Architectural Digest: Urban Archive Brings New York’s Fascinating Hidden History to Life. “Wondering where the oldest standing farmhouse is? Or what was on the patch of land now occupied by the main branch of the New York Public Library? Or even what building used to be right where that newly built condominium exists now? Urban Archive, the just-launched website version of a popular app created in 2017, has some fascinating answers. Working with about 60 New York institutions, Urban Archive, a nonprofit startup, has to date mapped 91,351 images across 34,977 locations throughout the city’s five boroughs.”
architecture
Floornature: 100 years of Vico Magistretti – 1920/2020
Floornature: 100 years of Vico Magistretti – 1920/2020. “The new year started with an important event for the Fondazione Studio Museo Vico Magistretti: on January 7, the website of Studio Magistretti’s digital archive went online. The database contains more than 30,000 accessible documents and over 450 projects designed by the Milanese architect, a geo-localised map of his architectures and 10 research roadmaps across the entire archive’s contents.”
Biomass Magazine: New app helps design buildings that use biomass for heat
Biomass Magazine: New app helps design buildings that use biomass for heat. “The Biomass Ready tool helps builders, architects, engineers, planners and others in the building trade to design new buildings that can incorporate biomass as a heating source. Biomass is woody plant material, derived from the trunks and branches of trees.” Like firewood? Yeah, like firewood.
University of Texas at Austin: Libraries Launch Access Tool for Digital Collections
University of Texas at Austin: Libraries Launch Access Tool for Digital Collections. “At launch, the portal highlights two of the Libraries’ most notable collections: the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection and the Alexander Architectural Archives. The portal contains various materials like scanned photographs, manuscripts, books, broadsides, architectural drawings and maps. Further content is constantly being added, including digitized maps from the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection and material for scholarly research from the Libraries’ Global Studies Collections. All content in the portal is being indexed by search engines, significantly improving searchability and discoverability.”
CNRS: A Digital Twin for Notre-Dame
CNRS: A Digital Twin for Notre-Dame. “Creating a Google Earth of sorts for the cathedral of Paris, that is the ambitious project of a team of researchers. Their objective is clear: to gather all past and future knowledge about the structure within a collaborative platform.”
Daily Commercial News: TOBuilt: a new tool for construction reno planning
New-to-me, from Daily Commercial News: TOBuilt: a new tool for construction reno planning. “TOBuilt, a crowd-sourced database with information and images of 11,500 buildings in Toronto, is proving to be a valuable research resource to architects, builders and consultants planning to add or renovate existing buildings.”
Illinois News Bureau: 100 years of architecture student design work to be preserved, archived
Illinois News Bureau: 100 years of architecture student design work to be preserved, archived. “The history of architecture education at the University of Illinois – and of architectural styles and cultural values over a 100-year period – sits behind a low doorway into a flood-prone basement room in the Architecture Building…. Architecture professor Marci Uihlein is working with University Archives and the University Library’s Preservation Services to catalog 1,600 drawings representing 775 student projects, do any necessary preservation work and move them to the Archives’ collections.”
