Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
The Android-only Wallabot device is apparently designed to help you avoid sawing through a waterline or prematurely snipping an electrical wire by virtue of showing you what lurks beneath your walls before you begin working. The device, which is demonstrated via video below, is paired with your... View full entry
[W]hile only the skeleton of the six-level structure [...] has been completed so far, there are already some elements that set The Shed apart. The most obvious of these is a telescoping shell on wheels that serves as both a façade for the gallery spaces and a flexible canopy that can be extended to enclose a public plaza [...]“This project is bone and muscle and there's no fat,” said the architect Elizabeth Diller — The Art Newspaper
A look at the latest construction developments of the Hudson Yards' “The Shed” arts and culture center, which began late last year and is due for a 2019 opening. View full entry
Migrants building a state-of-the-art stadium for the 2022 football World Cup in Qatar are abused and exploited – while FIFA makes huge profits. — Amnesty International
As previously covered in Archinect news, many migrant workers in Qatar face abuse and exploitation, forced labor or even death.A recent report from Amnesty International reveals new numbers — over 90% of Qatar's workforce, an estimated 1.7 million people, are migrant workers coming from... View full entry
Completion of the world’s new tallest tower, Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia, has been pushed back to 2019, its developer said yesterday.
Formerly known as Kingdom Tower, the structure is to reach more than a kilometre in height, which means it will surpass Dubai’s Burj Khalifa.
Construction began in April 2014, and was to have finished in 2018. [...]
“The project was delayed... but it’ll open (in) 2019,” Prince Alwaleed said during a media visit to the site, reports AFP.
— globalconstructionreview.com
"Saudi Binladin Group has been hit by a fall in work brought by lower Saudi public spending following the collapse in oil revenues," GCR reports. "Last year workers in Mecca burned buses in protest over unpaid wages amid reports of mass lay-offs." View full entry
The New York Construction Alliance is urging City Council to consider mandatory drug and alcohol testing on all New York City construction sites. NYCA president Kenneth Thomas recently made the following statement:“New York Construction Alliance (NYCA) is committed to worksite safety and our... View full entry
[The] Digital Construction Platform (DCP) [is] a four-ton solar powered robot arm on tank tracks. And yet, it’s a working proof-of-concept that a machine can build a lot like a tree does, sourcing local energy and adapting to local conditions to construct a building out of local materials–anything ranging from dirt, to ice, to moon dust...The tip of the arm is fit with a nozzle that can mix and spray mud, foam, or concrete–basically any viscous building material you could imagine. — FastCo.Design
Designed by the MIT Mediated Matter group, the DCP robot is an “experimental enabling technology for large-scale digital manufacturing” that has shown impressive results in printing with various media, including light printing, excavation, welded-chain construction, and additive... View full entry
The future of U.S. homebuilding depends on more people like Cyndicy Yarborough, a 26-year-old former Wal-Mart clerk with no background in construction. — Bloomberg
In modular construction plants across the nation, robots are putting together lengths of wall, floor and roof elements in panel form that are then shipped to construction sites to help speed up the onsite erection process. In the factories where this assembly takes place, a new breed of worker is... View full entry
Britain’s largest architectural firm, Foster + Partners, plans to lay off nearly 100 people, and blamed the uncertainty around construction projects caused by last summer’s Brexit vote.
The company, whose London projects have included the Millennium Bridge, the Great Hall redevelopment at the British Museum and the Gherkin tower, said the cuts would mainly affect staff at its headquarters in Battersea, south-west London.
— The Guardian
As we discussed at the Witte, the EPA’s “Energy Star,” indoor air quality, and materials safety programs directly support the design and construction industry each and every day.
The proposed EPA budget eliminates funding for these programs and will severely impact the ability of engineers and architects to meet client demands, fulfill our contractual obligations, and carry out the duties of our licensure to protect the public.
— Letter from David Lake via The Rivard Report
In response to a letter in which Texan Republican Congressman Lamar Smith told David Lake that he gets all of his news from a "biased liberal media," Lake not only kindly (and eloquently) rebutted this inaccuracy, but also encouraged the Congressman not to defund the EPA if he still wants to live... View full entry
It's already that time of year when the American Institute of Steel Construction reveals the latest winning projects of their Innovative Design in Engineering and Architecture with Structural Steel awards...Out of nearly 100 submissions from firms across the country, 13 winners received National and Merit Awards. The judging panel evaluated each submission's use of structural steel through multiple architectural and structural engineering elements. — Bustler
Some of this year's winning projects are:Presidential Award of Excellence in Engineering: Four World Trade Center, New York.Submitted by: Leslie E. Robertson Associates, New YorkPhoto credit: Fadi Asmar.National Award: Samsung Americas Headquarters (Device Solutions), San Jose, Calif.Submitted by... View full entry
The prospect of Brexit choking off the supply of EU workers is reshaping Britain's homebuilding industry, with big companies increasingly looking to factory-manufacture houses in sections that can be slotted together on-site with minimal labour.
Many of Britain's leading housebuilders, including Berkeley, Taylor Wimpey, Persimmon and Your Housing, told Reuters they were either planning new developments of prefabricated homes or considering doing so.
— Reuters
"You can almost feel the fear among the contractors and housebuilders where they've been surviving on labor from outside the country," says Mark Stevenson, a managing director of construction supplier Kingspan. "We're being pulled in a direction that customers want us to go in, from more work... View full entry
One of the most vexing features was the doorways, which Apple wanted to be perfectly flat, with no threshold. The construction team pushed back, but Apple held firm. The rationale? If engineers had to adjust their gait while entering the building, they risked distraction from their work, according to a former construction manager.
“We spent months trying not to do that because that’s time, money and stuff that’s never been done before,” the former construction manager said.
— Reuters
Although detail-obsessed architects can often find working with broad-strokes contractors to be challenging, there's one group of designers with perhaps even more rigorous attention to detail: the team at Apple. According to this article in Reuters, the actual building of the "spaceship" Apple... View full entry
Unemployed? Well, you shouldn't be: according to the AIA Consensus Construction Forecast, non-residential building projects are predicted to be strong throughout 2017, which means that design talent is currently in high demand. As AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker explains in a press release... View full entry
After winning the competition to design the U.S. Embassy in Beirut several years ago, Morphosis Architects has had some additional good news from the State Department: a construction contract has officially been awarded for the project, which sets the timetable for completion a little over six... View full entry
Construction expert BAM has been chosen to partner with British Antarctic Survey (BAS) to modernise UK Antarctic and other research facilities, enabling British scientists to continue delivering world class research into some of the most important issues facing our planet. [...]
Commissioned by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), this long-term UK partnership will last between 7-10 years and is worth an estimated £100m.
— British Antarctic Survey
Construction near the South Pole comes with its own set of challenges which the winning bidder, BAM International, along with its UK arm, BAM Nuttall, promises to master with years of expertise in working in remote parts of the world. The British Antarctic Survey's announcement... View full entry
