Articles by Janelle Zara

This open-source construction kit can be turned into a home in just one day.

In 2011, Foster + Partner’s Spaceport America opened in the New Mexican desert with some wild fanfar e: Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson propelled down the side of the building, champagne in hand, rockets soaring in the air, to christen the $220-million launchpad of the world’s first civilian spaceflight. Four years down the line and nary…

Billionaire’s row, a stretch of midtown Manhattan now dotted with exorbitantly priced, starchitect-d esigned residential highrises, has officially arrived with a sky-high record: a condo in Christian de Portzamparc’s One57 recently sold for $100 million, the highest sum in the city’s history. Indeed, international billionaires are currently pricing out the mere millionaires who formerly called the…

Thanks to innovations in material and process, the age-old light bulb ain’t so bulbous anymore. Thes e days it twists, it oozes, it pops, it surveils. Netherlands-based designer David Graas, who specializes in quirky material experiments like flat-pack cardboard furniture and recycled-PET bottlecap tabletop accessories, just added a new form to the mix. His Stalaclights are…

“Architecture may not necessarily cure personal unhappiness,” English architect Nick Elias tells Arc hitizer via email, “but it may provide the framework for it.” This is the guiding premise of PoohTown, Elias’s RIBA President’s Silver Medal-winning conceptual overhaul of Slough, a middling English town where industry rules — the likes of O2, Mars, Blackberry, Sara Lee,…

As a respite from all the in-your-face robotics and high-tech fanfare going on at the Consumer Elect ronics Show, Architizer found one moment of Zen playing around with the ambient lighting options of Philips Hue Tap. The puck-like remote control syncs to Philips’ smart, color-changing Hue lights via ZigBee, a lower-energy, appliance-specific alternative to wi-fi that…

The ability to 3D-print objects in exceptionally strong materials like Kevlar, fiberglass, and for t he first time, carbon fiber, means one thing: “No more Yoda heads,” according to MarkForged creative director Jeff Klein. MarkForged (stylized as MARKFORG3D) is the Boston-area startup behind the Mark One, a 3D printer that launched in its current form in…

In case you somehow failed to notice, your fridge’s crisper drawer is a stroke of genius, a compartm ent that provides the optimal humidity and temperature settings to keep your organic Tuscan kale stalks as crisp as can be while the milk and eggs chill out on their own on other shelves. But don’t your milk…