The New York City blackout that never happened
How do you design for an emergency that hasn’t happened yet? When creating physical or digital objects, whether cars or apps, designers often use prototypes to test their ideas. By bringing a vision to...
View ArticleCan drones inspect urban building façades?
Today’s research is tomorrow’s design. Doggerel is asking researchers within Arup and beyond to describe their work and its potential applications. Here, Josh Treuhaft and Felix Weber describe their...
View ArticleCan solar power fuel mass transit?
Today’s research is tomorrow’s design. We’re asking researchers within Arup and beyond to describe their work and its potential applications. Tony Bruzzone, a transportation planner in our San...
View ArticleThe upside of the looming resource crisis
We’ve all heard the expression “Waste not, want not,” but most of us don’t live by this rule — or even have the option. Everything from the buildings and cities we live in to the food we eat is the...
View ArticleTomorrow’s architecture, starring algae and hemp
Walking past the BIQ apartment building in Hamburg, Germany, you’ll see a variation on solar power not found anywhere else in the world. Inside 129 bubbling bioreactors attached to the façade, algae...
View ArticleThe future is fiction
Around the start of the 20th century, a number of French artists, including Jean-Marc Côté, depicted their visions of the future in the form of illustrated postcards. They imagined life in the year...
View Article[Y]our future, according to Chris Luebkeman
How do you design for something that hasn’t happened yet? Predicting how the world will look in the future and shaping buildings, parks, streets — really everything — accordingly seems impossible. But...
View ArticleA water expert looks to the future
Water plays a major role in many of the planet’s most pressing challenges, from food security to political instability. With a resource so critical and a set of related issues so complex, how do...
View ArticleCan we ensure energy resilience after a disaster?
Today’s research is tomorrow’s design. We’re asking researchers within Arup and beyond to describe their work and its potential applications. Russell Carr, an electrical engineer in our San Francisco...
View ArticleVisualizing zoning futures
Today’s research is tomorrow’s design. We’re asking researchers within Arup and beyond to describe their work and its potential applications. Jordan Woodson, a structural engineer in Arup’s Washington...
View ArticleNew frontiers for digital graphics in the built environment
Boundary-pushing experiments from media and software companies like the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Tableau are revolutionizing digital graphics, raising public expectations for...
View ArticleResearch roundup: Water resilience in dry climates
Today’s research is tomorrow’s design. We’re asking researchers within Arup and beyond to describe their work and its potential applications. Rowan Roderick-Jones, an environmental scientist and civil...
View ArticleResearch roundup: The walking city
Today’s research is tomorrow’s design. We’re asking researchers within Arup and beyond to describe their work and its potential applications. Demetrio Scopelliti, an architect in our Milan office,...
View ArticleResearch roundup: City action on climate change
Today’s research is tomorrow’s design. We’re asking researchers within Arup and beyond to describe their work and its potential applications. Harriet O’Brien and Annie Gibbons, energy and climate...
View ArticleDesigning for rapid change and a cloudy future
We exist in a world of perpetual, rapid-fire innovation, fueled mostly by the need for enterprises of all sorts to maintain competitive advantage. At times it seems as if change is destabilizing every...
View ArticleResearch roundup: Better cities through… asparagus?
Today’s research is tomorrow’s design. We’re asking researchers within Arup and beyond to describe their work and its potential applications. Martin Pauli, an architect and materials specialist in our...
View ArticleFutures past: Visions of the century of progress
The period between 1920 and 1950 witnessed more dramatic changes to the built environment than almost any other 30-year span in history, according to Martin Moeller, a curator at Washington DC’s...
View ArticleResearch roundup: Rating resilience
Today’s research is tomorrow’s design. We’re asking researchers within Arup and beyond to describe their work and its potential applications. For our first post, San Francisco-based structural engineer...
View ArticlePeering into the future of the built environment
Faced with ever-shorter cycles of change, communities, governments, and businesses increasingly recognize the need to prepare for a broad spectrum of possible futures. Figuring out what this means and...
View ArticleWhy use old data for new buildings?
A recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed that the effects of climate change are already being felt around the globe, leading to serious problems in...
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