A team of students and faculty at Virginia Tech has completed an innovative observation tower in rural Virginia. The design and delivery of the project saw the development and certification of a new custom timber product, off-site prefabrication, and the discovery of the ruins of a historic... View full entry

The University of Virginia (UVA) campus has become the showground for an array of creative structures built from natural materials. The Biomaterial Building Exposition (Bio-Build Expo for short) was organized by the university’s architecture school and showcases the possibilities of organic... View full entry

Chemical engineering researchers at MIT have announced the creation of a new material that is “stronger than steel and as light as plastic, and can be easily manufactured in large quantities.” The material, for which the team has filed two patents, may one day be used as a structural material... View full entry

Sustainability startup ByFusion has developed what they describe as “the first construction-grade building material made entirely of recycled, and often un-recyclable, plastic waste.” Named ByBlock, the interlocking blocks use the same principles as LEGO with protrusions on the top surface... View full entry

ETH Zurich has unveiled details of their latest investigation into advanced building materials in construction. The project, titled FoamWork, explores how foam 3D printing can assist in creating concrete formworks. The initiative saw ETH Zurich’s Digital Building Technologies team work in... View full entry

If there’s one thing that 2021 has shown us, it is that, for better or for worse, the world is evolving faster than ever. While this is a natural phenomenon, it’s apparent that the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated the level of uncertainty the world faces. Sociopolitical and... View full entry

Researchers at the University of Plymouth in the UK have published a study which found that overlaying living walls on existing buildings can improve thermal performance by 31%. The findings arose from a live experiment on a campus building, where researchers added a living wall system to an... View full entry

The ten winners of the Construction Startup Competition 2021 have been announced by CEMEX Ventures, recognizing the most promising startup companies in the construction sector for this year. The overall winner of the competition was Document Crunch, an AI-powered software which can identify and... View full entry

As part of the AEC sector’s effort to decarbonize in light of the industry’s contribution to climate change, architects, engineers, and researchers are increasingly devoting efforts not only to the design of space but to the composition of materials, structural systems, and façades. In the... View full entry

An international research team led by scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore has invented a new window material that controls heat transmission without blocking views, which could help reduce the energy required to cool and heat buildings.  The new energy-saving... View full entry

The University of Idaho recently announced that it has been awarded nearly $4 million from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement Program to develop technology for the conversion of wood waste into 3D-printing building materials. Research will... View full entry

Researchers from the University of Tokyo’s Department of Architecture have developed a promising new kind of concrete that has the potential to reduce emissions from the construction industry.  Approximately 7% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions come from the manufacture and use of... View full entry

A new study by researchers out of The Ohio State University investigates a different kind of design for absorbing vibrations that could better soundproof materials.  Ryan Harne, senior author of the paper and former associate professor of mechanical engineering at Ohio State, along with... View full entry

Scientists at Rice University have published research which proposes repurposing waste tires in the production of concrete. By converting waste from rubber tires into graphene, the researchers believe the new composite can be used to strengthen concrete, and thus reduce the thickness of... View full entry

A team of researchers at Northeastern University has created a sustainable material that can cool buildings without the need for conventional AC systems. Led by associate professor Yi Zheng from the university’s College of Engineering, the team has developed a “cooling paper” made from... View full entry