courtesy Chipotle
A rendering of one of Chipotle's new 100% electric restaurants.
Chipotle’s All-electric Restaurant Design
Global restaurant chain Chipotle plans to open new locations that will utilize 100% renewable energy from wind and solar power, according to a press release on the company’s website. The new eco-friendly design of its restaurants will incorporate features such as rooftop solar panels, electric cooking equipment, biodegradable cutlery and paper goods, cactus-leather chairs, and electric vehicle charging stations. The chain hopes to use this design in more than 100 of its new locations in 2024, with a larger company-wide goal of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030. [Chipotle]
Euroluce 2023 Preview
courtesy Artemide
Stellar Nebula Collection by Artemide
International lighting event Euroluce is returning to Salone del Mobile—the annual furniture fair—in Milan this week, from April 18–23. The biennial lighting exhibition will showcase new and exciting lighting design from around the world. Read ARCHITECT’s Euroluce preview to see 10 luminaires that will debut at the show. [ARCHITECT]
Iconic Barbie Dollhouse Architecture
@reevcon dont get me wrong ryan is up there too
♬ original sound – Reeves Connelly
Reeves Connelly, a graduate architecture student at the Pratt Institute in New York, dove into the architectural history of the iconic Barbie house in a recent TikTok video with more than 5.4 million views. With the new live-action Barbie movie debuting this summer, Connelly took to the popular social media platform to share his favorite part of the movie’s trailer: the architecture and design of the famous dollhouse. Its 1965 debut was a simple square-shaped abode made of cardboard. By 1979, Barbie lived in a Modernist A-frame house with its own plastic version of the 1973 Togo sofa designed by Michel Ducaroy. In the early 2000s, the iconic doll owned a Victorian mansion. [TikTok]
Dangers of Artificial Intelligence
In an April 5 lecture at the University of California at Berkeley, computer science professor Stuart Russell discussed the need for artificial intelligence regulation to protect human beings from potential negative consequences of the technology, such as losing control over machines, he said in the talk.
“Intelligence really means the power to shape the world in your interests, and if you create systems that are more intelligent than humans either individually or collectively then you’re creating entities that are more powerful than us,” Stuart Russell said at the lecture organized by the CITRIS Research Exchange and Berkeley AI Research Lab. “How do we retain power over entities more powerful than us, forever?”
According to an article about the lecture on the university’s website, the existence of chatbots such as ChatGPT has allowed the public to learn more about the capabilities of AI. However, Russell believes it’s unclear whether these tools have their own agendas. “You should not deploy systems whose internal principles of operation you don’t understand, that may or may not have their own internal goals that they are pursuing,” Russell said during the lecture. [UC Berkeley News]
Disability Justice in Design
MASS Design Group with TEN x TEN
A rendering of the Louise B. Miller Pathways and Gardens at Gallaudet University.
Jeffrey Yasuo Mansfield, principal at MASS Design Group in Boston, argues the importance of advocating for disability justice in architecture and design in an opinion piece for ARCHITECT. “Justice is understanding access as fundamental to dignity,” Mansfield writes. “Disability justice further recognizes that disability and ableism frequently intersect with other forms of oppression based on race, ethnicity, class, and gender.”
Discourse on equity and inclusion in design, and beyond, should always include individuals with disabilities. “Deaf and Disabled people are born designers; we are constantly redesigning a world not designed for us,” he continues. “This is not a zero-sum game, but one that has the power to lift up more people through thoughtful consideration of space, place, and history.” [ARCHITECT]
Storing Heat in Bricks and Carbon Blocks
Courtesy BTHL
Manufacturers of products from building materials to foods and beverages require heat to produce their goods. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, heat processing applications—including kilning, drying, curing, sterilization, distillation, and chemical processing—account for approximately 36% of total energy consumption in the U.S. manufacturing sector.
A 2023 MIT Technology Review article says there are a growing number of companies generating the heat they require using clean energy, such as wind and solar, and storing it in stacks, or systems, made of bricks or solid carbon blocks. These types of systems consist of commercially available materials that can be assembled quickly .
For example, in a system created by California-based company Rondo Energy, electricity moves through a heating element where it’s converted into heat energy. This energy is stored in bricks housed in an insulated steel container that can hold the heat for up to a few days. Still, one of the challenges of adopting a method like this for storing heat lies in determining how to build enough brick-based systems that can accommodate the manufacturing industry’s significant energy demand. And, it may take time for manufacturers to get on board. [MIT Technology Review]
Photon-recycling Luminaires
Adobe Stock
A new study published this month in Science Advances discusses the creation of a new photon-recycling incandescent luminaire that could save energy, shine brighter, and last longer than traditional incandescent lighting. With a conventional glass incandescent light all infrared light shines through the glass. However, the study’s team of 14 researchers, from various Chinese universities and private companies, made an incandescent lamp that recycles infrared light and increases energy efficiency by 25.4%. This energy-saving quality makes this type of incandescent light comparable to LEDs.
“The efficiency of the device is impressive, but this is a much more complex device than a traditional incandescent light bulb. It would probably not be cheap to mass produce it,” states Jonathan Wierer, a reviewer of the study and professor of electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina State University, in a New Scientist article about the research. [Science Advances]
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