Faraday Future’s future is looking bleaker.

After the electric car start-up failed to pay millions of dollars in bills, its contractor Monday halted work on Faraday’s $1-billion North Las Vegas, Nev., car factory. [...] The contractor is Aecom, the Los Angeles-based engineering giant. [...]

Faraday failed to pay $21 million due to Aecom in September and owed $25 million in October and $12 million in November, according to Aecom. — latimes.com

When production begins, SolarCity, already the leading installer of residential solar panels in the [U.S.] will become a vertically integrated manufacturer and provider...At a time when conventional silicon-based solar panels from China have never been cheaper, investing in a new type of solar technology is a risky undertaking. However, the potential benefits are huge. The new factory...could transform both SolarCity’s business...and the economics of residential solar power. — MIT Technology Review

"Robots hate litter," reads a health and safety sign. "Please don't give them any more reasons to overthrow mankind." It's also fair to say that naming your robots makes the whole process of constructing cars vaguely ridiculous. "Wolverine and Iceman lift the cars to tramline two," our tour guide informs us with the zeal of a true believer, adding, as he did after virtually every sentence, that this is 'kind of amazing'. — wired.co.uk

Rem Koolhaas/OMA will design The Factory, the proposed £110 million (approx. US$166.3 million) Manchester Arts Centre in England. Koolhaas won the commission ... over fellow starchitects including Zaha Hadid, Mecanoo, Grimshaw Architects, Rafael Viñoly, DS+R, and Haworth Tompkins. [...]

Named after the Manchester-based record label, The Factory is described as a cutting-edge, flexible cultural institution that ... will also be a major component in the cultural redevelopment of the city. — bustler.net

Musk had warned me that the scale of the place would be overwhelming. "It will blow your mind. You see it in person and then realize, Fuck, this is big."

He was right. It was impossible not to feel awestruck by the sprawling, 71-foot-tall structure stretched out, miragelike, before me as I drove into a shallow canyon. [...] When the Gigafactory is finished, it will be only slightly smaller than Boeing’s Everett, Washington, plant, which is the world’s largest building by volume. — fastcompany.com

Developers have released design plans for the housing element of the Moscow ZiL industrial zone redevelopment.

According to RBK Realty magazine, nine architecture firms from Russia, the USA and the Netherlands will be working on housing in the redevelopment of the former automobile factory, located in the south of Moscow. [...]

The building presented by Dutch agency Neutelings Riedijk Architecten consists of 10 towers, each with a golden glass and steel facade. — calvertjournal.com

The police in Bangladesh filed formal murder charges on Monday against 41 people accused of involvement in the 2013 collapse of a building that housed several clothing factories, leaving more than 1,100 people dead in the worst disaster in garment industry history. — The New York Times

"Time Space Existence" tells the story behind La Fabrica, the well-known headquarters of Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura that is located in a repurposed cement factory in Barcelona...By reimagining La Fabrica in new locations -- particularly in Venice -- the exhibition serves as a case study that goes beyond the structure's physical presence and explores its timelessness throughout the last century. — bustler.net

Preserving the rich history of an iconic site while modernizing any aspect of its design is always a tricky feat. For MVRDV, one of their latest competition wins is redeveloping the urban plan of the historic Serp & Molot (Hammer & Sickle) Factory...In the two-stage competition, the winning team was chosen out of a shortlist with LDA Design (UK), Ateliers lion Associés (France), Mega Project (Russia), and De Architecten Cie. (Netherlands). — bustler.net

The Palo Alto, Calif., company outlined plans for a factory that would employ up to 6,500 people and cover as many as 1,000 acres, including solar and wind farms to supply its power needs. It is evaluating sites in Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas, Tesla said in a regulatory filing.

The proposed 10 million-square-foot facility would make the powerful and pricey lithium-ion batteries that power its Model S and future vehicles. — online.wsj.com