James Coleman currently acts as Vice President of Innovation at A. Zahner Company, a company that specializes in computational fabrication and mass customization at an architectural scale. He is involved in the production of 100,000s of unique parts for large-scale projects as a digital design and manufacturing specialist. James holds master’s degrees in both architecture

Dr. Badri Hiriyur is the founder and CEO of T2D2. Prior to this role, he was the Director of AI at Thornton Tomasetti – a global leader in structural engineering and forensics. At Thornton Tomasetti, Dr. Hiriyur focused on developing applications leveraging AI and ML to transform workflows and processes in the AEC sector. Dr.

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

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

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

In the last few years, 3D printing has become an increasingly plausible construction technique for the building industry thanks to the innovations of companies like ICON, a Texas-based robotics and advanced materials startup. This year alone, ICON has developed a house with Lake|Flato Architects, a mass-market development with real estate developer 3Strands, and collaborated with

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and Texan robotics and advanced materials company ICON have revealed their latest collaboration, the 3D-printed Mars Dune Alpha. The experimental habitat will be used by NASA to simulate long-term missions to Mars and document the effects on participants. As part of the space agency’s Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA)

A freestanding, unreinforced pedestrian bridge built from 53 3D-printed concrete blocks is now open for leisurely foot traffic in Venice. Although Striatus doesn’t carry pedestrians over one of the city’s famed canals, this first-of-its-kind structure is now open for park-bound traversing at the leafy Giardino della Marinaressa during the run of the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale. The roughly 40-by-52-foot arched footbridge was

ICON, the Texas-based robotics and advanced materials construction company with lunar ambitions, has announced a new series of (earthbound) 3D-printed homes designed in collaboration with a slew of top architects. San Antonio- and Austin-based Lake|Flato Architects is the first to be tapped for the so-called Exploration Series, which according to ICON, will “develop new design languages and architectural vernaculars” with collaborating architects

The theme of this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, still on track to open on May 22, asks attendees and observers, How will we live together? For Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), that answer appears to be “on the moon,” as the multinational design juggernaut will bring its Moon Village to Venice’s Arsenale. For the Life Beyond Earth exhibition, SOM and the European Space

Just an hour east of the first mass-produced suburb in the United States, a new model of affordable, quick-to-build housing has been realized—and is now for sale—in the town of Riverhead on Long Island’s North Shore. Boasting three bedrooms, two full bathrooms, and a spacious open floor plan, the suburban New York home in question

Since 1981, the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture, or ACADIA, has held conferences at academic institutions throughout North America, bringing together a network of designers, researchers, and practitioners under a single roof. That wasn’t an option for ACADIA 2020—the 40th conference in the series—and the reality of social distancing is reflected right in

Two years after the Alphabet-owned Waymo launched a limited self-driving taxi service in the Metro Phoenix, Arizona, area (and two years after people started attacking the autonomous cars), the company has kicked off a fully driverless car service in and around Phoenix. Whereas in 2018 passengers would be assuaged by the site of a human

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

There was a time when the internet, then new, and untested, was widely welcomed as a revolutionary technology that promised to alleviate—even fix—many of the evils then affecting late modern societies. That brief, juvenile spell was followed by almost 20 years of remorse and misgivings: from the early 2000s to this past month the internet,

The Pavillon de L’Arsenal (Arsenal Pavilion), an exhibition space dedicated to architecture and urbanism in the 4th arrondissement of Paris, is currently closed to the public to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. One of its current main exhibitions, however, seems to have been born for the internet in anticipation of the pandemic. Artificial Intelligence

Every so often, the field of architecture is presented with what is hailed as the next “miracle building material.” Concrete enabled the expansion of the Roman Empire, steel densified cities to previously unthinkable heights, and plastic reconstituted the architectural interior and the building economy along with it. But it would be reasonable to question why

On February 6, The TECH+ Expo transformed the second floor of Los Angeles’s Line Hotel into a showcase of the latest innovations in architectural technology. But rather than exhibiting 3D printers, robot arms, and brick-laying drones, the conference highlighted products designed to streamline design research, project delivery, and the architect-to-client relationship. Chief executive officer of BQE Software, Steven Burns, provided

Yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Toyota and BIG unveiled a new concept for a high-tech “Woven City” to be built at the car maker’s 175-acre former factory site at the foothills of Mount Fuji, in Japan. “In Higashi-Fuji, Japan, we have decided to build a prototype town of the future where

The presentations and activities at this year’s ACADIA (Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture) conference gave attendees a glimpse of potentially disruptive technologies and workflows for computational architectural production. The conference was held this year in Austin from October 12 through 14 and was organized by The University of Texas School of Architecture faculty members Kory Bieg, Danelle Briscoe, and

There have been many uses proposed for drones: photography and videography, certainly; package delivery, and aerial 3D mapping. Now, researchers at the University of Michigan have proposed yet another possibility for these scaled-down aircraft—as flying nailguns. While the FAA may have banned people from attaching flamethrowers to their octocopters, U of M researchers say the

In Tallinn, Estonia, a knotted wooden structure that combines both new and old technology has won the Huts and Habitats award at the Tallinn Architecture Biennale. Curated by Yael Reisner under the theme “Beauty Matters,” the biennale seeks to celebrate the beauty in opposition to architectural environs that can often be isolating, alienating, and ecologically

This May, designer Jou Doucet x Partners, working with the Times Square Design Lab (TSqDL), debuted a 3D-printed concrete alternative to the now-common heavy concrete planters, bollards, and more traditional “Jersey” barriers that surround public places and prominent buildings across the country. Anti-terror street furniture is the often ugly urban peripheral that plugs into our

For the Origen Festival in Riom, Switzerland students in the Masters of Advanced Studies in Architecture and Digital Fabrication program at ETH Zurich, guided by researcher Ana Anton, 3D printed nine unique, computationally-designed columns with a new layered extrusion printing process developed at the university over the past year and a half. ETH students and

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

Since Dutch designer Iris van Herpen opened her eponymous atelier in 2007, the brand has become the face of high-tech fashion. Often the first to embrace new technologies like laser cutting and 3D printing in her fluid and futuristic forms, van Herpen has designed pieces worn by the likes of Solange and Rihanna, and, on the

Exhibit Columbus, the annual celebration of mid-century and contemporary design in Columbus, Indiana, will be showing off new possibilities of materials that unify support and envelope. This August,  two of the festival’s six University Design Research Fellows will present this work as part of a brand new fellowship program.  Marshall Prado, a professor at the

What if we could “breed” buildings to be more efficient? That’s the provocation by artist, designer, and programmer Joel Simon, who was inspired by the potentials of 3D printing and other emergent digital manufacturing technologies, as well as his background in computer science and biology, to test a system of automated planning. With a series

Level 3, number 203. Turn right 10 feet. Go straight for 15 feet. The best way to experience data’s strong grip on everyday life in China is to open up Baidu Maps, a mapping app by China’s biggest search engine company, and walk around a shopping mall for one afternoon. Inside the building, a network