As part of MIT Senseable City Lab’s City Scanner initiative, researchers are examining how efficient drive-by sensing can be for the “real-time environmental monitoring of cities.” That question became City Veins, a project where the Cambridge, Mass.–based researchers attached low-cost sensors to existing fleets of service vehicles—such as taxis or buses—around the world. Once deployed, the sensors created a dynamic network that collected environmental data in multiple cities, including Boston, New York, Amsterdam, and Munich. Noting that the sensing potential and data-collection quality was variable, affected by factors such as urban topography and the number of sensor-equipped vehicles in a given area, the researchers also examined the “temporal aspects of drive-by sensing,” according to a Senseable City press release. “The drive-by sensing approach developed in City Scanner complements stationary environmental monitors by providing a flexible and scalable solution with lower deployment and maintenance costs.” [Senseable City Lab]
Ben Wolf
As humans rapidly exhaust our carbon budget—the amount of CO2 we can release while limiting global warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels—a group of artists and activists (including climate activist Greta Thunberg) from Beautiful Trouble have repurposed the Metronome Clock installation in New York’s Union Square. In advance of New York’s Climate Week, the Metronome has become a gigantic Climate Clock, counting down the years, days, minutes, and seconds until the moment we surpass the global climate budget. “The clock is a way to speak science to power,” said project co-founder Andrew Boyd in a statement. “The clock is telling us we must reduce our emissions as much as we can as fast as we can. The technology is there. We can do this—and in the process, create a healthier, more just world for all of us. Our planet has a deadline. But we can turn it into a lifeline.”
Courtesy Ingka Group
Home and furniture retailer IKEA will open its inaugural secondhand store in Stockholm this fall. Nestled into ReTuna, a shopping center offering only products that are reused, organic, or sustainably produced, the secondhand IKEA store will sell repaired and restored IKEA products for a fraction of their original prices. “At IKEA we don’t want to merely be a part of the sustainability movement—we want to lead it,” said Jonas Carlehed, sustainability manager of IKEA Retail Sweden, in a press release from IKEA’s parent company, the Ingka Group. “If we want to reach our sustainability goals, we have to challenge ourselves and test our ideas. The climate crisis cannot be solved in theory, it has to be solved in practice.” [Ingka Group]
After an open letter was published voicing concern for the increasing cost of Revit as compared to its features, Autodesk has joined the Open Design Alliance, a nonprofit technology organization” specializing in providing support and access to design file formats,” according to a blog post from Amy Bunszel, Autodesk senior vice president of design and creation products. “In one of my recent posts responding to some of the constructive criticism we’ve received from our architecture customers, we promised to do a better job of listening to our customers, engage in an open dialogue, and do better where we’ve fallen short,” she wrote. “Our decision to join ODA is one of the many steps we are taking to continue fostering an open community and strengthen our partnerships across the industry.” [Autodesk]
Courtesy Vectorworks
The Columbia, Md.–based design and BIM software provider Vectorworks will be holding its annual Vectorworks Design Day virtually on Oct. 6. Registration for the two-hour event will be free. “This virtual event is geared toward designers in the architectural, interior architecture, landscape, and entertainment industries and will educate customers on the new Vectorworks 2021 features, while providing access to a variety of live and on-demand presentations and discussions,” states a Vectorworks press release. [ARCHITECT]
How can AEC professionals actually take advantage of Section 17D of Energy Policy Act of 2005? In ARCHITECT’s monthly series The Rules, Terri Peters dives into what’s dubbed the “Green Tax Break for Architects, Engineers, and Contractors,” which “offers financial incentives to building owners and AEC firms for decreasing a building’s energy usage through the installation and use of high-performance systems.” [ARCHITECT]
The American Institute of Architects has announced the latest results of its AIA 2030 Commitment in a report that “amalgamates predicted energy use data in buildings from 311 companies participating in the 2030 Commitment.” AIA will launch a new data collection platform next month. [ARCHITECT]
