Hippie modernism focused not on rigorous form but rather on a kind of socially inspired bricolage. Hippie modernism has been not only misunderstood but also underestimated. Buckminster Fuller’s concept of a ‘design science revolution’ inspired the hippie bricoleurs to shoulder their generation’s emerging notion of environmental stewardship. — PLACES JOURNAL
Greg Castillo pens a great article about one of the most overlooked and often dismissed role of hippies in what we have today greedily claimed by the millenials and known as "environmental movement."“Hippie Modernism” is published in coordination with the Walker Art Center... View full entry
Choosing building materials is a delicate balance of factors – looks, quality, price, environmental impact and sustainability all contribute to the success and overall value of the product. When data about building materials are illegible or biased, the construction process can become convoluted... View full entry
When Airbnb put up ads suggesting various ways San Francisco could use the company’s tax payments, it was undoubtedly aiming to drum up good will.
“Dear Parking Enforcement,” one of the ads read, “Please use the $12 million in hotel taxes to feed all expired parking meters. Love, Airbnb.”
[...]
But instead of good will, the flippant tone of the ads, which went up on billboards and bus stops around the city on Wednesday, unleashed a torrent of sarcasm and anger on social media.
— NY Times
Last week, a deluge of anger and annoyance rained down on Airbnb after their new ad campaign popped up around San Francisco. Billboards plastered with phrases suggesting ways various government agencies could better use the roughly $1 million in taxes per month generated by the company were... View full entry
Zurich-based architects and roboticists have created the In-situ Fabricator, an autonomous construction robot capable of laying bricks into pre-programmed structures. Designers at the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) Digital Fabrication laboratory believe a future generation of the robot could be used widely on building sites. — Reuters
According to Mathias Kohler of ETH Zurich, "The benefit from an architectural point of view is that you can really design the construction directly, so you can plan for how it is built instead of designing your plan and then that plan afterwards being converted on the construction site. So it... View full entry
This post is brought to you by BQE ArchiOffice. Are you an architect who always had that special entrepreneurial drive? Were you mentored by another successful architect or by a friend or family member who was successful in their own business endeavor and aspired to be like them? Perhaps you were... View full entry
The corporate shift toward iPads has occurred rapidly over the past year, thanks in part to Apple's high profile global partnership with IBM. Major design firms that already use Graphisoft ArchiCAD have also been quick to adopt iPads to make use of BIMx Docs, a mobile companion app.
Apple has specifically profiled Daiwa House Industry, Japan's largest homebuilder, as a major enterprise iPad adopter, detailing how the company uses iPads and custom iOS apps for everything...
— appleinsider.com
More news from Apple:Apple's next, HOK-designed Silicon Valley spaceship revealedApple announces new iPad Pro aimed at creative professionalsConstruction update: More (unofficial) drone footage of Apple's spaceship campusWhy Steve Jobs Obsessed About Office Design (And, Yes, Bathroom Locations) View full entry
Despite its economy of presentation – just text and video, nothing flashy or interactive – the installation #mythomaniaS at the Chicago Architecture Biennial offers a density of thought at once alluring and abstruse. In this, it well conveys the concerns and formal strategies of its slippery... View full entry
Cities are everywhere. Billions of us live in them, and many of us think we could do a better job than the planners. But for the past 26 years dating back to the original SimCity, we've mostly been proving that idea false. [...]
And now, here, I'm going to take you on a whirlwind tour through the history of the city-building genre—from its antecedents to the hot new thing.
— arstechnica.com
Related on Archinect:The issue of homelessness in SimCityHow video game engines may influence the future of architecture (and everything else)Three guiding principles for a fine fake metropolis View full entry
Kinetic Blocks works by feeding spatial information read by a Microsoft Kinect into the display, allowing it to respond to physical objects.
However, where the inFORM could already manipulate objects in real time, the new project is faster and finely tuned to detect, orient, and stack blocks to make and even disassemble structures. The display can also be programmed to build structures stored in memory, or interact with special kinematic blocks that allow the pins to interact with other objects
— theverge.com
Watch the video below to see the Kinetic Blocks in action:More news from MIT:Cutting across the Chicago Architecture Biennial: "Rock Print" from ETH Zürich and MITMIT presents 3D printer that can print 10 materials simultaneously without breaking the bankMIT's "Placelet" sensors technologize... View full entry
Living off the land is different when the land is 140 million miles away, so NASA is looking for innovative ideas to use in situ (in place) Martian resources to help establish a human presence on the Red Planet. — NASA
After NASA announced strong evidence of the presence of liquid water on Mars, efforts to bring Earthlings to the red planet seems to be picking up steam. Elon Musk is talking about nuking its poles and design competitions, like the 3-D Printed Habitat Challenge, are increasingly looking at... View full entry
A research team from Oak Ridge National Laboratory's (ORNL) Department of Energy has created a new model for how we can connect the way we power our homes and vehicles. Dubbed AMIE... the platform features special technology that allows a bi-directional flow of energy between a dwelling and a vehicle. In other words, the house can fuel the car and the car can fuel the house. What's more, ORNL used 3D printing technology to build the dwelling and the vehicle... — Gizmag
AMIE, or Additive Manufacturing Integrated Energy, is a hybrid of different futuristic technologies, mashed together into a single platform. First, both the house and the vehicle were 3D printed.The former, a single-room structure, was designed in collaboration with Skidmore, Owings and Merril and... View full entry
This post is brought to you by GKD Metal Fabrics. In the ever-growing multitude of green building products available in today’s market, one material that doesn’t always come straight to mind is stainless steel. But this often overlooked material holds a wealth of sustainability benefits that... View full entry
Time is running out to get your ticket to the 2015 Core77 Conference, DESIGNING HERE/NOW, taking place this October 22nd - 24th in Downtown Los Angeles. It's a full day of exploring the spaces between design disciplines where today's most impactful work is taking place. You don't want to miss... View full entry
Milton Keynes is currently the host city for a set of driverless car trials funded indirectly by the U.K. government — the most ambitious testing yet staged in the world.
If all goes as planned, by 2018, Milton Keynes’ downtown will be served by an on-demand, publicly run system of 30 to 40 driverless two-seater pod cars, which will allow residents to travel between any two points in the city’s downtown without navigating or reacting to obstacles themselves.
— nextcity.org
For a glimpse of the LUTZ Pathfinder autonomous vehicles in action, check out the video below: View full entry
Rock Print, one of the most technologically-impressive installations at the Chicago Architecture Biennial, is the collaborative project of Gramazio Kohler Research of ETH Zürich and MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab. A towering stone assemblage put together by robots and secured with nothing more than... View full entry
