Full Width 
Shortcuts 
Sign Up 
Log In 
Articles 
Reading List More from BLDGBLOG
Slag heap debris on the English coast has apparently been fusing into a new kind of sedimentary rock. A team of geologists studying the beach recently “found a series of outcrops made from an unfamiliar type of sedimentary rock. The beach used to be sandy, so the rock must have been a recent addition. It … Continue reading "geo/acc"
You’ve likely already seen the large complex of buildings in Shanghai that was picked up as a single block and walked to an adjacent site by a phalanx of miniature robots. Then walked back into place again. The 432 individual machines used for the move were “actually omnidirectional modular hydraulic jacks that are capable of … Continue reading "Architectural Dressage"
I find landfill chemistry weirdly fascinating, particularly the idea that untold millions of tons of garbage being stored in giant, artificial landforms—or simply buried underground like false geological deposits—might be inadvertently catalyzing chemical processes we neither understand nor know how to stop. I was thus excited to see a long investigation of this topic in … Continue reading "Uncontrolled Remains"
Recently, I’ve been looking back at a collaborative project with John Becker of WROT Studio. The “Institute for Controlled Speleogenesis” (2014) was a fictional design project we originally set in the vast limestone province of Australia’s Nullarbor Plain. [Image: A rock-acid drip-irrigation hub for the “Institute for Controlled Speleogenesis,” a collaboration between BLDGBLOG and WROT … Continue reading "Institute for Controlled Speleogenesis"
More in architecture
A few weeks ago, The Economist looked at the growing problem of “ubiquitous technical surveillance” in the field of espionage. It describes the difficulty of maintaining a rigorous or believable cover story, for example, when genealogy websites might be consulted by adversarial border agents to verify that a potential spy is who she says she … Continue reading "Seer"
Slag heap debris on the English coast has apparently been fusing into a new kind of sedimentary rock. A team of geologists studying the beach recently “found a series of outcrops made from an unfamiliar type of sedimentary rock. The beach used to be sandy, so the rock must have been a recent addition. It … Continue reading "geo/acc"
Chinese shipbuilding, air quality around the world, construction equipment automation, a worldwide map of lightning strikes, and more.
Local leaders continue to hold on to outdated assumptions about what the city is and could become.
