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Last year's devastating wildfires in California and Hawaii once again came into focus as part of a New York Times exposé on the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (I.B.H.S.)-led movement towards the “biggest overhaul of building standards in more than 30 years.” Burn... View full entry
Product standardisation—or the lack thereof—is a major obstacle to mass timber adoption, especially in the lower-rise and mid-rise “sweet spots.” It comes as Europe is miles ahead of North America (Asia-Pacific, Australia, and New Zealand) in developing mainstream mass timber systems. — Wood Central
“They [North America] have a mature market where woodworkers and integration shops work alongside billet producers to service the market,” Adrian Mitchell told the outlet. “It is not about whose panel size got designed by the engineer into a project from the start, giving that manufacturer... View full entry
Engineers at Princeton University have developed a new cement composite, inspired by the material found within certain shells, that is 17 times more crack-resistant than standard cement and 19 times more able to stretch and deform without breaking. The research team was led by Reza Moini, an... View full entry
A group of materials companies in Sweden has collaborated on a hybrid wall element with a lower carbon footprint than conventional concrete wall elements. The joint venture, comprising concrete element manufacturer Heidelberg Materials Preca and engineered timber manufacturer Metsä Wood, is... View full entry
New findings published in the journal Construction and Building Materials from a team of materials researchers working at the University of British Columbia Okanagan's School of Engineering have demonstrated the sustainable qualities of using wood fly ash by-products as alternatives to traditional... View full entry
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have published their study into how materials made from nanocellulose and algae can be used as sustainable architectural materials. The research, conducted in collaboration with the Wallenberg Wood Science Center, “shows how the abundant... View full entry
The latest Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) construction input price analysis for the month of December has registered a 0.6% decrease over November’s trend-reversing totals. Nonresidential construction input prices were down another 0.4%, with the commercial and multifamily sectors... View full entry
A team from Drexel University has published their research into a self-healing system for concrete. The team, operating in the University’s College of Engineering, embedded bacteria in their concrete system that, when activated by water, can repair cracks in the concrete. Named ‘BioFiber,’... View full entry
Wrapping up a year in the wake of the recently concluded COP28 UN climate summit that resulted in, well, mild levels of agreement on the role of fossil fuels, it is possible to sense a slightly increased urgency toward this most pressing planetary issue on a high-minded diplomatic level. As we're... View full entry
Repeated calls for the decarbonization of architecture are sometimes met with criticisms as to their lack of substance, and in some cases, practicality or overall feasibility, Canada's National Observer tells us. The only mycelium binders on the market are, for example, unsuitable to certain... View full entry
Researchers aiming to combat rising global temperatures have developed a new 'cooling glass' that can turn down the heat indoors without electricity by drawing on the cold depths of space. The new technology, a microporous glass coating, can lower the temperature of the material beneath it by 3.5 degrees Celsius at noon, and has the potential to reduce a mid-rise apartment building's yearly carbon emissions by 10 percent. — Science Daily
The technology was developed by a research team at the University of Maryland, led by Distinguished University Professor Liangbing Hu in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. The coating functions by reflecting up to 99% of solar radiation to prevent buildings from absorbing heat... View full entry
A new Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) analysis of statistics provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Producer Price Index data has shown a slight decline in construction input prices of 1.2% for the month of October. Per ABC’s analysis, Construction input prices are 1.1%... View full entry
Provencher_Roy has shared photos following the firm’s completion of a bridge reconstruction project in Nuns’ Island, Montreal. The new Darwin Bridges makeover represents the first instance of Ground Glass Pozzolan (GGP), a recycled glass product developed with researchers from the Université... View full entry
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) has debuted a new concrete alternative material as part of its participation in the fifth Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB 5), which is taking place now through February 11th at multiple locations citywide. The firm’s Bio-Blocks technology is being... View full entry
Construction input prices ticked up 1.5% in August, the first increase in six months, due to a surge in energy costs, according to a new Associated Builders and Contractors’ analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Producer Price Index data released Thursday. — Construction Dive
These readings come as a shock as the flattening of costs suggested that inflation was cooling. According to a separate analysis from the Associated General Contractors of America, a major increase in diesel fuel costs in August drove the overall increase in materials prices. The producer price... View full entry