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Eleven churches and chapels in Piedmont, northwest Italy, that have normally been closed to visitors will now be accessible to anyone downloading the app Chiese a porte aperte (Churches with open doors). [...]
It enables the visitor to register and book entry to any of the churches, which is automatic and without charge. A guided tour in Italian, French or English is thrown in as well.
— The Art Newspaper
Fresco interiors in one of the participating churches. Image via Fondazione CRT/Facebook"The buildings have been chosen for their architectural or historic interest and because they are on hiking routes, such as the Via Francigena, in the mountains, or near other notable sites," reports The Art... View full entry
With Apple's recent release of its latest mobile operating system, iOS 12, we're now seeing new feature releases in a variety of apps. Two players in the world of architectural software, Morpholio Trace and Shapr3D, today announced a joint effort that promises to further bridge the divide between... View full entry
Today you can have a fully connected home complete with sensors to monitor temperature, humidity, air quality, energy usage, and more, and check in on almost any appliance from anywhere in the world with just a smartphone. But even with all of the various connected appliances, virtual assistants, and copious sensors that can be installed in a modern smart home, the “smart” side of things is still rather lacking. — The Verge
The Verge senior editor Dan Seifert asks: Wouldn't it be cool if my home could figure everything out on its own? View full entry
American counties and municipalities alone have nearly 93,000 different building codes. If you are an architect, that can be an overwhelming amount of requirements to navigate, which is why Upcodes has been working on what it describes as a 'spellcheck' for construction. Started by two... View full entry
Architecture studio KieranTimberlake used passive strategies to cool their new Philadelphia office building and installed 300 sensors to record data on how it was performing. Along with their network of sensors, the firm also developed an app called Roast for their employees to rate how they... View full entry
NEW YORK’S MUSEUM of Modern Art is under siege. Well, a virtual siege, at least. A group of renegade artists has co-opted the brightly-lit Jackson Pollock gallery on the museum’s fifth floor, turning it into their personal augmented reality playground. [...] those that have downloaded the MoMAR Gallery app on their smartphones, the impressionist's iconic paintings are merely markers—points of reference telling the app where to display the guerilla artists’ works. — Wired
MoMAR's augmented reality app and the unauthorized accompanying group show Hello, we're from the internet explore the intersection of private physical space and the public digital realm. "MoMAR is an unauthorized gallery concept aimed at democratizing physical exhibition spaces, museums, and the... View full entry
Shit, I Smoke! was created by Brazilian-born designer Marcelo Coelho and Paris-born app developer Amaury Martiny in just a week, after they read a study that analyzed air pollution and its equivalent to cigarette smoking. [...] Using the formula in [the study], [the app] uses live pollution data from hundreds of air quality stations in cities around the globe and converts the station’s PM2.5 number into the number of cigarettes being inhaled by a person in real time. — Citylab
“For both Coelho and Martiny, the app isn’t only a useful tool to inform users about their city’s air quality; it also makes this information more accessible and easier to comprehend.” View full entry
If you've been around the 'architecture-can-be-fun-too'-focused internet for a while, you may remember Sergej Hein's semi-viral gem of a video, Berlin Block Tetris, which was exactly that: an animated version of the video game classic using building blocks that resembled socialist-era residential... View full entry
Sergio Mannino Studio recently completed a pharmacy retail project in Brooklyn. The space is a flagship for Medly, a healthcare startup offering a more efficient and enjoyable way for the community to order prescription medicine via an app. Medly pharmacy designed by Sergio Mannino Studio... View full entry
If you've already liked or used Morpholio's popular Trace app on the iPad Pro, you can now also get excited to put it to work on your small screen: TracePro just launched for iPhone and presents a powerful architectural application of Apple's ARKit augmented reality framework in a pocket-friendly... View full entry
Dutch social renters wanting to move to a new apartment can now use an app to swap houses with other renters. One precondition, both renters need to ‘like’ each other’s apartment to get a match. [...]
Young renters with small apartments may swap with older residents who live in bigger apartments. In this way, the issue of scheefwonen (skew living — when people live in apartments that do not match their needs and desires) within the Dutch rental sector could be solved.
— Pop-Up City
"After two apartments are matched, the users are introduced to each other, after which they have to find out if their rental agreements are compatible enough for the renters to swap house." View full entry
Good news! In response to your “concerns” about our current open-plan creative campus, we are pleased to announce our new building: a towering panopticon à la Jeremy Bentham’s eighteenth-century vision of utilitarian corporate efficiency! In our new office, all team members will work in isolated, transparent rooms called “Cells” on the periphery of a circular tower called “Synergon.” At the center of Synergon, management will reside in “Nest,” a glowing, elevated sphere of omniscience. — McsSweeneys
Alex Baia imagines dystopian panopticon office space for app creators. View full entry
Apple's latest mobile operating system, iOS 11, just released today. One of the biggest updates that should get the attention of architects is ARKit, Apple's new augmented reality framework. ARKit provides the opportunity to for Apple and 3rd party developers to create AR experiences anew, or to... View full entry
For architects, complying with building codes means navigating labyrinthine layers of regulations that vary between municipalities. Sorting through different codes and keeping track of updates is a daunting task and, in a worst-case scenario, a mistake can cost thousands or even millions of dollars to tear out and fix. Firms that can afford it hire building code consultants, but a startup called UpCodes wants to make code compliance easier for all builders. — Tech Crunch
Started by two brothers—one, an architect and the other, a software engineer—UpCodes provides an accessible platform for construction codes and works to consolidate building regulations into a single searchable database. Beyond making codes and regulations easier to navigate, the app... View full entry
If you've ever wanted to measure the dimensions of a window that you can't reach physically, it's largely been a trick of algebra. However, the new AR Measure App, as developed by Laan Labs, promises to make it easy to accurately measure physical objects by simply pointing an iOS device at it. In... View full entry
