ICON, developer of advanced construction technologies spanning from robotics, to software, and building materials, has completed a $35M series A funding round of financing led by Moderne Ventures. Among the series A round investors is Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). ICON. Vulcan 3D Printer... View full entry
Imagine plugging in to your brick house. Red bricks — some of the world’s cheapest and most familiar building materials — can be converted into energy storage units that can be charged to hold electricity, like a battery, according to new research from Washington University in St... View full entry
The Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California has launched a new master’s program in Advanced Design and Construction Technology (ADCT). The program, according to a school website, will explore an "integrative approach to design, engineering and... View full entry
Peopling Studio offers a 3D library of diverse characters in a variety of scenes to use and customize in your digital renders. The project appears to be voluntarily founded and run, offering free downloads. Their "disclaimer" describes the motives and inspiration behind the project... View full entry
The Denver Architecture Foundation (DAF) has launched two free audio tours featuring 24 locations of notable structures across Denver. The tours highlight over a century of architectural history throughout the region through dynamic storytelling and presentation. "DAF values historic preservation... View full entry
Foster + Partners has released photos of the firm's new Apple Sanlitun retail storefront in Beijing. The store is located within a shopping and entertainment district in China's capital city that was originally home to Apple's first store in China back in 2008. The store was recently... View full entry
Software developer Autodesk has issued a second response to a previously published open letter from leading architectural practices speaking out about design, development, and cost issues associated with Revit software. Addressing the lack of product development for the Revit software suite... View full entry
Designer Joey Ruiter has recently created a new piece of urban architecture. Or at least, on the surface, it appears that way. The urban artwork sits as a canvas for graffiti, but, with the push of a button, the metallic cubic geometry lifts off of the ground, flips out a seat, and unveils a set... View full entry
The new factory will build Tesla’s upcoming Cybertruck pickup and will be a second U.S. manufacturing site for the Model Y small SUV, largely for distribution to the East Coast. — AP News
According to AP News, the factory will be built on 2,100 acres near Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, making it the company's largest auto assembly plant. The plant will be approximately 4 million square feet and has already begun construction. View full entry
The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts has announced its slate of 2020 Grants to Individuals, a set of 52 awards totaling $320,800 in funding for research endeavors that highlight a multiplicity of architectural, urban, and social perspectives. As in years... View full entry
Autodesk has issued a public statement following the publication of an open letter signed by a constellation of BIM-forward architecture firms decrying the lack of development and rising costs of using Autodesk Revit. Earlier this week, firms that include Zaha Hadid Architects, Grimshaw, Rogers... View full entry
Visual journalists are always searching for new technologies to help them capture more detail and get the news out faster. But they’ve operated within the constraints of a camera lens, a two-hundred-year-old technology that gives readers a single, 2D representation of an event.
What if we could break free of the rectangle and let readers experience a setting the same way the journalist did? Instead of just looking at a photo of a space, what if we could move through it?
— The New York Times
The New York Times shares its research using photogrammetry for journalistic purposes. Dovetailing on the sophisticated and exacting approaches employed by investigative groups like Forensic Architecture to reconstruct contested and often tragic events, the NYT team instead harnesses the power of... View full entry
A design and construction team led by New York City-based architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro has completed work on the United States Olympic and Paralympic Museum (USOPM) in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The 60,000-square-foot museum complex is designed with accessibility at its... View full entry
A UCLA research team led by Gaurav Sant, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and of material science and engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, has received a two-year, $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. The award supports the development of a... View full entry
Japanese contractor Obayashi has started to build a dam almost entirely with robots, addressing the industry's labor shortage and aging workforce.
The site of the trial project is a concrete dam in Mie Prefecture, on the southeast coast of Japan's main island. The 84-meter-high structure is slated for completion in March 2023.
— Nikkei Asian Review
According to Nikkei, Obayashi has developed automated equipment to stack concrete layers to form the 334-meter-wide dam with virtually every process for constructing the dam involving some form of automation. Those process include the initial work of establishing the foundation... View full entry
