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It’s well known that the production of cement—the world’s leading construction material—is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for about 8 percent of all such releases...A team of researchers at MIT has come up with a new way of manufacturing the material that could eliminate these emissions altogether, and could even make some other useful products in the process. — MIT News
The research team is exploring the "idea of using an electrochemical process to replace the current fossil-fuel-dependent system" that relies on coal-fired ovens to convert limestone, clay, and sand to Portland cement. Through the new process, the need to burn coal will be avoided and the emitted... View full entry
In a recent news article from MIT News, architectural historian Timothy Hyde explains why "every building is ultimately a compromise.” Hyde shares, “It’s a compromise between the intentions of architects, the capacities of builders, economics, politics, the people who use the building... View full entry
Arthur Szlam and colleagues at Facebook Research have begun work on an AI assistant that can learn from its interactions with humans and then perform a wide range of tasks on request. The more it learns the more it can do. The team has chosen Minecraft, the best-selling 3D sandbox video game, as... View full entry
In light of a recent breakthrough within the topic of space, the architecture design firm Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (SOM) shares their partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in designing the first "full-time human habitat on the... View full entry
Urban settlements and technology around the world are co-evolving as flows of population, finance, and politics are reshaping the very identity of cities and nations. Rapid and profound changes are driven by pervasive sensing, the growth and availability of continuous data streams, advanced analytics, interactive communications and social networks, and distributed intelligence. At MIT, urban planners and computer scientists are embracing these exciting new developments. — MIT News
Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty recently voted to have its existing urban planning and computer science programs join forces and create a new undergraduate degree, the bachelor of science in urban science and planning with computer science. "The rise of autonomous vehicles... View full entry
The dream of nuclear fusion is on the brink of being realised, according to a major new US initiative that says it will put fusion power on the grid within 15 years.
The project, a collaboration between scientists at MIT and a private company, will take a radically different approach to other efforts to transform fusion from an expensive science experiment into a viable commercial energy source.
— The Guardian
Potentially an inexhaustible and carbon-free source of energy, the dream of making fusion power commercially viable appears to be getting a lot closer, according to a new announcement from researchers at MIT this morning. "Fusion is the true energy source of the future, as it is completely... View full entry
Global higher education analysis firm, Quacquarelli Symonds has released their 2018 rankings of the top universities in the world for the study of architecture and the built environment. Many of the leading names are university mainstays, with MIT topping the list for the fourth year in a row. Of... View full entry
It’s 2027 (or 2037) and the age of the self-driving car. City-dwellers have traded in their car keys for ride hails. Street parking has been replaced by wider sidewalks and bike lanes, while developers are busy converting garages into much-needed housing.
That’s one vision of how self-driving cars will affect U.S. real estate, laid out in a report by MIT’s Center for Real Estate. But it’s not the only one.
— bloomberg.com
"Even as reclaimed parking spaces fuel a downtown building boom," Bloomberg reports, "autonomous vehicles will encourage builders to push deeper into the exurban fringe, confident that homebuyers will tolerate longer commutes now that they don’t have to drive, according to the report [...]."... View full entry
The MIT project — the Managed, Reconfigurable, In-space Nodal Assembly (MARINA) — was designed as a commercially owned and operated space station, featuring a luxury hotel as the primary anchor tenant and NASA as a temporary co-anchor tenant for 10 years. NASA’s estimated recurring costs, $360 million per year, represent an order of magnitude reduction from the current costs of maintaining and operating the International Space Station. — MIT News
Left to right: Caitlin Mueller (faculty advisor), Matthew Moraguez, George Lordos, and Valentina Sumini are some of the members of the interdisciplinary MIT team that won first place in the graduate division of the Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts-Academic Linkage Design Competition... View full entry
The list of materials that can be produced by 3-D printing has grown to include not just plastics but also metal, glass, and even food. Now, MIT researchers are expanding the list further, with the design of a system that can 3-D print the basic structure of an entire building. — MIT
According to the researchers, structures built with this tech will be faster to make and cheaper than traditional construction. They'll be customizable and enable forms otherwise difficult to manufacture. "Even the internal structure could be modified in new ways," they write, "different materials... View full entry
Every year, a host of lists emerge ranking architecture schools around the world. For some, they serve as a useful guide to choosing where to pursue their studies. For others, the lists are subjective and have little real value. QS World University Rankings has just released its 2016 rankings for... View full entry
The space elevator—a theoretical mode of transportation where transport modules move up and down a long cable that connects Earth to space—has long been the stuff of futuristic fantasy...Now, a team of MIT scientists has designed one of the strongest lightweight materials in existence, taking us one step closer to realizing that sci-fi dream—and creating a formula for a material that could revolutionize architecture and infrastructure right here on Earth, too. — FastCo. Design
The material in question is called graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon. At just one atom thick, graphene has so far proven to be inoperable as a building material, even though it's the strongest material we know about. But the team of MIT invented a process that could change that. Using... View full entry
computer vision and artificial intelligence are the keys to a debate behind a door that’s been locked for a long time: the social impact of design in cities. [...]
"Now that we have new tools to measure aesthetics, we can estimate its consequences" [...]
[MIT Media Lab associate professor Cesar Hidalgo] wants to develop more empirical ways to study cities and the way they’re perceived—and, in turn, provide better science to the policy-makers who shape legislation.
— fastcodesign.com
More on neural networks and aesthetic quantification:Mark Zuckerberg's resolution for 2016: build an at-home AI "like Jarvis in Iron Man"Further strides made in Nobel-winning research on the neuroscience of navigationArchinect's Lexicon: "Neuromorphic Architecture""Sculpting the Architectural... View full entry
That an apple can travel over 11,500 miles from where it was grown (spending over a year in shipment and in toxic, low-oxygen storage to suspend its maturation) is the perfect object lesson of our global agricultural system’s failures. [...]
And with the advent of natural-resource scarcity, flattening yields, loss of biodiversity, changing climates, environmental degradation, and booming urban populations, we’re hurtling toward its natural limit.
— Near Future
"What if we could build a different world? One in which anyone could farm anywhere, not just on land devastated by disaster, but in basements, skyscrapers, and abandoned subway tunnels? Or in classrooms, rooftops, and old factories?"In this article by Caleb Harper, the Director of the Open... View full entry
[nuTonomy's] Level 4 autonomous vehicle "is designed to perform all safety-critical driving functions and monitor roadway conditions for an entire trip;" all you have to do is provide a destination and (possibly) open and shut the doors.
Google's autonomous cars, in contrast, are currently at Level 3, with limited self-driving automation [...]
[nuTonomy] is building into [its] decision-making engine the ability for cars to actually violate the rules of the road when it's necessary to do so
— spectrum.ieee.org
More from the autonomous vehicle beat:The "Impossible" Car – Faraday Future's lead designer, Richard Kim, on One-to-One #17"In LiDAR We Trust" – Poking the subconscious of autonomous vehicles with special guest Geoff Manaugh, on Archinect Sessions #43This startup hopes to bring autonomous... View full entry
