Tech startup Flux, an output of the Google X research lab that makes project management software for AEC companies, recently announced the winners of its Emerging Architects Design Competition. The program, which named four winners in five categories, tasked entrants with finding new ways of using technology to streamline project design and implementation to achieve sustainability goals. The overall winner—taking home the Most Innovative and People’s Choice Awards—is Ecoschool (shown above), which was conceived by Sinan Goral and Sophie Nahrmann from the Carnegie Mellon University and proposes affordable student and faculty housing in Pittsburgh with an exposed plumbing system that can be managed via the Cloud in real-time, drawing attention to the need for efficient, sustainable building systems. The other winning projects hail from Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture in Kiev, Ukraine, and the University of Oregon (a joint project); the University of Sydney, the University of Technology, Sydney, and the University of New South Wales, in Australia (a joint project); and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [Flux]
ICYMI: Rethinking the future of building in our report from Smartgeometry 2016. [ARCHITECT]
This portable, plug-and-play projection device wants to make collaborating on building plans easier. [SpurStartup]
Mummy brown, cadmium yellow, and dragon’s blood red are among the rarest of the rare colors stored in the Forbes Pigment Collection at Harvard University’s Fogg Art Museum. [Fast Company’s Co.Design]
A small team from BIG, Google, and Pei Cobb Freed & Partners is documenting, digitizing, and preserving the geometric patterning and tilework prevalent throughout Central Asia. [Metropolis]
Construction materials prices are on the rise for the first time in nine months but are down 3.4 percent from a year ago, according to the latest analysis of the Bureau of Labor Statistics Producer Price Index by the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC). [ABC]
Skanska and digital production agency Studio 216 have created a multi-person, holographic tour of the forthcoming 2+U high-rise office building in Seattle using Microsoft’s new HoloLens headset. [Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce]
A timber tower that would be up to four times lighter than its concrete-frame alternative could be the latest addition to London’s skyline if a proposal from architects representing Cambridge University, in the U.K., and local firms PLP Architecture and Smith and Wallwork is approved. [Wired UK + Smith and Wallwork]
