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In light of the upcoming prestigious ICON Magazine Awards 2013 taking place on Dec. 5 at the Oval Space in East London, we're excited to feature industrial design studio RoboFold, who is one of this year's "Emerging Design Studio" nominees.
Before RoboFold's establishment in 2007 at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London, Gregory Epp — who was a student there — spent more than a decade researching curved folding techniques.
— bustler.net
“Arum” Sculpture by Zaha Hadid Architects. Image: Matthias Urschler. “Infinity” Sculpture by Stathis Lagoudakis. Image: Tracy Woodford. View full entry
[...] London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, who yesterday announced that almost all ticket offices on the London Underground transport network would close by 2015 [...]. There are 268 ticket offices on the network in total, and around 260 are set to close [...] Ecommerce giant Amazon is reportedly in talks with Transport for London to use the closed ticket offices as “drop off” points for deliveries. — techcrunch.com
It makes plenty of sense for Amazon to be eyeing up prime Tube real-estate — which could enable it to build out a whole conveniently-sited network of its delivery Lockers in the U.K. Capital — giving London’s commuters a handy stop-off point to get their goods. View full entry
The Spacemaker VR by Digital Physical is a virtual reality software system that can add some new perspective to the entire design process. The Spacemaker lets designers export their 3D files and test out their creations, even during the design process. The software also includes customizable... View full entry
The New Museum will be opening an incubator for art, technology, and design next summer in the institution's adjacent building at 231 Bowery in New York. SO-IL architects in collaboration with Gensler will design the new 11,000 sq.foot facility, which will be located inside a 19th-century... View full entry
We typically see photovoltaic panels up on roofs, as they're broad, open surfaces that receive a lot of sunlight. You know what else spends a lot of time in the scorching sun, though? Sidewalks. With that in mind, a team at Washington DC's The George Washington University has created what is claimed to be "the first walkable solar-paneled pathway in the world." — Gizmag
But can my car drive on it? Built by Studio39 Landscape Architecture, the solar-sidewalk is installed on GWU's Virginia Science and Technology Campus. View full entry
Every year, London's Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA) hosts collaborative workshops that challenge an international group of student participants at different levels of architectural experience [...].
The AA DLAB VIsiting School 2013 marked its completion with the recent installment of its final prototype, "Light Forest." This year's workshop took place at AA London and AA Hooke Park from July 22-Aug.4.
— bustler.net
You can check out previously featured AA DLAB projects here and here. View full entry
Mark your calendar for the upcoming ACADIA 2013: Adaptive Architecture conference that will be held at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada on Oct. 24-26.
Now in its 36th year, the international conference will present an array of current research and creative design happening in the ACADIA community, an international group of digital designers and researchers dedicated to supporting critical research in computational design.
— bustler.net
Like any other technological device currently out there, newer 3-D printing machines aim to out-do the competition and take things to the next level. Enter Mebotics LLC, a group of four friends who spent the past year building the Microfactory. Becoming known as "the world's first Machine Shop in... View full entry
Given current growth trends, the world's population is expected to reach 9 billion people by midcentury. That also means a quadrupling in the number of cars to 4 billion by 2050 -- and that, said Ford, is a recipe for global gridlock that he argues will become "a human rights issue, not just an inconvenience."
For Ford [...] the only answer is to create a future where pedestrians, bicycles, and cars become part of a connected network.
— CNET
Arki is an Augmented Reality platform for real-time visualisation of architectural models. By incorporating AR technology within the architectural design process, ARki is able to visualise 3d models for both design and presentation purposes, helping to create an immersive visualisation technique with multiple layers of interactivity. ARki can be deployed on any ios/ android device which allows the user to explore 3d data with an added level of navigational freedom. — darfdesign.com
The breakthrough not only allows an object made up of many different materials to be printed, but also lets the user change the look and feel of a single material used to print an object. It's possible to print an object with hard and compressible sections out of a single material, even if the raw material isn't flexible in itself. — Gizmag
Now you can 3D print a single object with multiple materials and varying densities, thanks to MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL). Through an adapted software called Spec2Fab, the designer can specify precisely which materials are to be used in each part of the printed... View full entry
Elon Musk's Hyperloop announcement resulted in quite a bit of skepticism. We'd like to think that has less to do with the feasibility of Musk's concept and more to do with the massive mass transit failures of the past.
And there have been some doozies.
— wired.com
Related: L.A. to S.F. in 30 Minutes: Tesla's Hyperloop Would Make CA's High-Speed Rail Blush View full entry
How do you fancy living in a city with which you can interact? A city that acts more like a living organism, a city that can respond to your needs. [...]
But how do we get to this smarter future. Who will be monitoring and controlling the sensors that will increasingly be on every building, lamp-post and pipe in the city?
And is it a future we even want?
— bbc.co.uk
Plugging in an electric vehicle is, in some cases, the equivalent of adding three houses to the grid. That has utilities in California—where the largest number of electric vehicles are sold—scrambling to upgrade the grid to avoid power outages. — technologyreview.com
What 4D printing offers is the opportunity for objects to change, to adapt to their environment, to respond.
Earlier this year, Skylar Tibbits, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Self-Assembly Lab, created a bit of a stir with his talk on 4D printing.
“We are looking at the ability to program physical and biological materials to change shape, change properties and even compute outside of silicon-based matter,” Mr. Tibbits told the TED conference in February.
— blogs.wsj.com