The ten winners of the Construction Startup Competition 2021 have been announced by CEMEX Ventures, recognizing the most promising startup companies in the construction sector for this year. The overall winner of the competition was Document Crunch, an AI-powered software which can identify and... View full entry
Researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland have offered an insight into the design and fabrication of a new architectural sculpture, built with the help of artificial intelligence and four robots. The structure, standing 22.5 meters (74 feet) in height, will consist of five geometrically-complex... View full entry
Architects, officials, and villagers confirm the trend: People are discarding traditional materials, mostly mud, in favor of concrete, as soon as they can afford it. As living standards increase making concrete more accessible, some of the world’s hottest, poorest landscapes are rapidly morphing from brown to cinder block grey. — National Geographic
Architects like Francis Kéré have been attempting to buck the trend of using concrete by experimenting with upgraded versions of terrestrial materials like mud bricks that simultaneously provide tools for community-building in developing countries like Burkina Faso. Facade detail of Kéré... View full entry
As part of the AEC sector’s effort to decarbonize in light of the industry’s contribution to climate change, architects, engineers, and researchers are increasingly devoting efforts not only to the design of space but to the composition of materials, structural systems, and façades. In the... View full entry
Relph’s collection might be described as the first post-internet expression of the genre. The images mostly show buildings that are, in one sense, real or in the process of becoming so. But the rendering posters, created by design firms and developers, are also highly fictive, cinematic branding documents created to comply with a city law requiring public images of buildings under construction. — The New York Times
The arch flaneur Nick Relph has been documenting the city’s whirlwind transformation since the Gulliani administration and, for the past seven years, incorporating a VuPoint digital scanner into his work to produce a physical record of the changes that first made its debut in 2015 in MoMA... View full entry
After six years of design and research at MIT, a pair of autonomous boats have been launched into the canals of Amsterdam. Roboat, a research project undertaken by the MIT Senseable City Lab and the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS Institute), seeks to encourage a... View full entry
A floating solar farm that’s equivalent to about 70 soccer fields in size has begun generating power in Thailand, reflecting the country’s push to achieve carbon neutral status by 2050. — Bloomberg
Located at the Sirindhorn Dam, which is about 410 miles east of Bangkok, the facility is the world’s largest hybrid solar-hydropower system. It combines two methods of electricity generation, with 145,000 solar panels generating power from the sun during that day, while three turbines convert... View full entry
It’s a subject with broader relevance than one might initially assume: Perhaps 3 billion people around the world play video games; many millions are spending large amounts of their lives exploring the streets of these virtual cities. Game city design also sheds some light on real-life planning — and not just because designers of successful game cities need to think carefully about the scale, interconnection and visual appeal of what they create. — Bloomberg
The expansion of architecture into the metaverse is inevitable, with designers like Kazys Varnelis and others creating virtual worlds with the expressed intent of taking lessons learned from the digital sphere and applying them to the real built environment. Urban planners, as well as architects... View full entry
With COP26 entering its final day in Glasgow, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill have used the event to unveil their vision to transform the built environment into a network for absorbing carbon. Titled 'Urban Sequoia,' the project is centered on the concept of “forests” of buildings which sequester... View full entry
An international research team led by scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore has invented a new window material that controls heat transmission without blocking views, which could help reduce the energy required to cool and heat buildings. The new energy-saving... View full entry
Over recent weeks, Facebook’s rebranding and embrace of the metaverse has added a further dynamic to the role of digital space in our future lives. While the definition of the metaverse has been adapted numerous times since its coining in Neal Stephenson’s cyberpunk novel Snow Crash in... View full entry
This post is brought to you by Mosaic In the architecture and engineering industry, firm leadership often find themselves making decisions based on instinct and fear that they don’t have enough work. But the end result is that you’re always at the mercy of the business. Everyone needs... View full entry
Arts University Bournemouth (AUB) in the United Kingdom is celebrating the opening of a new creative facility designed by Sir Peter Cook. The Innovation Studio is the second building on AUB’s campus designed by Cook, after his undulating Drawing Studio was opened in 2016 by Zaha Hadid. Cook... View full entry
FBR, the Perth, Australia-based robotics company behind the Hadrian X block-laying robot, has announced that it has signed a term sheet with GP Vivienda, the housing division of one of Mexico’s largest construction and real estate development companies, to supply its “Wall as a Service”... View full entry
Blue Origin, the space company owned by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is teaming up with other firms to build a space station in Earth orbit. The group announced its plans on Monday, revealing the latest concept for a privately built orbital outpost that could replace or complement the International Space Station. — The New York Times
Called Orbital Reef, the proposed space station is described as a “mixed-use business park” in space. The project’s announcement comes months after Blue Origin completed its first human space flight, which included Bezos along with three others. Partners in the project include Sierra Space... View full entry
