The lobby of an Art Deco office building in Boston has been transformed into an immersice digital experience that reacts to users' movements. Unreal Engine, the gaming engine behind Fortnite, Playstation, and many other gaming products, powers the ESI Design-created interactive mural and uses... View full entry
Hudson Yards has received its share of mockery. Be it Archinect's April Fools' day joke, Vessel's Shawarma like appearance or the Luxury Real Estate Dildo Experience, there has been a fair share of criticism and poking fun of the new development. Well now, there is a Hudson... View full entry
Medics in Wuhan, the city of 11 million people where the virus originated, have described overcrowded hospitals and a shortage of test kits, protective gear, and other medical equipment.
To alleviate this pressure, city authorities last Friday announced plans to build a new hospital from scratch in just six days, to be used beginning February 3.
— Business Insider
Chinese officials are under increasing pressure to combat the spread of the deadly coronavirus which has already claimed the lives of at least 130 people and is quickly spreading around the world. The epidemic originated in Wuhan, the most populous city in Central China and home to more than... View full entry
Tech start-up Higharc aims to "reinvent home design for the digital age," reports the Financial Times. The company uses iterative design to create "custom" 3D models and plans. Algorithmic design isn't new to architecture, but it looks like Higharc seeks to do away with "expensive... View full entry
The legendary video game company, Atari has just announced a deal it's made with GSD Group, an innovation and strategy agency, and producer Napoleon Smith III, "to acquire the rights to build video game-themed Atari Hotels in the United States, with the first location breaking ground in Pheonix... View full entry
After years of playing third fiddle to solar and wind power, geothermal energy is poised to start growing again in California. [...]
The new plants will be the first geothermal facilities built in California in nearly a decade — potentially marking a long-awaited turning point for a technology that could play a critical role in the state’s transition to cleaner energy sources.
— Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times on California's efforts to increase, potentially double, the share geothermal energy contributes to the state's electricity mix by adding new plants. Traditionally, the much higher upfront cost of geothermal plants (compared to solar or wind farms of comparable capacity)... View full entry
Autodesk Innovator of the Year Amr Raafat has teamed with a robot software company to develop an autonomous laser scanning and layout planning robot that is being used on Windover Construction work sites.
The robot is able to move around on uneven surfaces to predetermined locations to scan indoor and outdoor spaces, as well as to measure and draw plans for walls and spaces that would need to be meticulously measured by a human...
— Construction Dive
This new development allows workers more time onsite for more essential tasks, absolving them of the tediousness that comes with measuring and documenting site conditions. According to Construction Dive, Raafat explained how laser scanning can take up to 16 minutes per space, which can be... View full entry
City Roads, an online tool developed by software engineer Andrei Kashcha, allows users to search any city and instantly receive back only the streets by pulling data from OpenStreetMap. Simply search, click, and enjoy the beauty of urban planning. You can print your city of choice on a mug... View full entry
The US has become terrible at building big things, and negligent in even maintaining our existing infrastructure. [...]
That all bodes terribly for our ability to grapple with the coming dangers of climate change, because it is fundamentally an infrastructure problem.
— MIT Technology Review
MIT Technology Review senior editor, James Temple, penned an urgent plea for a renewed, but sustainable, American public works boom that could significantly speed up the painfully slow infrastructure planning process in the face of rapidly changing climate conditions. "To prepare for the climate... View full entry
two-dimensional materials will be the linchpin of the internet of everything. They will be “painted” on bridges and form the sensors to watch for strain and cracks. They will cover windows with transparent layers that become visible only when information is displayed. And if his team’s radio wave-absorber succeeds, it will power those ever-present electronics. Increasingly, the future looks flat. — The New York Times
Amos Zeeberg of The New York Times takes a look at the wide world of super-thin materials, a growing class of substances that have the potential to reshape humanity's technological capabilities. The materials include graphene, an incredibly strong and conductive "2-D form of carbon"... View full entry
The University of Oregon (UO) College of Design in Eugene, Oregon is currently searching for a new dean. According to a job listing hosted by the Association for Collegiate Schools of Architecture, the 1,800-student college is home to 1,300 undergraduates and 500 graduate students and... View full entry
China’s largest property developer by sales Country Garden is planning to start mass production of construction robots next year to cut costs and raise efficiency, it said on Friday.
The group, which started investing in robotics research and development in 2018, said it aims to have at least one robot at each of its sites across the nation.
— Reuters
According to Reuters, Country Garden Holdings Co. Ltd. has signaled its intention to invest more than $2 billion in robotics each year for the next five years to boost automation in the company's construction, agriculture, restaurant, and property management businesses. To showcase its... View full entry
There is cross-laminated timber (CLT), which looks like inch-thick strips of heartwood arranged like a Jenga set to produce a block that is pretty much the definition of the word solid. Or glu-lam, used to make structural beams that are like extremely strong plywood, and LVL—laminated veneer lumber—which makes excellent heavy beams and had formed the skeleton of the apartment building. — National Geographic
Saul Elbein dives into the growing industry of mass timber and talks with architects, both abroad and in the U.S., that are already using the new materials to design buildings of today. Elbein also chats with those imaging cities of the future, full of "standardized, customizable, mid-rise... View full entry
“The bottom line is this: The way people get around, the way people live is going to change,” [Texas Governor Greg] Abbott said, according to the Rivard Report. “As a result, this generation of roads that [Texas Transportation Commission Chairman] Bruce Bugg is in charge of building is probably the last major buildout of roads we’ll have in the state of Texas, even considering the fact that Texas is the fastest-growing state in America.” — D Magazine
Might Texas finally end its long-running love affair with highway infrastructure? According to the state's Governor, Greg Abbot, it's a possibility. In a recent speech, Abbot, who is a Republican, expressed doubt that the state's current transportation regime can last much longer as the... View full entry
One Thousand Museum, first-and-only residential tower designed by the late Zaha Hadid in the Western Hemisphere, makes its debut in Miami's Museum Park this week. The residential tower stands prominently alongside neighboring condo towers and other notable Miami structures like the... View full entry