Borealis Ventures speculates the future role of prefabrication in construction

In Constructuring: An Unstoppable Trend, a white paper by Borealis Ventures’ Ian Howell, speculates as to which practices holdback the construction industry’s ability to build housing on-time and within budget. Citing a McKinsey & Company study which found that “large projects across asset classes typically take 20 percent longer to finish than scheduled and are

an inflatable pavilion anchored between three neoclassical red brick buildings

At Columbia, an inflatable pavilion is the SPOT for GSAPP’s graduation

Summer is approaching, and that means that schools are saying goodbye to another generation of students. At the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), that meant the creation of the Avery SPOT, a high-tech inflatable installation and wooden stage that were used to hold GSAPP events and commencement from April 29 through May 1.

artwork of an explosion in a forest scene on the LED billboard of wiscombe's sunset spectacular

Tom Wiscombe Architecture’s Sunset Spectacular harnesses aerospace engineering for a 21st-century billboard

Los Angeles’s Sunset Strip is a charming hodgepodge where buildings old and new jostle for space with palm trees and rotating billboards. Adding to this riotous scene is a new urban marker every bit as attention-grabbing as Hollywood blockbusters and architectural kitsch. At 67 feet tall, the West Hollywood Sunset Spectacular is somewhere between a billboard and

A prototypical mighty buildings home, a single-story adu

Mighty Buildings is 3D printing prefabricated accessory dwelling units

Mighty Buildings, a new San Francisco-based construction startup, is aiming to 3D print prefabricated housing. They’ve hit the ground running, and the company has already produced a number of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and partnered with EYRC Architects to design its new range of stylish, small homes. By producing lightweight, stone wall, flooring, and roof

Workers carry a large segment of wall in a prefab housing factoring with a doorway cut out on a factory floor.

Autodesk invests in prefab home startup to help with disaster housing

Autodesk is making a bet on the future of prefabrication for disaster housing with an investment in FactoryOS and the company’s California-based “Rapid Response Factory.” In addition to allowing the startup to begin experimenting with constructing post-natural disaster homes on the factory floor, the funding will reportedly allow the Bay Area startup to create a

Photo of a small 3D-printed home with a large overhanging wooden roof

Austin company 3D prints house on site to help alleviate homelessness

“What if you could download and print a house for half the cost?” reads the lede for the Vulcan II, a 3D printer with a name suited for sci-fi space exploration, on the website of Austin-based company ICON. Now the company has put this claim to the test, building what it says is the first

Swiss researchers enlist the help of robots to build high-tech showhome

ETH Zürich’s high-tech showhome opened its doors this past week. The three-story DFAB HOUSE has been built on the NEST modular building platform, an Empa– and Eawag–led site of cutting-edge research and experimentation in architecture, engineering, and construction located in Dübendorf, Switzerland. The 2,150-square-foot house, a collaboration with university researchers and industry leaders, is designed

The world’s largest 3D-printed structure unveiled in Nashville

On July 18th, Chattanooga-based architectural fabricator Branch Technology unveiled the world’s largest 3D-printed structure, a bandshell pavilion measuring 20-feet-tall and 42-feet-wide. The pavilion was first announced in Cambridge, Massachusetts during MIT’s 2018 International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures. The structure is located in Nashville’s emerging smart-city neighborhood, OneC1TY. Reported by Architect Magazine, the carbon

Katerra’s approach could make factory construction a model for the future

Some of the most fruitful innovation in the AEC industry right now lies in the realm of factory-built buildings. Whether they include experiments with prefabrication, mass-timber construction, or modular components, architects are increasingly working with building assemblies that are fabricated off-site and under controlled conditions. And while some designers work in these modes on a