "decentralized architecture office" that believes the blockchain may revolutionize architecture (and so much more). The interview frames a handy introduction to the... View full entry
On March 31, [Elon Musk's] Tesla Motors unveiled its long-promised Model 3, a $35,000 electric car that will go 215 miles per charge. The market response suggests to some the potential as a category killer, not just in electric vehicles, but mainstream cars in general: in the week since, more than 325,000 Model 3s have been pre-ordered by people putting down $1,000 per reservation, the company said April 7.
Even deep Tesla skeptics call this demand unprecedented.
— qz.com
For more on the auto industry and car culture:The "Impossible" Car – Faraday Future's lead designer, Richard Kim, on One-to-One #17Lake Flato Architects splits reservation cost for Tesla Model 3 with employeesWired takes a look inside Tesla's car factory of the futureDawn of the self-driving... View full entry
