Yesterday, Boston-based autonomous vehicle technology company Optimus Ride announced a new partnership with real estate company Brookfield Properties to introduce Optimus Ride's self-driving vehicles to Brookfield properties around the world. The first location will be the 36-acre Halley Rise mixed-use development near Reston, Va., where, beginning in June, Optimus Ride will introduce three vehicles to transport tenants from their offices to parking lots around the site. According to a press release, an on-site operations team will provide maintenance and oversight of the vehicles. [Optimus Ride]
This week, the U.S. Green Building Council released its ninth annual list of the Top 10 states with the most LEED-certified projects per capita. Topping the 2018 list is Illinois, which certified 172 green building projects, an equivalent of 5.31 square feet of space per resident. [ARCHITECT]
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania (U Penn), the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and the University of Cambridge, in England, have developed a porous "metallic wood" material made of nickel that is as strong as titanium, but four times as light. "The reason we call it metallic wood is not just its density, which is about that of wood, but its cellular nature,” said study lead and U Penn engineering assistant professor James Pikul. “Cellular materials are porous; if you look at wood grain, that’s what you’re seeing—parts that are thick and dense and made to hold the structure, and parts that are porous and made to support biological functions, like transport to and from cells.” [University of Pennsylvania]
ARCHITECT contributor Aaron Betsky ponders the role of structure and material research in architecture ahead of Exhibit Columbus. [ARCHITECT]
Polish physicist Olga Malinkiewicz has developed a new perovskite solar cell inkjet processing method, which allows for the creation of solar panels at much lower temperatures and at a significantly reduced cost. The resulting coating—which can be applied to buildings, spacecraft, cars, or even laptops—is light, flexible, and available in varying levels of transparency. [AFP]
International design platform What Design Can Do and the IKEA Foundation have shortlisted 57 projects from 452 entries for this year's Clean Energy Challenge, which focuses on site-specific issues in five major cities; waste management in Mexico City; transportation in São Paulo; food security in Nairobi, Kenya; clean urban landscape and beautification in Amsterdam; and buildings in New Delhi. Here are some that caught our eye. [ARCHITECT]
