Noguchi heads rejoice! The archives of Japanese American artist Isamu Noguchi have been digitized and made available to the public via a online archive and portal. Hyperallergic reports that the Noguchi Museum in Queens, New York has made 60,000 archival items, including 28,000 photographs... View full entry
Construction software company HoloBuilder Inc. has announced a partnership with Boston Dynamics, maker of mobile robots, to develop SpotWalk, which the firm claims is a first-of-its-kind robotic document capture app for construction sites.
...the robot [can] walk around job sites autonomously and capture 360-degree images that record construction progress, thus creating digital, recordable data of the project over time.
— Construction Dive
According to Construction Dive, Hensel Phelps tested the new technology on a recent project and found its application to be efficient and time-saving. A spokesperson for the contractor said that the robot "removes a time-consuming step while providing accurate construction photos with a high... View full entry
How can we make stronger building materials? An experiment conducted by Rice University's Brown School of Engineering explores this limit by manipulating materials like plastic, metal, and concrete to match the strength of diamonds. 3D printed blocks made at Rice University. Image... View full entry
The Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture of Hong Kong and Shenzhen that opens this December is set to become "the first exhibition to use Facial Recognition and Artificial Intelligence on its own premises," according to biennale chief curator Carlo Ratti. The focus is created "in order... View full entry
Renewable energy initiatives like building new wind and solar farms have multiplied as a global push to reinforce sustainability initiatives has taken off in recent years. However, despite the benefits for these necessary renewable energy plans, pushback from residents, as well as local governing... View full entry
At the recent Greenbuild International Conference and Expo in Atlanta, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) unveiled its vision for the new LEED Positive initiative, a vision that embraces a series of subtle changes to the group's approach to building certification... View full entry
This is by far the busiest road in Dubai, the site of frequent, epic traffic jams that are infamous among commuters...But an ambitious new proposal would see a stretch of Sheikh Zayed Road transformed into an "urban living room" with fumes and congestion giving way to a green, pedestrianized oasis. — CNN
The project, titled X-Space was designed by architects Mouaz Abouzaid and Dima Faraj, and recently won the World Architecture Festival's (WAF) top prize in the Smart Cities category, reports CNN. The two-level project seeks to expand area for pedestrians while reducing area for... View full entry
Can Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) technology help industrial manufacturing facilities reduce their carbon footprints? A recent report by Vox shines a light on what had until recently, been considered a somewhat defunct solar energy generation approach. Concentrated Solar Power is harnessed by... View full entry
MIT will create a new college that combines AI, machine learning, and data science with other academic disciplines. It is the largest financial investment in AI by any US academic institution to date. — MIT Technology Review
MIT’s new artificial intelligence-focused Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing will "create 50 new faculty positions and numerous fellowships for graduate students," according to the MIT Technology Review. The school is set to debut in September 2020, first in existing buildings... View full entry
Elon Musk's tunneling company, The Boring Co. (TBC), will begin underground construction on a tunnel for a tram system at the Las Vegas Convention Center on Friday, Nov. 15.
The people mover project is contracted at $52.5 million and scheduled to be completed in January 2021, in time for the annual Consumer Electronics Show.
— Construction Dive
The company projects that the tunnel loop will move 4,400 passengers per hour. According to Construction Dive, aboveground work on stations and stops began last month, after TBC's boring machine was assembled on site. View full entry
During Dubai Design Week, architect and professor Dr. Georges Kachaamy presented an eye catching project that questions architecture's need for the ground. Through his project, "Rising Oases," Kachaamy proposes a future where individual buildings are no longer tied to their "daily restraints,"... View full entry
Bay View will soon become home to a new meeting and event space that focuses on virtual reality, for both work and play...Owners and brothers Ryan and Reid Spiering purchased the building two years ago with plans for a VR-related concept. Their initial interest was driven by a shared love for video games, but as architecture, engineering and construction professionals, they also saw opportunity for VR within the local market. — BizTimes
The two brothers built-out the 1,000-square-foot space that will house three separate VR areas. Each will have a "high-tech" headset, an overhead computer, and an HD screen, reports BizTimes. Rendering of meeting configuration. Ryan Spiering is a visualization and virtual reality specialist... View full entry
Tall buildings do more than just help shape skylines. The architects who design these buildings, for example, often strive to create the most "alluring" structures using sometimes mind-boggling structural feats. The corporations and developers who commission these towers, on the other hand, seek... View full entry
A Vinci-led consortium [...] completed civil engineering works on the high-spec building that will house the world’s largest fusion machine, called a “tokamak”, which scientists hope will start replicating the sun’s energy by the middle of the next decade. [...]
The 73-metre-high, 120-metre-wide structure required highly specific concretes. Teams developed about 10 formulations to shield staff and the environment from fusion-generated radiation.
— Global Construction Review
Building a tokamak machine to exploit fusion energy similar to our sun is no simple engineering feat: the building will house reactions that happen at extremely high temperatures, around 150 million degrees Celsius, fusing hydrogen nuclei when they reach the plasma state, thus releasing... View full entry
Living in a smart home neighborhood, the Fergusons experience both convenience and surveillance. And that's typical in Black Diamond, where Lennar Homes offers smart homes as part of a 4,800 unit development that includes other builders. This neighborhood isn't a one off. There are smart home developments in suburbs outside of cities such as Miami and San Francisco. Lennar is making Amazon tech standard on each of the 45,000 homes it builds this year. — NPR
Families in a Lennar Homes development in the Seattle suburb of Black Diamond are settling into their newly built and Amazon smart technology-equipped homes — some to their excitement, others fearing constant surveillance. "In this community, there are smart homes on one side of the street... View full entry
