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A team of researchers from Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia are working on another solution: A swarm of tiny robots that could cover the construction site of the future, quickly and cheaply building greener buildings of any size. [...]
"The robots can work simultaneously while performing different tasks, and having a fixed size they can create objects of virtually any scale, as far as material properties permit”
— fastcoexist.com
Check out the Minibuilders in action below: View full entry
The fourth cycle of the Holcim Awards has appointed its international expert jury members, who will take on the big task of selecting this cycle's winners of the prestigious global competition, which has a total cash prize of US$2 million...More than 6,000 submissions from 152 countries were sent to this year's call for entries. Later this year, regional winners will be selected based on their team's entry addresses the competition's target issues regarding sustainable construction. — bustler.net
The jury members are:Mohsen Mostafavi (head), Dean of the Graduate School of Design (GSD), Harvard University (USA)Marc Angélil, Senior Dean, Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich (Switzerland)Alejandro Aravena, Executive Director, Elemental (Chile)Maria Atkinson, Founding CEO, Green Building... View full entry
The flagship museum of the billionaire financier and art collector Eli Broad, still under construction, has filed a $19.8 million lawsuit against a German company for what it describes as delays in fabricating the building blocks for its unusual latticed facade. — nytimes.com
Construction spending posted modest gains in April, driven by an uptick in home building and government construction that lifted total activity to the highest level since March 2009.
Spending rose 0.2 percent in April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $953.5 billion [...].
— nytimes.com
Tokyo’s extreme housing production and resulting market is a product of Japan’s uniquely liberal zoning rules. Taken along with its dense network of profitable, private railways, Tokyo is the closest thing this planet has to a city that has completely surrendered itself to market forces. And its construction numbers show it. — nextcity.org
At a hard-hat tour of the Whitney’s Renzo Piano-designed building in downtown Manhattan earlier this month, it was announced that the institution plans to extend a year of museum membership to the project’s construction workers. — hyperallergic.com
Lewis Mumford wrote that, in a city, “time becomes visible.” Not, it would appear, in Raleigh, North Carolina, where a city board has just decided that a rather discreet and understated modern house might need to be torn down because it damages the ambience of a historic district, which is to say it destroys the illusion that the neighborhood is a place in which time has stopped. — Vanity Fair
A battle of bureaucracy and "historic preservation" is playing out in a Raleigh, NC neighborhood. Louis Cherry, FAIA, is building his own home in the Oakwood neighborhood of Raleigh. After having received approval for his design by relevant city agencies, including the Raleigh Historic Development... View full entry
Mark your calendars! Some popular architects will be speaking in the upcoming "Innovators" talk series at the Museum of the City of New York, starting tomorrow May 6 at 6:30 p.m...
Accompanying the current "Palaces for the People" exhibition, each talk will explore the influence of the Guastavino Company, led by a Catalan father-son team whose architecture, construction, and design practices helped shape NYC's built landscape.
— bustler.net
Below is the panelist line-up:May 6 - Innovators: Building Design and Construction: Guy Nordensen (Guy Nordenson Associates); Valentine Lehr (Lehr Consultants International); Jill Lerner and Marianne Kwok (Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates); and Corie Sharples (Shop Architects)May 14 - Innovators with... View full entry
Inside a warehouse at the Brooklyn Navy Yard steel beams and flat metal sheeting rest atop a workbench. A diagram–which looks an awful lot like IKEA furniture assembly instructions–spells out where each beam and metal screw belongs. [...]
The metal may not look like much yet, but it’s on its way to becoming part of the world’s tallest modular residential high-rise. [...]
“This is bringing the best of manufacturing and construction together.”
— forbes.com
Construction has been underway for 10 Design's Zhongxun Times in recent months in the historic city of Chongqing, China. Commissioned by the ZhongXun Group, the mixed-use office and retail development is phase one of the Danzishi Central Business District, which 10 Design masterplanned.Corporate... View full entry
Some pretty lackluster news from the housing market today.
Construction spending rose a measly .1% in February. Part of that was because of the wild weather we saw this winter, but economists say that only accounts for part of the lacklusterness. It seems we’re not building or buying homes like we used to. Pending home sales fell in February to their lowest level in more than 2 years. The housing market made big gains last year, but so far 2014 isn’t looking so hot.
— marketplace.org
If liberal cultural and educational institutions are to operate with any integrity in that environment, they must insist on a change of the rules: abolish the recruitment debt system, pay a living wage, allow workers to change employers at will and legalize the right to collective bargaining. Otherwise, their gulf paymasters will go on cherry-picking from the globalization menu [...] while spurning the social contract that protects basic human rights. — nytimes.com
Previously View full entry
Caissons are a technology borrowed from bridge building, and they are what makes this project possible. The engineers will drill them anywhere from 40 to 80 feet into the Manhattan schist (the dense, metamorphic bedrock that supports the city’s soaring skyline). The caissons are meticulously arranged in the narrow spaces between the tracks. Above, the they will connect to deep-girdle trusses – some up to 8 stories tall – that control and redirect the towering weight overhead. Finally, the slab. — wired.com
Great cities don’t rest on the laurels of their great public spaces. They make them greater. That’s what Chicago is doing here, despite the objections of naysayers who argued during the recession that the project was an unnecessary and unaffordable extravagance.
But recessions come and go. We only cheat ourselves if we use downturns as an excuse to lower our sights and not build a better future. Now the future and better times are here.
— chicagotribune.com
Cranes that have helped to build the Shanghai Tower, China's tallest building and the world's second tallest, are seen being dismantled. — telegraph.co.uk