Concrete.ai, a Los Angeles–based data science startup describing itself as being “on a mission to avoid 500 million tons of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere annually,” announced last week the beta launch of a new software platform developed to reduce the cost and embodied carbon intensity in concrete construction. As detailed by the company, the

On Friday October 21, The Architect’s Newspaper presents TECH+ NYC. This forum celebrates the quantum leap of technology transforming the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industries. The full-day event is a continuation of our national Tech+ conference series, featuring case studies and firms from across the country. Back in person for the first time since

This summer text-to-image Artificial Intelligence (AI) softwares DALL∙E and Midjourney rose in popularity among architects, artists, and designers. With just a few descriptive keywords and phrases the models are able to collage together a visual representation of the input text using its memory database of visuals. While the results are sometimes memeable, the engineers are

Carlo Ratti Associati (CRA) and Milan-based architect Italo Rota have joined forces with Rome-headquartered global energy behemoth Eni to explore the carbon-free potential of magnetic confinement fusion energy at a pop-up exhibition installed at this year’s just-concluded Maker Fair Rome. The spherical pavilion is realized as an ersatz tokamak fusion reactor within Gazometro Ostiense, a

After two years of completely virtual events, the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) is returning to in-person proceedings for the first time since the onset of the Covid pandemic. While it was fitting that architecture’s technology caucus hosted online conferences that skirted Zoom fatigue with an interesting interface and meaningful content, there

A river so polluted it becomes cleansed—we are swimming amid trash. A land undisturbed by rainbows of gasoline—we are surrounded by toxic beauty ablaze. This summer, I have been using Midjourney to make buildings that appear just out of the realm of possibility and just out of the realm of the present. The results are

Liv-Connected, a modular construction company, is hard at work trying to solve the country’s housing crisis. Their solution? A customizable, prefabricated home that can be assembled on-site in four hours. The company was founded in 2019 by physician Herbert Rogove—an early proponent of telemedicine—and his son Jordan Rogove, cofounder of the New York City–based architecture

This summer, text-to-image AIs have captured the imagination of architects. The software is a powerful tool, but one that should be integrated into ongoing discussions of architectural image making, technology, representation, bias, education, and labor. AN gathered Kory Bieg, Shelby Doyle, and Andrew Kudless to discuss these issues. The Architect’s Newspaper: To start, could you

In the warm night sky above Budapest, a fleet of drones spelled “GRAPHISOFT” as the software company celebrated its 40th anniversary. At Graphisoft Park—the company’s headquarters in Buda—attendees gathered outside with Aperol spritzes before CEO Huw Roberts took the stage. Roberts was joined by founder Gábor Bojár and chairman of the board and former CEO

Lake|Flato Architects, a Lone Star State firm lauded for its enthusiastic embrace of sustainable design practices and emerging building technologies, is going full-on modular in partnership with a just-announced prefab homebuilding venture named HiFAB. Launched by Dallas-based real estate development and investment firm Oaxaca Interests, HiFAB recently debuted its studio and manufacturing… Read More… The

HANNAH, an Architectural League Prize–winning experimental design and research studio led by Cornell University assistant professors of architecture Leslie Lok and Sasa Zivkovic, has announced that construction work is underway in Houston on a story-story, 4,000-square-foot single-family home that, when completed, will stand as the first 3D-printed multistory structure in the United States. Serving as

SoFi Stadium, host venue of Super Bowl LVI and anchoring site of the 2028 Summer Olympics, is getting a flashy new neighbor at Hollywood Park, the burgeoning behemoth of an entertainment complex-slash-mixed-use development located at the old Hollywood Park racetrack near Los Angeles International Airport in Inglewood, California. As recently announced, Cosm, a global experiential

Montana, the first state to debut a luge track and send a woman to Congress, can now claim a new and somewhat unexpected first: the first state to give broad regulatory approval to the use of 3D-printed walls in new construction in lieu of concrete masonry units (CMUs) or standard cored concrete blocks. As reported

The following editorial from Aki Ishida kicks off the Focus section of the July/August 2022 edition of The Architect’s Newspaper, which showcases the latest and greatest innovations in glass. You can view the entire section, complete with product roundups and case studies, in full here. In recent decades, technological advancements in chemical coating, structural engineering,

There is a new craze in town. Recently, designers have been typing prompts into a diffusion-based artificial intelligence (AI) platform and waiting for images of never-before-seen buildings, logos, products, and more to materialize within seconds. Platforms like Midjourney are built on data sets of billions of existing images scraped from the web. In this vast

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