London-based design consultancy PriestmanGoode unveiled its initial concept for the Hyperloop transportation system at the London Design Festival's "Please Don't Eat the Designers" installation, which is part of the larger Design Frontiers exhibition, displayed Sept. 18 to 24 at the Somerset House. For the program, PreistmanGoode temporarily moved part of its studio to the gallery in order to show "real designers—from visualizers to materials specialists—working on real projects, allowing visitors to engage with the creative process and gain insight into what it's like working at the frontiers of the future of transport," according to the event website. Commissioned by Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT), the concept is being created in collaboration with Spanish engineering firm Carbures. At the forefront is the Hyperloop passenger capsule, which will be constructed out of HTT's proprietary Vibranium material—a sensor-embedded carbon-fiber material that is 10 times stronger than steel, according to the company. [ARCHITECT]
Researchers at Columbia University have found that evaporation-harvested power from U.S. lakes and reservoirs has the potential to generate 325 gigawatts of energy—comparable to nearly 70 percent of what the country currently produces. [Columbia University]
ICYMI: Dubai's government announced plans for "Mars Science City" at the annual United Arab Emirates government meetings in Abu Dhabi on Sept. 26. The site is set to be the "largest space stimulation city ever built," according to the government's press release and will be led by the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre, and developed with global firm Bjarke Ingels Group in collaboration with a team of Emirati scientists, engineers, and designers. [ARCHITECT]
As part of the Egyptian government’s Solar Feed-in Tariff (FiT) program, which encourages the installment of solar energy plants, General Electric is helping build the country's first utility-scale solar array power plant, which could generate 50 megawatts, and power 15,000 homes. [GE]
A team of researchers from the University of Cambridge, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Oxford, University of Bath, and Delft University of Technology has discovered that exposing perovskite solar cells—a compound made of lead or tin—to daylight and certain levels of humidity can permanently fix any existing defects in the cell. [ARCHITECT]
Researchers from the University of Padova and the University of Bologna in Italy believe that lava tubes, or underground caves created by volcanic activity, could be used as protected habitats to house human settlements on Mars and on the moon. [ARCHITECT]
