As cities address climate change, they are looking at passive buildings and novel approaches to energy and heating.
Cities are being challenged to tackle climate change through net-zero strategies that include passive homes, geothermal heating, and more.
The Berlin Affordable Housing Challenge is part of Bee Breeders’ Affordable Housing competition series. Run in partnership with ARCHHIVE BOOKS, this competition tasked participants with submitting innovative design proposals for tackling Berlin’s housing crisis.
Germany’s new government, formed in 2021, has vowed to make affordable housing a centerpiece of its agenda. Berlin, the capital city and the country’s center of gravity for entrepreneurship and new business, is in particular feeling extreme housing market pressures. According to an article published by NPR during the period of this competition, eight out of 10 city residents are now renters, where rent has increased 42% since 2016, and where an average of 40,000 new residents arrive each year.
Meta, formerly Facebook, has said that its grand ambition of building the ultimate “metaverse” won’t be possible if there aren’t drastic improvements in today’s telecoms networks.
The metaverse is a buzzword that’s being hyped up as the next big thing in tech. Broadly speaking, the concept refers to a seamless virtual world where people can work, shop and play with their colleagues, friends and family.
Dan Rabinovitsj, VP of connectivity at Meta, told CNBC at the Mobile World Congress tech event Monday that home networks and cellular networks aren’t yet ready for the metaverse.
Designboom speaks with ICON and lake | flato after visiting the 3D printed ‘house zero.’ discover more from the architect and fabricator!
Fortescue begins construction of world’s biggest electrolyser factory, to double global production.
Fred Closter doesn’t like Florida Power & Light.
When the Boynton Beach retiree spent $24,000 to install solar panels on the roof of his Boynton Beach home a year ago, he decided not to rely on the utility to power his home when the panels weren’t generating electricity at night and when it rains.
So he dropped another $16,000 on two large lithium ion batteries made by Tesla that can power the home for up to a day and a half if his panels aren’t producing. If a hurricane or other severe storm with the potential to create power outages approaches, the Closters’ solar provider, SunPower, will remotely direct the system to charge their batteries so their power won’t be interrupted.
California-based Azure Printed Homes has announced intentions to construct 14 prefabricated 3D printed homes using recycled plastic. The homes will form part of a new housing development in Ridgecrest, California, led by Oasis Development.
The project will build on Azure’s existing production of backyard studios and ADUs, which it produces from its factory in Culver City, CA. The company claims that 3D printing their ADUs and studios from recycled plastic allows them to build the units 70% faster and with 30% fewer costs than traditional home construction methods.
“At healthy levels, worry can help us anticipate threats and prepare for the future,” says Rebecca C. Cox, the lead author of the research from the Department of Integrative Psychology, University of Colorado, Boulder. “Worry can become a cause for concern if the frequency or intensity of the worry is disproportionate to the source of the worry. If I’m so worried about an upcoming test that I can’t focus on studying, or I’m so frequently worried about storms that I don’t leave my house, then worry has crossed into a problematic range.”
According to previous research, in those with generalized anxiety disorder, worry may function to keep anxiety at a high but predictable level to avoid experiencing an unexpected shift in emotion.
To** **investigate this on a day-to-day level, Cox and her team asked participants to respond to daily survey prompts in the morning, afternoon, and evening to indicate how anxious they felt in that moment. This method, called ecological momentary assessment, is often employed by psychologists to measure emotions in real-time.
Rutgers professor Jason Barr has proposed adding 1,760-acres of reclaimed land, named New Mannahatta, to the tip of Manhattan to provide housing and combat climate change.
Called New Mannahatta in reference to the indigenous name for the island in New York, the plan would extend Manhattan Island into New York Harbor beyond the Statue of Liberty.
Barr, a professor of economics at Rutgers University, outlined his plan in an opinion piece directed at the city’s mayor Eric Adams, which was recently published in the New York Times.
This group appears to be doing its ‘bit’ for NEO identification and is always open to new members, check it out?
IAWN was established (2013) as a result of the UN-endorsed recommendations for an international response to a potential NEO impact threat, to create an international group of organizations involved in detecting, tracking, and characterizing NEOs. The IAWN is tasked with developing a strategy using well-defined communication plans and protocols to assist Governments in the analysis of asteroid impact consequences and in the planning of mitigation responses.
