Innovation

First free-form 3D-printed house could be completed this year Dive Brief: Tennessee construction tech firm Branch Technology expects to break ground soon on what it claims is the world’s first free-form, 3D-printed house and is planning to deliver the project before the end of the year, The Architect’s Newspaper reported.  Architectural firm Wimberly, Allison, Tong & Goo's Curve Appeal design won Branch's 2016 Freeform Home Design Challenge, which invited firms to submit proposals for a house made with Branch’s C-FAB (cellular fabrication) technology. Curve Appeal will be built on a lot in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and crews will use approximately 100 pieces of printed carbon-fiber-reinforced ABS...

How building information modeling is optimizing construction Building Information Modeling (BIM) has driven a multibillion dollar paradigm shift in construction strategies, allowing firms working in every sector of the industry to build more intelligently and more efficiently. As a result of BIM, design teams, contractors and clients are collaborating more than ever before, using the same sets of information to communicate more effectively and avoid confusion throughout construction. The technology has become widely adopted around the world. But how is BIM doing all of this, and what does it mean for data center construction? The billion-dollar question; what is BIM?...

Online building construction app iBuild launched in Kenya Kenya-based International Corporation, iBUILD, with global headquarters in Washington, DC, has launched its mobile- enabled construction platform in Kenya. The company, which began its first testing in the country in 2017, is now fully launching nationally into the open building and construction market. Kenya will be the first full market launch and iBUILD hopes that the country will demonstrate strong leadership in how civil society can address the dearth of affordable housing and lack of residential construction activity. This is achievable through providing an empowering marketplace with the ability for ‘fundis’ (masons) to...

Urban Mining & Recycling The Urban Mining & Recycling unit demonstrates how a responsible approach to dealing with our natural resources can go hand in hand with appealing architectural form. The project is underpinned by the proposition that all the resources required to construct a building must be fully reusable, recyclable or compostable.  This places life-cycle thinking at the forefront of the building design created by Werner Sobek in collaboration with Dirk E. Hebel and Felix Heisel: Instead of merely using and subsequently disposing of resources, they are borrowed from their technical and biological cycles for a certain amount of...

Potato peels offer a sustainable alternative to traditional building materials Many of the typical building materials used in construction — like medium-density fiberboard (MDF) — contain toxic materials and formaldehyde, plus they have a shockingly short lifespan and a negative environmental impact. But now there is a new option to these single-use materials — potato waste. London-based designers Rowan Minkley and Robert Nicoll as well as research scientist Greg Cooper have developed Chip[s] Board, which is a biodegradable alternative to MDF that is made from non-food-grade industrial potato waste. This innovative idea for a new building material is free of...