Canton, Mass.–based coffee chain Dunkin' Donuts has built a mobile tiny house that is entirely powered by biofuel—made of 80 percent oil extracted from used Dunkin' coffee grounds and 20 percent alcohol (to make the fuel burn). Constructed in a partnership with Nashville, Tenn.–based tiny house design/build firm New Frontier Tiny Homes and Seattle-based Blue Marble Biomaterials in three months, the tiny house provides an example of how waste can be converted to fuel. The tiny house is currently sitting on a lot in Nahat, Mass., and is available to rent via Airbnb until Oct. 30. [Dunkin' Donuts]
During its annual Year in Infrastructure Conference, held Oct. 15–18 in London, Exton, Pa.–based AEC software company Bentley Systems announced the acquisition of London-based pedestrian simulation and modeling software, Legion. Suitable for use in large-scale urban planning, architecture, and transportation projects, Legion can simulate pedestrian's activities (including circulation and evacuation behavior), and interactions with physical obstacles within public spaces such as metro and railway stations, airports, and stadiums. Using Legion simulation tools with Bentley's OpenBuildings Designer (formerly AECOsim Building Designer), architects and engineers can develop design alternatives that includes pedestrian activities and journeys to and from public spaces, according to a press release.
In a collaboration with the Frank Lloyd wright Foundation, Spanish architect David Romero has created 3D visualizations of a selection of Frank Lloyd Wright's unbuilt works, using Autodesk's AutoCAD and 3ds Max software, with the RailClone plugin. These photorealisitic visualizations depict Wright's Gordon Strong Automobile Objective (a tourist destination designed in 1924 to be built in the Sugarloaf Mountains in Maryland), the Roy Wetmore Car Repair and Showroom (designed in 1947 to be built in Detroit), and the Butterfly Wing Bridge and Valley National Bank (designed in 1949 to be located in San Francisco). Romero also used historical context, Wright's built structures, and each project's designated location to create the renderings. These images will be published in the upcoming issue of the foundation's quarterly magazine. [Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation]
The first tunnel is almost done
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 22, 2018
Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced in a tweet on Sunday that the first tunnel of a proposed high-speed, underground public transportation system in Los Angeles could open as soon as Dec. 10. Located below the city of Hawthorne in the south west of Los Angeles County, Calif., this test tunnel could transport passengers, bicyclists, and vehicles at speeds of up to 150 miles per hour from the SpaceX's property across the 120th St. for about 2 miles. [Los Angeles Times]
In our latest Mind & Matter column, Blaine Brownell, AIA, looks into possibilities of designing structures that could improve under environmental stressors. Exploring examples of antifragile building materials and systems, such as MIT's self-healing plastic, Brownell concludes that such achievement would require architecture to become "more receptive to change," and society to overcome "deeply ingrained associations of buildings as static, unchanging objects." [ARCHITECT]
