Today you can have a fully connected home complete with sensors to monitor temperature, humidity, air quality, energy usage, and more, and check in on almost any appliance from anywhere in the world with just a smartphone. But even with all of the various connected appliances, virtual assistants, and copious sensors that can be installed in a modern smart home, the “smart” side of things is still rather lacking. — The Verge

A team made up of researchers at Shizuoka University and other institutions is set to conduct an experiment in September for a project to develop a "space elevator" connecting Earth and a space station by cable -- attracting attention as a possible dream vehicle for space travel and cargo shipments in the future. — The Mainichi

The first building to win the RIBA Stirling Prize – Hodder Associates’ Centenary Building for the University of Salford – could be converted into a new primary school.

The plans for the currently empty 23-year-old building form part of 5plus Architects’ emerging 99ha development framework for the university’s existing campus and surrounding area. — Architects' Journal

A venture firm and a major taxi company began trials of passenger-carrying autonomous taxi services on Monday with an eye on launching the full service around 2020 when Tokyo hosts the Olympics and the Paralympics.

ZMP Inc., a Tokyo-based developer of autonomous driving technology, and Hinomaru Kotsu Co., said they are the first in the world to offer autonomous taxi services to fare-paying passengers in the test through Sept. 8. — Japan Times

Cut peat blocks were already being used for building houses thousands of years ago. Now, scientists at the University of Tartu have developed a material which could make it possible to print energy-efficient houses out of milled peat and oil shale ash using a 3D printer. — Research in Estonia

Facebook is doubling its presence in London by acquiring office space across two buildings in King's Cross.

The 600,000 square feet (56,000 square meters) of office space will be enough for more than 6,000 workstations. [...]

The expansion follows the 2017 opening of its site at Rathbone Place, which added 800 jobs and opened its first in-house incubator program for startup businesses. It also has a location on Brock Street. — CNET

Their cell generated a current stronger than any previously recorded from such a device, and worked as efficiently in dim light as in bright light.

This innovation could be a step toward wider adoption of solar power in places like British Columbia and parts of northern Europe where overcast skies are common. With further development, these solar cells—called “biogenic” because they are made of living organisms—could become as efficient as the synthetic cells used in conventional solar panels. — University of British Columbia

MIT Media Lab’s Mediated Matter group has invented a new way to 3D print any object, regardless of how complex it is, with color and shape as detailed as a photograph. It’s the equivalent of traditional CMYK printing, but in 3D. The results are stunning. — fastcodesign.com

Taken as whimsical follies by the design press and broader culture, Amazon's architectural and logistical patents are altogether more sinister, signalling new, automated urban ambitions. [...]

While some of these patents could be marked as routine publicity stunts, lurking beneath Amazon’s bravado is an obsession with organisation and productivity: oriented towards abstract users, measured in data, and governed by algorithms. — Failed Architecture

A Crunchbase News analysis of residential-focused real estate startups uncovered a raft of companies with a shared and temporary housing focus that have raised funding in the past year or so.

This isn’t a U.S.-specific phenomenon. Funded shared and short-term housing startups are cropping up across the globe, from China to Europe to Southeast Asia. — TechCrunch

In order to demonstrate the capabilities of a new nanorobotic system, French scientists have built a "microhouse" that sits on the cleaved end of an optical fiber.

The diminutive home was built by a team from the Femto-ST Institute in Besançon, France, using the new μRobotex nanofactory system. That setup utilizes a robotically-controlled ion gun and a gas injection system, operating within a large vacuum chamber, to assemble microstructures on the tips of optical fibers with extreme accuracy. — New Atlas

I think we haven’t thought through the challenge of technology for city mobility. We are stuck with some 120-year-old ideas that the industry is desperately holding on to. I tell students: Whenever you hear the word “smart,” beware, because that is somebody who wants to sell as many millions as possible of some new gimmick. And he is not necessarily giving you a better quality of life. — CityLab

NEW YORK’S MUSEUM of Modern Art is under siege. Well, a virtual siege, at least. A group of renegade artists has co-opted the brightly-lit Jackson Pollock gallery on the museum’s fifth floor, turning it into their personal augmented reality playground. [...] those that have downloaded the MoMAR Gallery app on their smartphones, the impressionist's iconic paintings are merely markers—points of reference telling the app where to display the guerilla artists’ works. — Wired

The tinted world of tomorrow is coming, and airports—mini-cities of steel, concrete and lots and lots of glass—are interested. In a test last fall, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport outfitted one of its gates with a new type of “smart glass” that can adjust for sunlight exposure. The obvious point is to keep travelers from getting overheated—but the exercise also brought a more lucrative benefit. — Bloomberg

[...] iPhoto confused a human friend of mine – I’ll call him Mike – with a building called the Great Mosque of Cordoba. [...]

Rather than viewing this as a failure, I realized I had found a new insight: Just as people’s faces have features that can be recognized by algorithms, so do buildings. That began my effort to perform facial recognition on buildings – or, more formally, “architectural biometrics.” Buildings, like people, may just have biometric identities too. — The Conversation