The Palo Alto, Calif., company outlined plans for a factory that would employ up to 6,500 people and cover as many as 1,000 acres, including solar and wind farms to supply its power needs. It is evaluating sites in Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas, Tesla said in a regulatory filing.

The proposed 10 million-square-foot facility would make the powerful and pricey lithium-ion batteries that power its Model S and future vehicles. — online.wsj.com

Your assignment is to come up with an idea so revolutionary that it could be considered an important advance in industrial design.

Students at Rice University in Houston accomplished that with plans for a floating city that is being considered by one of the world's largest oil companies. Last year, the students won the inaugural Odebrecht Award for a radical design of man-made floating islands where as many as 25,000 oil workers and their families could live. — npr.org

The long and varied history of waste and its removal in New York from the 18th century onwards is the subject of Elizabeth Royte’s 2005 book Garbage Land and of the Urban Omnibus City of Systems video she narrates. In the video, Royte describes how her research into where exactly her trash was going after she threw it out has led her to become a more ecological citizen, with “a systems view” of our interconnected processes of manufacturing, transportation, disposal and re-use. — Urban Omnibus

What have we learned so far about how cities function — and how they don’t? What is the role of that most symbolic of city features, the skyscraper? And is it possible to “break” a city? Five experts offered their perspectives on the use of data to solve urban problems, the ways in which the skyscraper is venerated and misused, and their best guesses on what the cities of the future might look like. — nytimes.com

In a new exhibition, Michael Pawlyn lays out his vision for architecture inspired by the natural world – including biorock buildings grown entirely underwater and whole office blocks being lit by learning from the blind sea star. [...]

“All my work is driven by a frustration with the word ‘sustainable’,” he says. “It suggests something that is just about good enough, but we need to be looking at truly restorative solutions. — theguardian.com

Form per our fragmented cultures can follow the function of materials proved to work through our fragmented physics and building sciences. We rely highly on statistics in building sciences. In interpreting culture and evolution of culture, we have little to no consensus. — toskovic.com

The latest addition to the Los Angeles skyline — the New Wilshire Grand, the tallest structure to be built west of the Mississippi — takes a major step forward Saturday when more than 2,000 truckloads of concrete are driven through downtown for what is being billed as the world's largest continuous concrete pour.

The slurry-fest begins at 5 p.m. and is expected to last nearly 20 hours. — latimes.com

The Living was selected to re-design MoMA PS1's courtyard this summer. In response Fred Scharmen (who thinks it is a "a gorgeous piece") commented "My initial reaction to this scheme centers around that phrase ‘self assembling’ that shows up in the video around the 00:36 mark...This is slightly problematic".

Today’s technology is rooted in the work of Sir Isaac Newton. Contemporary physics’ paradox in resolving the difference between magnetism and electricity implies multiple truths and we wonder what drove Newton’s work and what drove Einstein’s? — toskovic.com

If we want to know how to make a better city, the place to start is at ground level, using observation and measurement ... to build a psychologically grounded view of the relationship between the physical design of a city and what happens there. [...]

How do we develop an experimental science of urban design? In the research laboratory for immersive virtual environments (Relive) at the University of Waterloo, we have turned to simulation methods to help build such a science. — theguardian.com

In his time as a passenger on what he called Spaceship Earth, Fuller realized that human progress need not separate the “natural” from the “unnatural”: “When people say something is natural,” he explains in the first lecture (embedded above as a YouTube video above), ”‘natural’ is the way they found it when they checked into the picture.” — Open Culture

In his time as a passenger on what he called Spaceship Earth, Fuller realized that human progress need not separate the “natural” from the “unnatural”: “When people say something is natural,” he explains in the first lecture (embedded above as a YouTube video above), ”‘natural’ is the way they found it when they checked into the picture.” — Open Culture

Canadian company Dirtt provides reusable building components and 3D design software, but is still convincing architects it's more sustainable than other options - and worth the price — The Guardian