ACADIA announces keynote speakers and awardees for 2019 conference

The Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA), an organization that connects architects and design professionals working with digital technology, has announced the awardees and recipients for its 2019 conference, which will be held this October at the University of Texas at Austin. Titled “Ubiquity and Autonomy,” ACADIA says this year’s conference will investigate

A rendering of an impressionistic image of buildings on all surfaces of a room with thin columns, created by ARTECHOUSE.
ARTECHOUSE’s Chelsea Market space will let visitors experience architectural hallucinations

ARTECHOUSE, a technology-focused art exhibition platform conceived in 2015 by Sandro Kereselidze and Tati Pastukhova, has been presenting digitally inspired art in Washington D.C. and Miami. Now they’re coming to New York, “a clear next step for [their] mission,” with an inaugural exhibition by Refik Anadol. The Istanbul-born, Los Angeles-based Anadol is known for his

A blue drone made for 3D printing with pink and blue glowing blades floats in front of a glass building.
GXN thinks the future of construction could be flying 3D printers

Most 3D printers, no matter their size, operate in a pretty similar way: they move along a grid to deposit material, sliding on axes in a fixed manner within a frame. Even those with more flexible arms remain fixed at a point. GXN, the research-focused spinoff of the Danish architecture firm 3XN, is looking to

A top-down view of a construction scene
How can new technologies make construction safer?

Construction remains one of the most dangerous careers in the United States. To stop accidents before they happen, construction companies are turning to emerging technologies to improve workplace safety—from virtual reality, drone photography, IoT-connected tools, and machine learning. That said, some solutions come with the looming specter of workplace surveillance in the name of safety,

A digital model simulated city appears in a screenshot with a toolbar at left
Chicago-based start up wants to make a digital clone of a city

In Jorge Luis Borges’s 1946 one-paragraph short story “On Exactitude in Science,” a fictional 17th-century individual, Suarez Miranda, tells of a time that the “Cartographers Guilds” made a map of their empire so accurately that it matched it entirely, at 1:1 scale, point by point. Of course, this map was utterly useless. This meditation on

A view of different textures on a 3D rendering of a sculpture
A French startup is using drones and AI to save the world’s architectural heritage

Now active in over 30 countries around the world, French startup Iconem is working to preserve global architectural and urban heritage one photograph at a time. Leveraging complex modeling algorithms, drone technology, cloud computing, and, increasingly, artificial intelligence (AI), the firm has documented major sites like Palmyra and Leptis Magna, producing digital versions of at-risk sites at

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

CityIQ plans to install thousands of sensors to monitor San Diego

Smart City Expo World Congress, held this year in Barcelona, is an annual architectural, engineering, and technology exhibition dedicated to creating a better future for cities worldwide through social collaboration and urban innovation. Among the projects that were unveiled at this November’s event was CityIQ’s proposal to install 4,200 sensor nodes throughout San Diego, California, a major tech

Amazon is bringing its seamless automated grocery store to New York

Imagine a world where artificial intelligence tracks your every movement. A world where buildings have minds of their own, learning your behaviors, and collecting data from you as you come and go. While existing technology has not yet reached sci-fi levels, a visit to an Amazon Go grocery store can offer you a peek into this possible future of retail

Federal government shuts down self-driving school bus program in Florida

The dreams of a fully autonomous school bus are on hold for a little while longer, at least in Babcock Ranch, Florida. On October 19, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) ordered a complete halt to the self-driving school bus program in the Florida town, which had been transporting kids to-and-from school along a three-block stretch. Transdev North America had

A New Way to Be Attached to Our Devices: Emotional AI

FutureVision is R/GA’s trend-spotting division. FutureVision helps keep you connected with the latest information, making it easy for you to stay informed. Many of us have an unhealthy relationship with our digital devices, and repeated behaviors such as checking email or our Instagram accounts for Likes can become addictive. So much so that there’s practically a

Self-driving homes could be the future of affordable housing

The convergence of new technologies including artificial intelligence, the internet of things, electric cars, and drone delivery systems suggests an unlikely solution to the growing housing crisis. In the next few years, we may use an app on our smartphones to notify our houses to pick us up or drop us off. Honda recently announced the IeMobi

Waymo faces tech hurdles as self-driving taxi deadline looms

As the technology propelling autonomous vehicles lurches forward, car companies have been struggling to make the leap between fundamental research and a marketable product. After an Uber test car struck and killed a woman in March of this year, the ride-sharing company abruptly shut down their self-driving program in Arizona. Now Waymo, the Alphabet-owned self-driving car company that had pledged it would launch a fleet

Responsive Virtual Reality Has Promising Marketing Implications

FutureVision is R/GA’s trend-spotting division. FutureVision helps keep you connected with the latest information, making it easy for you to stay informed. This cute and simple interactive narrative is underpinned by complex technology. Described by Google as a “mobile movie theater,” Spotlight Stories combines 3D and 2D animation with 360-degree spherical video. The app also uses

AutoX launches a self-driving grocery delivery service in San Jose

From Amazon Go to Walmart’s Alphabot, grocery retail is being significantly disrupted by the fast-evolving technologies of automation and artificial intelligence. Now, startup AutoX is launching an autonomous vehicle delivery service directly to households. While other companies such as Nuro and Marble are designing and operating autonomous vehicles specifically for delivery, AutoX is utilizing preexisting

Getting Personal With AI

FutureVision is R/GA’s trend-spotting division. FutureVision helps keep you connected with the latest information, making it easy for you to stay informed. Science fiction likes to show us a world where technology is so pervasive, it completely transforms our lives, for better or worse. Star Wars; Minority Report; I, Robot—all of these films feature sophisticated artificially