New Freeway Design for energy generation

Here's a clever idea, use wind generated by cars and trucks along the freeway to generate electricity - another reason not to have gridlock! Check out this new system by Mark Oberholzer.

Organic Building Materials

Sent in by 2007 student John Todd, this Times article discusses the possibilities of using Mushrooms as building insulation.

Exterior Cladding Performance

There is a complex relationship between temperature and moisture in exterior cladding systems. Our friends at the Oak Ridge National Laboratories Building Technology Center ORNL/IBP have created a tool to help us assess the performance of any system. Check out the WUFI: their Educational PC-Program for calculating the coupled heat and moisture transfer in building components.

Prefabrication

This summer one of our own faculty, KEN TADASHI OSHIMA had the privilege to comment on and participate in an exhibit at the MoMA in New York. This exhibit discusses and documents fabrication and prefabrication for housing around the world. Five full scale houses were built on an open lot in mid-town Manhattan to illustrate prefabrication and innovative construction techniques. Check out the videos on the site. What challenges does prefabrication create for the design of our homes? What challenges do builders face? Does the drive towards automation make standardization inevitable, or do these next generation examples allow for mass customization?

Bosch Aluminum Frame System

TAALMAN KOCH ARCHITECTURE have developed a prefabrication system for housing. Here's one of the homes recently developed with this system. Check out the iT House construction blog.

Why this blog?

This blog is to inspire students who are studying Construction Materials and Methods. We've moved our Cool Stuff list over from our course website to make it easier for students to post Cool Stuff throughout the fall quarter (during class) and to keep on posting throughout the year.

Lots of cool innovative ideas and examples out there from wind farms running off of highway medians (catching the wind from passing cars and truck) to new materials made out of mushrooms. This is a log of building materials for earth and space. Looking for inspiration? This list will be updated regularly. Feel free to suggest cool sites for this list!