It’s a well-known fact that buildings painted lighter colors reflect more light: it’s what made New York City’s plan to combat the urban heat island effect and lower cooling bills by painting roofs white so effective. Now, scientists have discovered a “whitest-white” paint that reflects 95.5 percent of light, a potential boon for passive cooling
NASA is continuing the work started in its 2018 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge, which sought designs for 3D printing radiation-shielded Martian shelters from the surrounding regolith, a little closer to home. Participants SEArch+, 3D printing, robotics, and advanced materials startup ICON, and the Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) have all been tapped to research how we might
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
Japan is facing a labor shortage: As the country continues to age, with 35 percent of the workforce is over 55, the construction industry is looking towards new ways to fill its widening labor gap (Japan has been relaxing its notoriously strict immigration policy towards lesser-skilled workers, but very slowly). One of those solutions is
The Provincial Centre for Sustainability and Innovation in Construction (better known as Kamp C) in the Belgian municipality of Westerlo has completed work on a two-story model home, measuring just shy of 970 square feet, that was produced as a single piece by a fixed 3D printer—a world’s first. The concrete printer in question is
Deep in the forests of Ithaca, New York, a short drive from the Cornell University campus, lies the newly completed Ashen Cabin, a practical example of how new manufacturing methods can turn what used to be waste into useful materials. The small cabin was built by HANNAH, the small practice headed by Leslie Lok and
With most Americans complying with nationwide stay-at-home orders enacted to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus, a handful of states have nonetheless permitted construction sites to continue operations on “essential” projects. Site safety inspectors have therefore been left with the difficult task of ensuring that the workers they oversee are practicing all safety protocols
The Berlin-based Barkow Leibinger, with the help of the Boston-based architect of record Sasaki, has created the adaptable, translucent ArtLab for Harvard. As the university expands across the river into Boston’s Allston neighborhood, they’ve been developing an ArtYard—a contemporary, arts-focused answer to the walled Harvard Yard in Cambridge. Barkow Leibinger’s brief was to create an adaptable,
The Cold Climate Housing Research Center (CCHRC) describes itself as “an industry-based, nonprofit corporation created to facilitate the development, use, and testing of energy-efficient, durable, healthy, and cost-effective building technologies for people living in circumpolar regions around the globe.” Aaron Cooke, the architect who leads the Sustainable Northern Communities Program at the CCHRC in Fairbanks, Alaska, is
Dubai is now home to what is claimed to be the world’s largest on-site 3D-printed building. The 31-foot-tall, two-story government agency was printed in on-site three weeks using a single printer developed by the Boston-based Apis Cor, which has previously garnered attention for their sub-$10,000 printed home and for winning NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge along
