Artinfo spoke with Cathy Lang Ho curator of "Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good" the American Pavilion's inherently political theme at this year's Venice Architecture Biennale. 18x32 opined "Go reread The Society of the Spectacle, get back to me with a new headline.—ed." The link is to a wikipedia entry on Betteridge's Law of Headlines.
News Wiel Arets it was announced, has been named Dean of Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture. lletdownl wrote in response to the news "This news had been floating around, and i had my fingers crossed. Though i know almost nothing about how good a job Arets will be able... View full entry
Using natural soil and sand, the Stone Spray can construct intricate solid structures at almost any location, even on vertical surfaces. The device was developed by architects Petr Novikov, Inder Shergill, and Anna Kulik as a research project to experiment with applying the concepts of digital manufacturing to construction work. — gizmag.com
Visit the Stone Spray website. View full entry
Ai Weiwei: No. Beijing's greatest problem is that it never belongs to its people. Though it's a city of more than 10 million, people living here are like people living in a hotel. — Foreign Policy
Beijing's best-known dissident, architect, and creative provocateur tells Jonathan Landreth what's wrong with China's frenetic capital. View full entry
Bustler.net posted a list of the 2012 Recipients of the AIA Small Project Awards. Reacting to the Saint Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church; Springdale, AR by Marlon Blackwell Architect Orhan Ayyüce posted an image of Fire Station No. 4, Columbus, Indiana, 1967, by Venturi and Rauch asking "Do you think so too? As a student FS 4 was a big deal for me and still is."
News Janelle Zara wrote about The New Architectural Wisdom of Airports: Ikea, iPads, And Ice Skating Rinks for Art Info. aml pointed us to her "more skeptical take on contemporary airports" and airport urbanism over at her blog. Therein she argued "my main point is that airports are and... View full entry
In this excerpt from his new book, City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age, PD Smith explores the history of ‘invisible’ urban infrastructure, from the network of subterranean steam pipes synchronising Paris clocks in the 1870s to the ‘organism’ that is Seoul today. The next step: a city that talks back to its citizens? — australiandesignreview.com
Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, are reporting development of a new transparent polymer solar cell (PSC), an advance toward giving windows in homes and other buildings the ability to generate electricity while still allowing people to see outside. — Nanoarchitecture.net
"Hammertone is created from a fabric of woven LED strips and paper squares, networked through a series of sensors which read the aural vibrations created by the artists - responding through light, shadow and geometry." — MocoLoco
On Saturday August 4, 2012, Brooklyn-based design firm The Principals present from 2pm until 9pm, Hammertone will be performing in collaboration with the musicians Lemonade, Pearson Sound and Jamie XX at MoMA PS 1's Summer Warm Up series. View full entry
The Sound of Buildings is an audio exploration of Melbourne’s most architecturally significant buildings. Available free as an interactive iPhone and iPad app, The Sound of Buildings provides listeners with a deeper level of understanding and context for the selected buildings, as well highlighting Melbourne’s diverse architecture and urban spaces through an exploration of cultural, monuments, government, residential, commercial, transport, education, health and sporting projects. — soundofbuildings.com
Gehry Technologies (GT), a company founded in 2002 by Gehry Partners’s research and development team, has announced a free preview period for their latest off-the-shelf product GTeam. The new cloud-based software described by Gehry as “Google Docs for 3D models” automatically translates files from AutoCAD, Revit, Rhino, Google SketchUp, and other professional modeling software into a common format, which can then be easily accessed and shared online. — artinfo.com
Even by the generous standards of Kinect hacking, that’s mighty weird. — IDEAbuilder @ Youtube.com
IDEAbuilder has built a hands free online home configurator for their clients. Using Microsoft Kinect home owners can go online and snap together the home of their dreams from a library of digital fabrication ready components that are robotically manufactured in our factory. The app is... View full entry
Unveiling a new building in 99 degree weather with no air conditioning doesn't sound ideal - unless, that is, said building is the first one in NYC that can power itself. Dubbed the Delta, the self-sustaining residential property was opened to the press last night by green developers Voltaic Solaire, and the balmy conditions in the city just happened to be the perfect opportunity to showcase its smart design. — Inhabitat
Green developers Voltaic Solaire unveiled New York City's very first self-powered building last night. View full entry
Autodesk is known for architectural and design software, but in recent years has started offering products aimed at ordinary consumers. Besides $60m for Socialcam, which makes video authoring and publishing software, Autodesk paid $32 million for Instructables... And it purchased a company called Pixlr, which is an online photo editor, for an undisclosed sum. Autodesk also developed consumer software for drawing and painting online, which it calls SketchBook. — bits.blogs.nytimes.com
Sefaira Concept enables architects and project teams to create better performing buildings with a powerful web-based sustainability analysis platform. It performs whole-building analysis of energy, water, carbon, and renewable energy potential, while an intuitive interface allows for fast, iterative exploration of design options.
Concept allows you to combine creativity and analytic insight to design buildings that are both elegant and highly sustainable.
— sefaira.com
It's insane; the sides are made from a zigzagging yet continuous, seam-free piece of glass that looks to exceed 30 feet at its longest point. — core77.com
...how would you like something that can never crash, is immune to weather, it goes 3 or 4 times faster than the bullet train... it goes an average speed of twice what an aircraft would do. You would go from downtown LA to downtown San Francisco in under 30 minutes. It would cost you much less than an air ticket than any other mode of transport. I think we could actually make it self-powering if you put solar panels on it, you generate more power than you would consume in the system. — theatlantic.com