Tag: technology | ArchDaily

Movement as a Design Principle for Workplace Seating

Rene Submissions — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 06:04:12 +0000

For decades, professionals have accepted an uncomfortable reality: hours spent at a desk often result in stiff backs, constant shifting, and creeping mental fatigue. While conventional ergonomic seating has sought to improve comfort through adjustable mechanisms, it has largely continued to assume that effective sitting depends on maintaining a stable posture. Growing understanding of the relationship between movement, physical well-being, and cognitive performance suggests a different approach, one in which motion becomes an integral part of the seating experience rather than something to be minimized.

From Waste to Wall: Sugarcane Bagasse as Low-Carbon Building Material

Agustina Iñiguez — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 07:30:00 +0000

From acoustic and thermal cladding systems to masonry units and textiles made from agricultural waste, experimentation with bio-based materials continues to drive sustainable solutions for the construction industry. Faced with the urgent need to rethink how we conceive of and interact with the materials that shape the built environment, professionals, researchers, and educators are addressing different design scales and project phases, recognizing the importance of reducing carbon emissions and the industry's environmental impact. In partnership with Bagaceira Project, the Sugarcrete® acoustic and thermal panel prototype, developed by the University of East London (UEL), demonstrates how low-carbon design can transform agricultural waste into high-performance building materials.

Why Software Adoption Fails Without Enablement

Eduardo Souza — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 06:45:00 +0000

Moving from the drafting table to the computer screen, the digitization of drawings and documentation marked the first phase of digital transformation in architecture firms. The second introduced BIM, connecting project information through cloud platforms and collaborative workflows. Nowadays, a new phase is emerging, defined by artificial intelligence, automation, and more specialized software ecosystems. The paradox is that while previous phases were dominated by a small number of tools, today's landscape offers an abundance of highly specialized, AI-enabled, and often overlapping solutions competing for attention. While purchasing new software is often the easiest part of digital transformation, the greater challenge lies in changing established workflows and behaviors, which is why many new tools struggle to achieve lasting adoption.

Building on the Moon: NASA's Architectural Strategy for Permanent Lunar Habitation

Moises Carrasco — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0000

After Artemis II's return to Earth, NASA unveiled a new phased plan to establish a Moon Base. Although most of the media's attention went to rockets, budgets, and geopolitical competition, a quieter question was lingering for architects in the background: How can a human being actually live on the surface of the Moon, and for how long? The establishment of a permanent human presence on the Moon marks a fundamental shift in space exploration that requires a new architectural paradigm. In their presentation, NASA officials suggested the strategy would drift away from highly constrained, vehicle-dependent environments toward autonomous, site-adaptive, and eventually permanently habitable structures.

Why Information Continuity Matters in Contemporary Architecture

Eduardo Souza — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 06:45:00 +0000

Unlike many other activities that now take place entirely in digital environments, the final result of work in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry does not remain on a screen. Files become buildings, models transform into structures, and decisions made during the design process ultimately shape streets, neighborhoods, and entire cities. A building often lasts for decades, sometimes centuries, and the impacts of the choices made during its development extend far beyond the moment of delivery, influencing the daily lives of thousands of people.

Designing with Sound: How Audio Shapes Residential Architecture

Kiana Buchberger — Wed, 13 May 2026 06:45:00 +0000

What defines the atmosphere of a home? Beyond material palettes and natural light, sound plays a defining role in how spaces are perceived and inhabited. The reverberation of footsteps across stone, the muted calm of a textile-lined room, or the way music carries through an open-plan interior all shape the sensory identity of domestic space. Architecture is experienced not only visually, but acoustically.

Designing for Obsolescence in an Age of Perpetual Upgrades

Eduardo Souza — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 07:30:00 +0000

In the nineteenth century, entire railway networks became obsolete almost overnight, not due to physical deterioration, but because of changes in the technical standards that supported them. The expansion of railroads across Europe and North America adopted different track gauges (the transverse distance between rails), and as a dominant standard gradually emerged, these infrastructures became incompatible with one another. This required large-scale adaptations, conversions, or even complete reconstruction, in what became known as the "Gauge War."

Architects Office Designs World Trade Center Biotic Mixed-Use Complex in Brasília’s Parque Tecnológico

Reyyan Dogan — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 06:30:00 +0000

Located within the Parque Tecnológico de Brasília, the World Trade Center Biotic is a mixed-use development designed by Brazilian studio Architects Office as part of the district's broader urban expansion. The project is part of the master plan developed in 2020 by Carlo Ratti Associati and is currently being developed. Conceived as a multi-program complex, the proposal brings together offices, residential units, a hotel, retail spaces, and shared facilities within a single urban framework. The project occupies a site of approximately 70,000 square meters and is planned to reach about 180,000 square meters of built area, with an estimated 150,000 square meters expected to be completed by 2030.

From Cloud to Coast: The Physical Cost of AI in Hong Kong’s Borderlands

Jonathan Yeung — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 07:30:00 +0000

Amid the rapid build-out of data centres and AI economies across the Greater Bay Area—and alongside the celebration of AI as a tool and "author," as featured in 2025 Hong Kong–Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (Hong Kong)—a parallel question becomes unavoidable: how do the planning and construction of AI infrastructure actually begin to shape everyday life? Many of the facilities already built remain intentionally distant from daily experience. The "cloud" may be marketed as immaterial, but its architecture is profoundly physical: high-power, high-heat, service-heavy environments that are often sited in remote or low-density areas to take advantage of lower land costs and to minimize friction with nearby communities. Security and risk management further reinforce this logic. Data centres hold sensitive, privileged information—corporate assets, legal records, government and institutional data—and remoteness becomes part of their operating model, keeping the infrastructures of AI both spatially and socially out of sight.

Gateway in Lunar Orbit: Extending Architecture Beyond Earth

Moises Carrasco — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 04:00:00 +0000

The concept of the technosphere provides a framework for understanding the scale of human impact on Earth. The term was coined by Peter K. Haff, and it is defined as the global network of human-made artifacts: a physical layer of infrastructure, buildings, vehicles, and machinery that functions alongside the biosphere and atmosphere. Currently estimated at 30 trillion tons, this human-constructed mass is dominated by the built environment. In this context, architecture serves as the primary interface, shaping how technology interacts with local ecologies. However, it seems that soon, the Technosphere will no longer be confined to the terrestrial surface. Through NASA's Artemis program, this network of human-made mass is expanding beyond Earth's atmosphere and is looking to establish new orbital infrastructure that represents the first permanent off-world extension of this man-made system.

Facing the Age of Robots? Material Innovation in Architectural Structures

Agustina Iñiguez — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 07:30:00 +0000

By exploring the art of robotics in construction, advances in architectural technologies are increasingly shaping multiple aspects of human life. From robotic arms and drones to robots that move across large surfaces and even 3D printing robots, their use in construction is accelerating research and the development of new working methods, as well as structural and material experimentation. In collaboration with multiple disciplines and spanning various facets of architecture, the role of robots in the contemporary landscape demonstrates a potential that extends beyond merely automating processes or reducing construction times and costs. This raises the question: Are we building architecture to serve technology, or technology to serve architecture?

Making Infrastructure Visible: When Systems Become Architecture

Daniela Andino — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 04:00:00 +0000

For centuries, large-scale infrastructure operated in the background. Ports, power plants, and energy facilities were positioned at the edges of cities, designed primarily for efficiency, and rarely considered part of civic life. Their function was indispensable, yet their architectural presence remained secondary. These structures supported urban growth and global exchange while maintaining a spatial distance from everyday urban experience.

Archiving the Technosphere: How Museum Architecture Mediates Human-Made Systems

Susanna Moreira — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 08:30:00 +0000

Far from the perception of the exhibition space as a sterile and untouchable, almost sacred place, the contemporary technology museum has emerged as a performative participant in the systems it seeks to document. The architecture of these institutions has become increasingly fluid and bold, often mirroring the velocity and complexity of the systems it houses. They operate as mediators between the human, the ecological, and the technological realms, transforming from encyclopedic warehouses into active educational engines. By spatializing complex scientific data through immersive rooms, these structures make the technological networks of our world accessible, engaging, and tangible.

The Technosphere: ArchDaily’s March Editorial Focus

Romullo Baratto — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000

How heavy is a house? In his 1965 essay A Home Is Not a House, Reyner Banham observed that modern American dwellings were becoming structurally lighter while growing heavier in mechanical services, such as plumbing, wiring, heating, and cooling. The true weight of architecture, he argued, was no longer in walls and roofs, but in the energy-intensive systems that sustained comfort.

Architecture as a Platform: What Makes a Building Evolve?

Ankitha Gattupalli — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Not long ago, recent enough to feel current, architecture entered a moment in which buildings became legible as products. The framing offered discipline and a refreshed perspective to an industry that often deems novelty more precious than operational clarity. Nudging exercises of "form" towards repeatability, user experience, performance, and scalability prepared buildings to be a "product" that could now be evaluated. Architecture is more answerable to how well it works, how clearly it communicates its use, and how consistently it delivers its intended experience.

MVRDV Begins Construction on the EU TUMO Convergence Center in Yerevan, Armenia

Reyyan Dogan — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 07:30:00 +0000

MVRDV has started construction on the EU TUMO Convergence Center, a new educational and research facility in Yerevan, Armenia. Located in Tumanyan Park, the five-story building will expand TUMO's campus, providing spaces for free technology and creative education for teenagers and adults, alongside research and co-working areas for technology and design companies. Positioned on a hilly outcrop above the Hrazdan River Gorge, the project responds to the surrounding topography while establishing visual connections with the city, the gorge, and Mount Ararat. Construction officially commenced on 24 February, with local and international representatives in attendance.

ATN Summit 2026: From an Online Platform to a New Architecture and Technology Conference

Rene Submissions — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 07:45:00 +0000

Founded by Oliver Thomas, the ATN Summit is the first flagship conference of the Archi-Tech Network, marking five years since the platform began as a grassroots initiative to share real-world architectural knowledge. Taking place on March 18–19, 2026, in London, the ATN Summit brings together architects, technologists, and industry innovators to explore how emerging technologies are reshaping architectural practice. Designed as a high-production, ideas-driven event, the Summit reflects ATN's evolution from an informal online conversation into a global platform actively engaging with the future of the built environment.

Indigenous Materials Towards an African Modernity: An Interview with Worofila

Romullo Baratto — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Founded by Senegalese architect Nzinga Mboup and French architect Nicolas Rondet, Worofila is a studio dedicated to bioclimatic and ecological architecture. Based in Dakar, Senegal, the firm explores the potential of vernacular materials like earth bricks and typha, applying modern techniques to create effective construction solutions. Their work addresses key issues of the environment, sustainability, and urbanization, merging traditional materials with innovative practices.