Parametric modeling is best known as the technology empowering the nimble geometric feats of many contemporary architects. This new generation of architecture is so reliant upon parametric modeling that designers like Patrik Schumacher, the director of Zaha Hadid Architects, argues that it constitutes “the great new style after modernism.” By his reasoning, and the reasoning of others, parametric modeling is enabling an entirely new type of architecture.Despite the exuberance, the building industry has been quietly struggling with parametric modeling. In practice, the models are difficult to produce and they often break. The breakages most commonly occur when the project’s design
Map Courtesy of Detroit Blight Task Force Green squares denote parcels for which surveys are complete, gold squares are partially done, and purple squares are still to be done. Video by the Skillman Foundation A video from the Skillman Foundation on the Motor City Mapping initiative. Related Links: Detroit Makeover Gearing Up to Tear Down Old Structures Blog Post on Blexting from Hell Yeah, Detroit! Battling Blight: Detroit Maps Entire City To Find Bad Buildings Detroit is charting a plan to fight the blight that has plagued it for years, starting with a highly detailed map of the city itself.Two
Related Links: See Cover story: Robots on the Jobsite Advancing in Construction The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation? "While technological progress throughout economic history has largely been confined to the mechanisation of manual tasks, requiring physical labour, technological progress in the twenty-first century can be expected to contribute to a wide range of cognitive tasks, which, until now, have largely remained a human domain," write Frey and Osborne. As their paper lays out, jobs associated with hard, physical labor have been mechanized for centuries, with several notable shifts during the Industrial Revolution. Advances in the power
On a sunny day late last December on the track of the Homestead Miami Speedway in Florida, humanoid robots representing 16 teams from around the world opened doors, turned valves, cut through walls, struggled to climb ladders and drove all-terrain vehicles.
Courtesy National Corvette Museum The sinkhole swallowed eight priceless 'Vettes, including two on loan from General Motors. YouTube Watch a camera drone survey the damage. Related Links: Sinkhole Collapses Part of Corvette Museum in Ky. Sinkhole Hits National Corvette Museum Engineers probing the cause of a massive sinkhole that formed underneath the National Corvette Museum and swallowed eight rare cars have mobilized helicopter drones as a key inspection tool, underscoring the importance of the emerging technology in construction forensics."There is a cave that they have found in there with the drones," Katie Frassinelli, a spokeswoman with the Bowling Green, Ky.-based
Related Links: Electronic Stability Control System Rule State DOTs Focus on MAP-21 Policy Changes, and Next Transport Bill Under the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21), the Federal Highway Administration's is promoting state-of-the-art technology, such as 3D modeling, by awarding up to 5% additional federal project funding to state transportation departments that use the technology. Other programs under the law require state departments of transportation to have an approved highway asset management plan in place."Using innovative technology can take the project from 95% to 100% federal funding," says Steven Stanfill, business development manager, civil engineering, Autodesk
A fleet-tracking company's new plug-and-play vehicle-monitoring device delivers detailed engine-use and driver-behavior reports to a cloud server and at lower costs than the competition.“I’ve seen a 25% increase in labor productivity and a 25% decrease in fuel consumption since using the device,” says Chris Parisis, president of CG Appliances, San Francisco. He says he chose Azuga’s G2 vehicle-tracking technology because it was plug-and-play.“A lot of our workers lease trucks. [Using the G2] we don’t have to spend $750 installing a vehicle-monitoring device on every one,” he says. The device plugs into a vehicle’s OBDII port under the steering column and
The building industry is divided into two separate, but equally important groups: property owners who make investment decisions and AEC professionals who turn concepts into reality. For the longest time, these disparate factions have relied on one another to drive development, but despite their alignment of goals, challenges arise due to their different languages and scopes of work. At the AEC Hackathon last October in San Francisco, there were a lot of interesting approaches on how to solve problems faced by building industry professionals. One in particular dealt with “hacking the process,” essentially working to develop a framework which encapsulates
Related Links: EarthCam ePlanIt OxBlue Elevated Lens Photography photoSentinal Radiusvision OnsiteView iBEAM Construction Cameras AGC discussion on JobCams 26 Gigapixel image of Paris Jobsite cameras take scheduled photos from static positions and stream them to private users or public websites, stringing together the images as movies of projects going up or to archive for later use. While the cameras are a hit with developers and marketers of high-end residential buildings and flagship projects, they are becoming a general construction staple, written into specs from the start, say users and vendors.Sources also say the range of job-cam uses and paybacks is
Mobility and collaboration tools went from nice-to-have to a must-have technology in 2013, as more owners expected contractors to deploy the smartest use of produtivity tools on jobs and jobsites.This year, more companies — especially contractors and general contractors — opened their wallets to investments in mobility and collaboration tools that help them communicate more quickly on a project, and share documents across far-flung project teams.Research and surveys of contractors and subcontractors highlighted the shift. For example, McGraw Hill Construction found that mobility tools such as tablets and cloud services are yielding investment benefits for contractors and specialty contractors. But
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