Month: May 2024

Harrison Floyd is a student at Clemson who participated in the Digital Ecologies courses of Materializing Mathematics, Applied Mapping, Smart Materials and Kinetic Structures, and Designing Interactive Environments. The following are samples of his work.

Maurin is a student at Clemson who participated in the Digital Ecologies courses of Community 1:1, Pilot Study, Smart Materials and Kinetic Systems, and Extended Reality. The following are samples of Maurin’s work.

Yuting Lu is a student at Clemson who participated in the Digital Ecologies courses of Studio V, Digital Manufacturing Process, Smart Materials and Kinetic Structure, and Extended Reality. The following are samples of Lu’s work.

Marissa Cutry is a student at Clemson University who participated in the Digital Ecologies course of Smart Materials + Kinetic Structures, Applied Mapping, and Digital Manufacturing Process. The following are samples of her work.

Among the approaches of circular construction, the reuse of buildings is the most desirable as it leaves a large portion of embodied carbon untouched. At the same time, it also minimizes the energy effort of modifying, transporting, or reprocessing components. Above all, the load-bearing structure is the central aspect. It is the most durable, most existentially imperative, most spatially defining, and the most energy-intensive part of a building (Fivet 2019; Hopkinson et al. 2018). Globally, many buildings’ astonishingly short lifespan results from the design’s short-sightedness, not that of its materials. While load-bearing structures can often serve for decades, uses change much more quickly. “All buildings are predictions. All predictions are wrong,” concluded Brand in his influential study of how buildings change over time (Brand 1995).

Read more here.

Adaptable buildings are a vital part of circularity in the built environment. With long-term owners, defined sustainability goals, and frequently shifting programmatic and organizational needs, college campus buildings are positioned to be at the forefront of this movement. Many Design for Adaptability (DfA) strategies are published, but there is a scarcity of empirical evidence showing that they work. This study investigated whether these DfA features in US college campus buildings led to more adaptation and reuse. Data were collected on 26 adapted or demolished buildings and were analyzed using logistic analysis. The results suggest that DfA features lead to more adaptations, providing evidence for campus decision-makers that these strategies work.

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The upcoming issue of TECHNOLOGY | ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN (TAD) seeks submissions that critically investigate the potential of generative systems in the allied design fields.

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Smart roads with advanced vehicle-sensing capabilities could be the linchpin of future intelligent transportation systems and could even help extend driverless cars‘ perceptual range. A new approach that fuses camera and radar data can now track vehicles precisely at distances of up to 500 meters.

Real-time data on the flow and density of traffic can help city managers avoid congestion and prevent accidents. So-called “roadside perception,” which uses sensors and cameras to track vehicles, can help create smart roads that continually gather this information and relay it to control rooms.

Read more here.

Holographic images have real depth because they are three dimensional, whereas monitors merely simulate depth on a 2D screen. Because we see in three dimensions, holographic images could be integrated seamlessly into our normal view of the everyday world.

“Holography could make virtual and augmented reality displays easily usable, wearable, and ultrathin,” said Heide. They could transform how we interact with our environments, everything from getting directions while driving, to monitoring a patient during surgery, to accessing plumbing instructions while doing a home repair.

Read more here.

The NeuCyber Array BMI System, a self-developed brain-machine interface (BMI) system from China, was unveiled at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Zhongguancun Forum (ZGC Forum) on Thursday in Beijing.

At the forum, a video demonstration revealed a remarkable feat: a monkey with its hands restrained and soft electrode filaments implanted in its brain, controlled an isolated robotic arm and grasped a strawberry by simply using its “thoughts.”

Read more here.