To play through Elden Ring is to take on a grave and foolish challenge. It took 135 hours of my life to finish the admired action role-playing video game directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki with narrative content from Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin. I didn’t beat it just for the bragging rights, but for

Launching in late 2024, Space Perspective, a space tourism company, will bring thrill-seeking travelers and wannabe astronauts alike to the “edge of space.” In its recently released renderings the company shared the design for the exterior of the orbiting capsule, Spaceship Neptune, which features a bulbous shape with panoramic windows. The space shuttle is being

Following early morning news that the sale of the James R. Thompson Center was nearly finalized, Google has revealed itself as the future new tenant of the iconic, Helmut Jahn–designed office building in the heart of Chicago’s Loop. As Karen Sauder, head of Google’s Chicago office and president of Global Client and Agency Solutions, explained…

Social media is abuzz with screengrabs from Dall•E mini, an online platform from Hugging Face that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to collage together images based on keywords and phrases input by its users. The developer behind the project is Boris Dayma, who has programmed and trained the model to peruse millions of online images and

On the main east-west drag in Marfa, Texas, the Art Blocks house/gallery sits between an upscale prix fixe restaurant and a church. With four bedrooms, three baths, a large yard, and a freestanding garage, it’s a fairly large house for the town. It would be a rather inconspicuous one were it not for the large

Whenever I search for toothpaste at the grocery store, I am reminded of browsing the projects on Bjarke Ingels Group’s (BIG) website. Each bright and sparkly box looks unique to fit a variety of specific needs: fresh breath, tartar control, sensitivity, whitening, etc. But upon further examination of each tube, they all claim to do

It’s no secret that political parties rely on architecture as a way to express and impose power, sometimes forthcoming and other times unspoken. In the instance of The Free Republic of Liberland—an as-yet-unrecognized and currently uninhabited micronation on the western bank of the Danube between Serbia and Croatia—architecture is discussed openly by its inner circle

This past August, Texas-based robotics and advanced materials startup ICON garnered headlines when it revealed what was then the largest completed project to date employing the company’s patented 3D-printed construction technology: a single-story barracks on the grounds of the Camp Swift Training Center in Bastrop, Texas. Created for the Texas Military Department, that structure, measuring

Software company Morpholio, which blends virtual hand drafting with virtual reality features in its Trace programs, launched Shadow Maker on March 22. A new feature for the iPhone and iPad app Morpholio Trace, Shadow Maker can place models in their real-world solar conditions. Trace is just one part of the company’s app suite and is

In January of 2022, the city of Brighton in the U.K. went viral for requiring new buildings to integrate ‘bee bricks’ as a means of increasing biodiversity in the built environment. Artificial bee habitats, commonly called “bee hotels,” are a popular form of intervention in gardens and parks around the world. They’re intended to cater

A new book by Andrew Witt provides an in-depth, refreshing look at the historical applications of mathematics within architecture. Formulations: Architecture, Mathematics, Culture, published by MIT Press as part of the Writing Architecture Series by Anyone Corporation (the publisher of the popular architecture journal Log), explores the methods of mathematical and scientific analysis as proto-computational

Summit Powder Mountain in Eden, Utah, is an ultra-exclusive community for billionaires with good taste. The mountain resort is a preserve for refined, and in some cases adventurous, residential architecture by the likes of Olson Kundig, MacKay-Lyons, and Studio Ma. The most ambitious and beguiling design comes from the Los Angeles–based office Tom Wiscombe Architecture

Difficult as it is to choose, I do have a favorite episode of Frasier. Season 10, episode 11, titled “Door Jam,” revolves around La Porte d’Argent, a new Seattle day spa frequented by high-profile socialites that Frasier and Niles are dying to get into. They eventually scheme their way into the club and have the

Medieval and early-modern workers did not have to go to work. Nor did they work from home; they just worked where they lived, or lived where they worked. Double-entry bookkeeping was invented at the end of the Middle Ages, but for centuries before the industrial age all offices were, literally, home offices; special buildings entirely

Space Forces: A Critical History of Life in Outer Space By Fred Scharmen Verso Books, 2021 MSRP $27 As the world spins deeper into the third year of a global pandemic with no sign of abating, a new space race is forming over our heads. Entry is open to all, and the tickets are literal.

Robotics and advanced materials construction startup ICON has revealed its first completed home in its Exploration Series, which per the Texas-based company, sets out to “develop new design languages and architectural vernaculars” with collaborating architects “based on the opportunities created by construction-scale 3D printing.” First announced last May, the roughly 2,000-square-foot East Austin abode melds

Despite the flashy promises of supersonic rail travel through vacuum-sealed tubes and six years of work by Bjarke Ingels to envision rapid intercity transportation systems, Richard Branson’s Virgin Hyperloop is reportedly struggling. The company has reportedly laid off 111 employees, about half of its staff, and will drop the passenger side of the business to

The Dubai Future Foundation’s long-awaited Museum of the Future, a “new global centre for future thinking, technologies, and innovation” housed within a 252-foot-tall toroidal structure, is finally open in the heart of the city’s Financial District. Rising seven stories above Dubai’s skyscraper-lined main artery, the Paul Bunyan-sized ring with sheik-penned quotes inscribed into its metallic,

Starting Friday, February 18, and running through April 17, the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) is hosting Lucy McRae’s first solo show, a dystopian exhibition titled FUTUREKIN: Mental Health Machines for a Post-CRISPR World. McRae, who was born in the U.K. and raised in Australia, is a “science fiction artist and body architect” and

What do a video game designer, a conservation photographer, a reliability engineer, a fire scientist, a dancer-slash-roboticist, an astrophysicist, a digital archaeologist, a bat conservationist, and the CEO of an aquarium of all have in common? They are among the 100-plus women of STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) who will be descending in statue form

A new book on architectural representation, Reality Modeled After Images: Architecture and Aesthetics after the Digital Image (Routledge Publishing) by Michael Young, co-founder of YOUNG & AYATA and assistant professor at The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union, attempts to deal with the state of contemporary image culture by cutting across

Floating countries are nothing new—libertarians have been proposing going John Galt and fleeing to floating nations free from the rules of terrestrial governments for decades. No such seastead or self-sufficient island nation has ever actually been built, of course, but that hasn’t stopped cryptocurrency investors from floating their own proposals. Last week, the internet discovered

From reimagining city spaces to designing sustainable buildings, architecture firms and designers are tackling complex projects while navigating the remote workplace. But as we slowly return to what work life used to be before the pandemic, many of us have already adapted to a hybrid work environment. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), 87

For those on the ground at Expo 2020 Dubai looking to transport themselves to a far-flung tropical locale without leaving a once-barren expanse of desert abutting the Persian Gulf, the Brazil Pavilion has got you covered. Just don’t forget to bring aquatic footwear. Located in the Sustainability District between the Sweden Pavilion and the Azerbaijan

Earlier this week, additive construction company Alquist and Habitat for Humanity formally handed over the keys to the new owner of an otherwise ordinary-looking three-bedroom single-family home in Williamsburg, Virginia. Despite appearances, however, that building was recently completed as the first Habitat project on the East Coast to be constructed with the aid of a

Following a highly successful shift to a totally virtual experience in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, ACADIA (The Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture), once again held their annual conference online in 2021. Titled “Realignments: Toward Critical Computation,” this year’s proceedings marked the 40th anniversary of a conference that brings together practitioners,

Nabr, a consumer-first housing startup that aims to bring a tech-driven, bespoke home designing and financing to the masses, has formally launched with the news that its first apartment building will debut in the summer of 2023 at 415 South 3rd Street in San Jose’s buzzy arts and culture quarter, the SoFA (South of First

The mid-20th-century writer and philosopher Marshall McLuhan first used the phrase “the medium is the message” in his 1964 book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. For McLuhan, the content of a television series or a picture book was less impactful than the way the message itself was delivered. In that same book he distinguished

After changing its national currency to Bitcoin and enforcing mandatory acceptance at businesses in September, El Salvador is looking to up the ante by building a “Bitcoin City” at the base of Conchagua volcano in the country’s eastern La Union region. Announced by President Nayib Bukele on November 20 as part of a weeklong promotional