Do plants hold the key to making cities healthier? Could we design buildings that don’t take away green space, but create it? That don’t demand energy, but generate it? Rudi Scheuermann of consultant Arup thinks so. By employing a range of design techniques including cladding structures in living plant walls and engineering bioreactive facades that...

The post #16 Designing green buildings first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Providing water and sanitation after a destructive military revolution in Peru; engineering with elephants in Kenya; and plunging into enormous pot holes in Uganda, the professional life of civil engineer Brittany Harris has been more eventful since she graduated in 2015 than many engineers’ experience throughout their entire working careers. Her efforts to bring sustainable...

The post #15 Engineering Elephants: Brittany Harris first appeared on Engineering Matters.

How did a circus act inspire a revolutionary new construction method for Scotland’s first glass fibre reinforced polymer, cable stayed footbridge? Why did triumph and heartache underpin construction of the world’s most difficult cable stayed bridge, the Kap Shui Mun Bridge in Hong Kong? What did tunnel engineering teach designers about construction that enabled them...

The post #14 The Bridge Man: Dr Robin Sham first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Are there really bodies buried in the Hoover Dam? Was the hard hat really invented here in 1931? And why was it originally called Boulder Dam? In this podcast we explore and uncover the secrets of one of the greatest engineering projects ever built. The unique and formidable Hoover Dam. Learn about the “Double Ugly”,...

The post #13 Secrets of the Hoover Dam first appeared on Engineering Matters.

No-one knows how many penguins are in the Antarctic, but thanks to the use of drones this is set to change as scientists are using these unmanned aerial vehicles to fly over colonies of chinstrap, adelie and gentoos. And that is not all. Academics at the University of East Anglia are developing artificial intelligence that...

The post #12 The Drone Boom first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Robots are not just coming. They are already here. From TyBot which can tie steel reinforcement into position on bridges, to the road marking wizard Little Erik, and robotic hot wire cutters that can create bespoke formwork in minutes, robots are able to transform the way that infrastructure and buildings are constructed. From accelerating work...

The post # 11 The robots are here first appeared on Engineering Matters.

With 4.8 million kilometres of road China sits third in the world in terms of length of highways behind only the US and India. But its huge investment budget of £455 billion for new and improved highways could see it bypass these other world leaders. In 2018 alone it will add a further 5,000km presenting...

The post #10 How China has automated road design first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Right now companies around the world are competing in a global race to prove that a new transport revolution is just a few years away. Using high speed transit through low pressure tubes speeds of 1100km/hr per hour are theoretically possible, bringing cities closer together than ever before. London to Edinburgh? 40minutes. Melbourne to Sydney?...

The post #9 The race to create Hyperloop first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Floating along Copenhagen’s central waterway is a new proposition in affordable student accommodation, Urban Rigger. Each of these 745m2 units starts with a central concrete pontoon supporting nine steel shipping containers, which between them host 12 studio apartments for student accommodation. Launched as a solution to the student housing crisis in the Danish capital more...

The post #8 Cargotecture: scaling up shipping container construction first appeared on Engineering Matters.