News — building

How to print a building: the science behind 3D printing in construction Building sites are going to look a bit different, in the future. Shutterstock. Seyed Ghaffar, Brunel University London It’s often claimed that 3D printing – known in the trade as “additive manufacturing” – will change the way we live. Most recently, a team from Eindhoven University of Technology announced plans to build the “world’s first” habitable 3D printed houses. But it’s one thing to build small, prototype homes in a park – it’s quite another to successfully use additive manufacturing for large scale projects in the construction sector....

5 ways to future-proof a building  Get your daily dose of good news from Grist Subscribe To The Beacon Ever since workers strung the wires of the first electrical grid in 1882, buildings have been gobbling up energy. But what if that relationship were upended so that buildings fitted with solar panels produced more electricity than they consumed? Turns out, that’s already well underway: The number of buildings constructed so ingeniously that they sometimes feed energy to the grid has nearly doubled in the last two years. The nonprofit New Buildings Institute keeps a list of these “zero energy” offices, schools, and libraries. In 2018,...

Will LA start building public housing again? Proposed legislation calls on city staffers to study European models for social housing and how they might be brought to Los Angeles Government-owned housing that would serve a mix of incomes could help LA crawl out of its deepening affordability crisis, says Los Angeles City Councilmember Mike Bonin, who announced a broad package of housing legislation at City Hall today. The Westside councilmember introduced what he’s billing as a local version of the “Homes Guarantee,” a national platform advanced by progressive housing advocates and Democratic Socialists to make housing a right. “We need to be,...

Wuhan to build second hospital for those infected in 15 days Excavators and bulldozers on Friday at a construction site on the outskirts of Wuhan where a hospital is being built to treat patients affected by the new coronavirus. It is due to be completed by Feb 3. A second dedicated hospital to treat such patients is also in the works. PHOTO: REUTERS BEIJING • China's Wuhan city will build a second dedicated hospital to treat patients affected by the novel coronavirus, the state-run People's Daily reported, a day after announcing the first one. Construction of the hospital, designed to have...

Change in Construction Materials Could Transform Buildings Into a Global CO2 Sink Buildings can become a global CO2 sink if made out of wood instead of cement and steel. A material revolution replacing cement and steel in urban construction by wood can have double benefits for climate stabilization, a new study shows. First, it can avoid greenhouse gas emissions from cement and steel production. Second, it can turn buildings into a carbon sink as they store the CO2 taken up from the air by trees that are harvested and used as engineered timber. However, while the required amount of timber harvest...