The new KUKA|prc plugin for Grasshopper enables architects working with Rhinoceros to program for robot controllers.
Good morning, architects. Tim Maly previews the Rob|Arch 2012 conference, a workshop by the Association for Robots in Architecture that is winding up today in Vienna. As the Wired article explains, the conference assembles designers who build robots that, in turn, can build structures. To help speed the creation and development of architecture robots, Association for Robots in Architecture co-founders Sigrid Brell-Cokcan and Johannes Braumann recently released KUKA|prc, a "parametric robot controller plugin for Grasshopper" that almost surely will not contribute to any sort of self-assembling robot uprising.
HIGHER AND HIGHER. In The Wall Street Journal, Eliot Brown reports that a skyscraper planned for Midtown in Manhattan could rise higher than the Empire State Building. According to Brown, Extell Development has hired Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill to design a tower for Midtown over the Nordstrom department store. That's the firm you hire when you want to go high, and the proposed building would do exactly that, rising 1,550 feet into the sky—taller than the Empire State Building and falling only short of 1 WTC due to its high spire.
CHARM CITY. More than a dozen Baltimore architecture firms are hiring, according to Carol Proctor, research director for the Baltimore Business Journal.
ARCHITECTS AND MISERS. In a book roundup for The New York Times, Sam Roberts spares a blurb for Ralph Walker: Architect of the Century (Rizzoli, $50) by Kathryn Holliday, and mentions a couple other architecture-themed books. Janet Wallach's The Richest Woman in America (Nan A. Talese, $27.95) has nothing to do with architecture, but it sounds compelling all the same.
...AND REMAINDERS. The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation remembers Cornelia Brierly, who died in August... Boston Architectural College completes a big renovation and expansion project... Aggregated dodecahedrons make up one design for the Helsinki Library... Another design for the Helsinki Library is altogether more menacing.
