With the new mayor focusing our attention on smart development and social equality, 2016 will be a banner year for the London Festival of Architecture. Election watchers will be familiar with many of this year’s hot topics: community spaces, social housing, docklands renewal. But considering the theme this year is ‘community’, there will be something for every tribe of Londoner. Out of 300 events, we’ve picked the 10 must-sees. — thespaces.com
See related news here: This week's picks for London architecture and design events London's Natural History Museum to create outdoor exhibition spaces Zaha Hadid's repertoire is a stunning display in Venice's Palazzo Franchetti View full entry
Liverpool's Riba North will have conference facilities and a gallery "at its heart", a spokeswoman said.
It will open in August with an exhibition of designs for Liverpool that were never built.
The centre, which will be housed in the Broadway Malyan-designed Mann Island on the city's waterfront, "will offer a magnificent opportunity to display Riba's historic collections, telling hundreds of years of the UK's extraordinary architectural history", Duncan said.
— bbc.com
More UK news here:Edinburgh's maker-architects: a visit to GRASLondon's Natural History Museum to create outdoor exhibition spacesBrighton's Embassy Court by Wells Coates featured in new film View full entry
[Airbnb] says it will spend the next several months reviewing how hosts and guests interact on the site and what it could do to ensure users are treated more fairly. [...]
"The bottom line is that the design of platforms dictates the decisions that people make on them. Even if there’s implicit bias, [Airbnb has] an enormous amount of ability to change the extent of discrimination on the platform."
— washingtonpost.com
For more on the controversial P2P renting service:Airbnb invests in a blockchain futureYou may have Airbnb to thank for that low hotel rateAirbnb intentionally misconstrued data to "garner good press", according to new reportAirbnb rentals cut deep into San Francisco housing stock, report... View full entry
A Labour MP has formally asked the government’s independent spending watchdog to investigate how the trust behind London’s proposed garden bridge has spent almost two-thirds of the government funding for the project before construction has begun.
“We’ve had millions of pounds of public money spent and we have no idea what it’s actually been spent on, and it was spent before it even got full planning permission,” Hoey said.
— theguardian.com
Although Khan originally showed reservations, it was revealed last week that he would back the project pertaining to certain conditions. Read more on the controversial project here:Why are Heatherwick's proposals succeeding in New York but tanking in London?Sadiq Khan investigates troublesome... View full entry
London-based manufacturer Sto has collaborated with architecture and design practice Sam Jacob Studio to create a oversized replica of an ordinary garden shed by 3D scanning its facade and reproducing it using a product called Verolith. The oversized shed is covered in Verolith panels, a chalky... View full entry
Hyper-Reality is a concept film by Keiichi Matsuda. It presents a provocative and kaleidoscopic new vision of the future, where physical and virtual realities have merged, and the city is saturated in media. — hyper-reality.co
"Our physical and virtual realities are becoming increasingly intertwined. Technologies such as VR, augmented reality, wearables, and the internet of things are pointing to a world where technology will envelop every aspect of our lives. It will be the glue between every interaction and... View full entry
A very large 3D printer measuring 20 x 120 x 40 ft (6 x 36 x 12 m) did most of the work, printing the building by extruding a cement mixture layer by layer, in a similar method by which WinSun's 3D-printed homes were made (WinSun is involved in this project too). There were also some additional smaller mobile 3D-printers used too, however.
It took 17 days to print the basic building, but it then required finishing both internally and externally.
— Gizmag
How many people does it take to 3D print an office? Well, according to Arabian Business, "The labour involved in the printing process included one staff to monitor the function of the printer, in addition to a group of seven people to install the building components on site as well as a team of... View full entry
“What we’re seeing right now is what I saw in 1996,” said Mr. Lloyd, a former president of sales and development at Cisco. “We all had I.P. routers and everything was done a certain way. At Cisco, we said, ‘You can carry that over the Internet,’ and everyone said, ‘No.’ But those high-speed networks made the Internet possible.” Hyperloop, he said, “will do to the physical world what the Internet did to the digital one.” — Allison Arieff – nytimes.com
Allison Arieff (editorial director at SPUR and former Dry Futures judge) has some questions for Hyperloop One (formerly Hyperloop Technologies) after a propulsion test demonstration in the Nevada desert. While the company has managed remarkably fast developments in its tube technology for such... View full entry
Some people think VR is a second class reality. I am not sure of that — aeon.com
There are some convincing points here by Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist David Chalmers. Just imagine how the humanities future is being shaped by the fast developing technologies. View full entry
It’s that time of year when London's design district opens its doors to the public for Clerkenwell Design Week and shows the rest of London and the design industry what it has to offer. An impressive showcase of distinct and accomplished talent the three-day event spans; furniture and product... View full entry
Thirty-five partners have achieved their Challenge energy or water savings goals, all ahead of schedule...These partners accomplished their energy, water and financing goals through a combination of innovative solutions and proven strategies, which are openly exchanged through the Better Buildings Solution Center website. — U.S. DOE
The latest data from U.S. DOE Better Buildings program shows that partners have saved more than $1.3 billion on energy costs. A new infographic explains how Better Buildings works and why it’s important. View full entry
Set to open on 17 June, the Tate Modern Switch House – named after the part of the power station that the new galleries occupy – expands the museum by 60% to accommodate the surging numbers of visitors, which reached 5.7 million last year, well over double the number the building was designed to cope with when it opened in 2000. But the arresting brick ziggurat is also a physical symbol of the effect the Tate has had on its surroundings. — theguardian.com
Read more relating article here:Future sustainable skyscrapers will be made of...wood?Fabricated robot installation at the V&A unveiled as part of their first Engineering SeasonHerzog and de Meuron in conversation with Rowan Moore View full entry
Benoy has been shortlisted along with three other British design firms including HOK, Grimshaw and Zaha Hadid to create a a new concept for the country's global gateway. The architects were asked by Heathrow to consider the purpose and potential of an airport with the resulting designs... View full entry
Philosopher Jason Millar claims to have originated the idea of the ethically challenged self-driving car in a 2014 paper on robotics...
In the “The Tunnel Problem,” Millar’s driverless car (let’s call her Porsche again) is fast approaching a narrow tunnel, the entrance of which is blocked by a child who has fallen in the roadway. The car can either kill the kid or hit the wall of the tunnel, killing the driver (who is really just a passenger).
— Daniel Albert | N+1
"Millar insists programmers need to build such scenarios into their code. I imagine them writing something like this:if (kid_in_tunnel > 16) { kill kid_in_tunnel;lp “We are sorry for your loss.”;} else { kill ass_in_Porsche;lp “Serves you right... View full entry
If the founders of a new face recognition app get their way, anonymity in public could soon be a thing of the past. FindFace, launched two months ago and currently taking Russia by storm, allows users to photograph people in a crowd and work out their identities, with 70% reliability.
It works by comparing photographs to profile pictures on Vkontakte, a social network popular in Russia and the former Soviet Union, with more than 200 million accounts.
— the Guardian
"In future, the designers imagine a world where people walking past you on the street could find your social network profile by sneaking a photograph of you, and shops, advertisers and the police could pick your face out of crowds and track you down via social networks."For related content:France... View full entry
