Through Blueprint Magazine we found out about the birth of a machine that is able to print entire buildings. The monster is located near Pisa, Italy, and its father is Enrico Dini, an engineer with a background in offline programming systems for six-axis robots. "Driven by CAD software installed on a dust-covered computer terminal, the armature moves just millimetres above a pile of sand, expressing a magnesium-based solution from hundreds of nozzles on its lower side. It makes four passes. The layer dries and Enrico Dini recalibrates the armature frame. The system deposits the sand and then inorganic binding ink. The exercise is repeated. The millennia-long process of laying down sedimentary rock is accelerated into a day. A building emerges. This machine could be used to construct anything."

Wednesday 19 May, 2010, auditorium Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam. Open: 4:30 pm, start: 5 pm. Entrance fee: € 5, reduction fee € 3 (students, Friends of the NAi). Register here. Speakers will include Ole Bouman, Hani Asfour, Rem Koolhaas and Reinier de Graaf, and Ronald Wall. Following the release of Al Manakh Gulf Continued, a special issue of Volume Magazine, the NAi will organize a debate in collaboration with OMA, Archis/Volume and Pink Tank. Al Manakh Gulf Continued offers readers another view of urban development in the Gulf region. This time focusing on how the cities remain re-invent themselves and about their position related to the rest of the world.

Al Manakh: Gulf Continued launches tomorrow at 6 pm at Sorbonne University in Abu Dhabi. Dubai Today spoke with Mitra Khoubrou, Partner at Pink Tank and one of the editors of Al Manakh. Listen to the first part of the interview with Mitra Khoubrou below. Click here to listen to the rest of the interview.

Starting September 19th, Sukkah City will pop-up at Union Square Park, New York City. Sukkah City consists of twelve radically temporary structures built by competitors form all over the world. Anyone is invited to submit designs. The sukkah is an ephemeral, elemental shelter, erected for one week each fall, in which it is customary to share meals, entertain, sleep, and rejoice. "New York City will re-imagine the ancient Sukkah phenomenon, develop new methods of material practice and parametric design, and propose radical possibilities for traditional design constraints in a contemporary urban site. Twelve finalists will be selected by a panel of celebrated architects, designers, and critics to be constructed in a visionary village in Union Square Park from September 19-21, 2010. (...) One structure will be chosen by New Yorkers to stand and delight throughout the week-long festival of Sukkot as the Official Sukkah of New York City. The process and results of the competition, along with construction documentation and critical essays, will be published in the forthcoming book 'Sukkah City: Radically Temporary Architecture for the Next Three Thousand Years'." More about the Sukkah and about the competition:

Two weeks ago northern European airspace was closed due to ash coming from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland. Data analysts of ITO World took advantage of this major air traffic reboot and created a fascinating video, based on the data retrieved from Flight Radar 24, that shows how the northern European airspace returned to normal use after being closed due to volcanic ash from Iceland. As you can see, a small number flights took already place on April 18. Two days later all airports were opened again.

Please read our press release announcing the release of Al Manakh Gulf Continued in Abu Dhabi. Stay tuned for more information about events to introduce the book.

Despite our skill and experience in manipulating space and material, architects are incapable of addressing the needs of society unless they have first been explicitly asked to do so. Unsolicited architects do not wait to tackle the big issues often overlooked by the market. They create briefs where none are written, discover sites where none are owned, approach clients where none are present, and find financing where none is available. Unsolicited architecture offers an alternative to a reactive, service-oriented role, and instead calls for a new, more socially-motivated approach to procuring projects.

Tomorrow Al Manakh Gulf Continued will be launched. In advance of its release Jonathan Hanahan created a series of data visualizations, of which this article is the last chapter. All books have a table of contents, an introduction and an index to the document, but can it be more than just a directory? This third visualization in the series attempts to address an alternative view of the contents of a book, providing more than just title, chapter, and author. Here, the continent of where the article has been submitted from and the author's perspective is also included. Working with a similar visualization strategy as in the previous sources visualization, the articles are distributed clockwise; each slice is proportional to the length of the article. Download PDF version Viewbook Order your copy of Al Manakh Gulf Continued here, or subscribe to Volume magazine and receive Al Manakh 1, Al Manakh Gulf Continued and three Volume issues! (Please note: offer expires on July 1.)

‘Sources to Subjects’ explores the details behind how topics were developed for Gulf Continued and where the information guiding our conclusions came from. By breaking down our data archive to not only look at what news organizations reported the most frequently but also where globally those sources are committed and what types of perspectives they focus on. In light of perpetual media and political bias in the area, breaking down locations and perspectives help draw conclusions on how to address the overall presentation of issues within this edition of Al Manakh. Download PDF Version —This visualization was created by Jonathan Hanahan.