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As the Northern Hemisphere approaches the winter season, construction activity on our southernmost continent has kicked into overdrive: More favorable summer temps have opened up a brief six-month window at the British Antarctic Survey's Rothera research station and operations hub, allowing for... View full entry
Caltech’s new Resnick Sustainability Center (RSC) has opened after the completion of an 80,000-square-foot design produced by the LA-based Yazdani Studio of CannonDesign. The project, which had been marketed as an interdisciplinary and cohesive "makerspace" for Caltech scientists and... View full entry
China’s plan to construct what would be the world’s new largest particle collider, pending major funding hurdles, is becoming more clear after a technical design report was submitted for the estimated $5.2 billion project. The 100-kilometer Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) is meant... View full entry
Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) has shared photos following the inauguration of its new CERN Science Gateway project in Geneva, Switzerland. The project for clients at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (or CERN) was realized in collaboration with the local studio Brodbeck Roulet... View full entry
A six month construction season is set to begin at the United Kingdom’s largest Antarctic research and operations hub. Called the Rothera Research Station, it supports leading researchers in frontier science in the region. This marks the start of the next phase of the British Antarctic... View full entry
Scientists in the US have developed a paint significantly "whiter than the whitest paint currently available".
Tests carried out by researchers at Purdue University on their "ultra-white" paint showed it reflected more than 98% of sunlight.
That suggests, the scientists say, that it could help save energy and fight climate change.
— BBC
The paint's whiteness opens up a range of cooling features that, applied at an industrial scale, could limit the built environment's contributing effect to global warming and its dependency on traditional air conditioning. "If you were to use this paint to cover a roof area of about 1,000 square... View full entry
The next stage of building a scientific support facility in Antarctica begins this week [...]
A 20 person-plus team from BAS construction partners BAM, Ramboll and Sweco is working on the second season of building the cutting-edge science and operations building. Construction can only take place during a short window during the Antarctic summer months, avoiding the harsh, dark winter.
— British Antarctic Survey
Results of a new five-year study of recycled concrete show that it performs as well, and in several cases even better, than conventional concrete. Researchers conducted side-by-side comparisons of recycled and conventional concrete within two common applications -- a building foundation and a municipal sidewalk. They found that the recycled concrete had comparable strength and durability after five years of being in service. — Science Daily
Find the complete study Recycled aggregate concrete from large-scale production to sustainable field application by University of British Columbia Okanagan researchers here. View full entry
A study conducted by Javier Fernandez and colleagues from Singapore University of Technology and Design provides research that the bioinspired material, chitin, would be a viable building material for Mars inhabitation and tool production. Fernandez shares with Universe... View full entry
Imagine plugging in to your brick house. Red bricks — some of the world’s cheapest and most familiar building materials — can be converted into energy storage units that can be charged to hold electricity, like a battery, according to new research from Washington University in St... View full entry
A Vinci-led consortium [...] completed civil engineering works on the high-spec building that will house the world’s largest fusion machine, called a “tokamak”, which scientists hope will start replicating the sun’s energy by the middle of the next decade. [...]
The 73-metre-high, 120-metre-wide structure required highly specific concretes. Teams developed about 10 formulations to shield staff and the environment from fusion-generated radiation.
— Global Construction Review
Building a tokamak machine to exploit fusion energy similar to our sun is no simple engineering feat: the building will house reactions that happen at extremely high temperatures, around 150 million degrees Celsius, fusing hydrogen nuclei when they reach the plasma state, thus releasing... View full entry
The focus on innovation and an increasing war for talent is causing a significant shift in the design of R&D facilities. Attracting the best talent requires expression of purpose both in the culture and the physical workplace. In the highly competitive research landscape centered around New Jersey, biopharmaceutical companies are aligning these values by moving the laboratory front and center, and putting their science on display. — Gensler
Laboratory scientists are now moving from "back-of-house areas" to more visible zones where the intricacies of lab work can be better appreciated and embraced by building users. This presents "a whole new set of design opportunities and challenges," writes Gensler Sciences Leader, Brenda... View full entry
After years of protests and legal battles, Hawaii officials announced Thursday that a massive telescope which will allow scientists to peer into the most distant reaches of our early universe will be built on a volcano that some consider sacred.
The state has issued a “notice to proceed” for the Thirty Meter Telescope project, Gov. David Ige said at a news conference. In October, a state Supreme Court’s 4-1 ruling upheld the project’s permits for the $1.4 billion instrument.
— HuffPost
Meanwhile protests continue by a group of native Hawaiians who see the telescope's site on top of Mount Mauna Kea as sacred ground and have been trying for years to block the project at this location. View full entry
A team of Boston University researchers recently stuck a loudspeaker into one end of a PVC pipe. They cranked it up loud. What did they hear? Nothing.
How was this possible? Did they block the other end of the pipe with noise canceling foams or a chunk of concrete? No, nothing of the sort. The pipe was actually left open save for a small, 3D-printed ring placed around the rim. That ring cut 94% of the sound blasting from the speaker, enough to make it inaudible to the human ear.
— Fast Company
"The mathematically designed, 3D-printed acoustic metamaterial is shaped in such a way that it sends incoming sounds back to where they came from," explain the Boston University researchers behind the discovery: Xin Zhang, a professor at the College of Engineering, and Reza Ghaffarivardavagh, a... View full entry
Hawaii's Supreme Court has sided with scientists in a battle to build one of the world's largest telescopes, rejecting efforts by native Hawaiians to block its construction atop what some consider a sacred volcano.
In 2015, a construction permit for the Thirty Meter Telescope, or TMT, to be built on Mauna Kea, was invalidated amid protests and court appeals, claiming the dormant volcano is sacred land that would be violated in the building process.
— NPR
The embattled TMT astronomical observatory project on Mauna Kea previously in the Archinect news: Hawaii's Thirty Meter Telescope could be moved to the Canary IslandsHawaii protesters block construction of giant telescope on sacred mountain Mauna KeaThe $1.5B 30m telescope (TMT) will be the... View full entry
