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British construction tech start-up Automated Architecture (AUAR) is sending two of its pop-up, robotic micro-factories to the U.S. for the first time in a move to bring automated and affordable house building to North America. Founded in 2019, AUAR functions by licensing its technology to builders... View full entry
Last month, we reported on two stories that demonstrate the range of architectural start-ups emerging to address a lack of housing in the USA and further afield. One example came from established leaders in the industry, with Bjarke Ingels unveiling details of Nabr, his “people-first housing... View full entry
A New York-based construction robotics startup that makes prefabricated rebar cages for concrete structures has announced that it has secured $8 million in a Series A funding round. The round was led by Tribeca Venture Partners and featured Blackhorn Ventures, Point72 Ventures, New York... View full entry
Funding in US-based construction tech startups totals just $196.5 million across 44 deals halfway through 2019.
Still, $192.6 million across 44 deals is still significantly lower than the $1.274 billion raised by US-based construction startups in the first half of 2018.
— news.crunchbase.com
The bustling world of construction technology start-ups is off to a slow start in 2019, as mid-year funding statistics point to a marked drop in investment for these insurgent companies over 2018's blockbuster year, Crunchbase reports. Whether or not 2018's record investment, including Katerra's... View full entry
The co-living startup Starcity plans to build an 800-unit, 18-story “dorm for adults” to help affordably house Silicon Valley’s booming workforce. Dishotsky, the co-founder/CEO of the co-housing start-up Starcity, is now working to fill America’s housing-strapped cities with a scaled-up version of his childhood idyll. — CityLab
Said to be the an 18-story "dorm for adults" the co-living startup Starcity aims to "redefining the meaning of home." The co-founder and CEO Jon Dishotsky is an advocate for co-living due to his upbringing in suburban Palo Alto. If asked about his upbringing, Dishotsky will share the story of... View full entry
As Americans cram into ever-tighter urban living arrangements, a question has emerged: Isn’t there some better way to furnish a tiny apartment? Yes. The answer, of course, is robots.
Inside a model studio apartment at the Eugene, an 844-unit building on Manhattan’s West Side, sits a blocky, Swiss Army-knife-like unit that looks a little like two-sided armoire with lots of compartments. It’s called Ori. Ori runs on a track and can be activated by voice command...
— The New York Times
Companies like Ori and Bumblebee Spaces are testing out robotic furniture in major cities where living space is limited. The Ori system, currently testing robotically-furnished apartments in Manhattan, operates through voice command or your smartphone app moving the modular unit along a floor... View full entry
YCombinator, the Silicon Vallley start-up accelerator and investment firm behind Airbnb and Dropbox, announced its entrepreneurial reach into city-building this past summer, with the goal to develop "a city for humans" with reduced housing expenses and a simplified planning code.Some SV... View full entry
Y Combinator, the startup accelerator and investment firm that helped produce Airbnb, Dropbox, and Instacart, is embarking on a creation project arguably more ambitious than any company.
"We want to build cities," wrote Y Combinator partner Adora Cheung and President Sam Altman...the project aims to develop ways to reduce housing expenses by 90 percent and to develop a city code of laws simple enough to fit on 100 pages of text. Eventually the plan is to actually produce a prototype city.
— Bloomberg
"We’re not trying to build a utopia for techies," says Cheung, the project’s director and the former CEO of failed housecleaning startup Homejoy. "This is a city for humans."For more news from Silicon Valley, check out these links:Silicon Valley campuses at risk as sea levels riseSilicon... View full entry
Give employees all the tools they need to innovate, make space for a little fun, then watch the sparks fly. The truth about creativity, however, is considerably less convenient. Discomfort, and even a degree of hardship, are what drive creativity, not bean bag chairs and ping pong tables. [...]
if companies want to nurture creative employees, not only content ones, they must include challenges and even a dash of hardship in their bag of perks.
— latimes.com
Related posts from the serendipity machine news desk:Archinect's Lexicon: "Serendipity Machine"Will Zappos turn downtown Las Vegas into the next Silicon Valley?Do contemporary office designs upend work/life balance? View full entry
It’s this inevitable dichotomy between data and real life that will likely define [Google's] Sidewalk Labs...There’s a naivety to their worldview that might help to get things done inside a company but could prove a hurdle to progress in the public realm. Yes, the region does need more housing, but the politics of how, where, and when that housing is built are far more nuanced than Google can apparently handle. — psmag.com
The cloud of speculation surrounding Google as of late only grows bigger with the tech giant's recent launch of its independent start-up, Sidewalk Labs. Charging further into Google's real-world endeavors, the "urban innovation company" vies "to improve city life for everyone through the... View full entry
Late in 2011, [Zappos CEO] Hsieh became even more legendary by announcing almost larkishly that he’d be leading a $350 million effort to rejuvenate a blighted stretch of Las Vegas’ downtown […]
His plan was to spend much of his own personal fortune to transform this lifeless area about a mile north of the neon blitz of the Strip into an entrepreneurial tech nirvana. [...]
Doubters have no place in the ecosystem. Pragmatists stand little chance. A love of hyperbole prevails.
— Wired
While the projects had wildly different end products, they both had a similar starting point: focusing on how to ease people’s lives. And that is a central lesson at the school, which is pushing students to rethink the boundaries for many industries.
At the heart of the school’s courses is developing what David Kelley, one of the school’s founders, calls an empathy muscle.
— New York Times
