Airbnb is pushing further into the hotel space — this time with New York’s Rockefeller Plaza. The homesharing app launched a partnership on Monday with New York realty giant RXR Realty to turn part of an iconic Manhattan building into a hotel. Offered exclusively through Airbnb’s global platform, the initiative targets business travelers...
Single people and couples served by coliving today aren’t the only groups feeling pain from the urban housing crisis. By many measures, families with young children have it worse. Families need lots of space, which is difficult to come by in major cities. And they’re often competing with groups of roommates for a limited inventory of two and...
A Turkish architecture firm will use robots to build the Robot Science Museum in Seoul, South Korea. Two teams of robots will start work on the 2,500-square-meter building in 2020, according to the architecture firm, Melike Altınışık Architects (MAA). One team will construct the curved metal facade of the museum. They will complete every step...
Tokenized assets are here to stay. The current race is about who can get regulated products to the market first and then who can successfully gain user adoption. While several projects have purported to tokenize real estate assets, blockimmo is the first to do it within the bounds of existing regulations in two jurisdictions. The blockimmo...
Hans Meyer, founder of hotel brand Zoku, is one of many in the industry saying that hotel experiences are becoming more sensory experiences. “It’s not only what you see but also what you smell, hear and taste.” A good example is the London hotel The Mandrake for its generously-sized courtyard. Emma King, head of interior design for...
The so-called homesharing economy continues to heat up. Expedia Group said it had acquired two small startups — Pillow and ApartmentJet — which help owners of multifamily residential communities list and manage short-term rentals while complying with local regulations. Pillow, a San Francisco-based startup, had raised $16 million in capital,...
Autonomous robots are impacting myriad industries. We’ve seen them inspecting industrial tanks and even serving coffee. Usually, these robots are designed to perform repetitive simple tasks. Boston Dynamics multi-functional and nimble robot, SpotMini, might be perfect for building construction. It can perform a range of dynamic tasks which...
Briqchain is one of the first of a number of new investment vehicles using blockchain technology to make real-estate investing more efficient and transparent for small investors. Briqchain starts from 10 euros. Investors buy bonds via briqchain.com for 10 euro per "Briq". The company uses these briqs to invest in rental real-estate. Investors...
E-commerce homewares company, Wayfair, has released an augmented reality interior design and room planning app especially for the new Magic Leap headset. “Wayfair Spaces”, as it’s called, acts as a virtual showroom for select pieces of the retailer’s furniture and home accessories collection. It is powered by Magic Leap’s spatial computing...
There are a wide variety of biometric tools available, including fingerprint scans, iris scans and facial recognition. Now, researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi have developed a biometric system based on footsteps.The new system uses a geophone. This is a transducer that converts ground movement into electrical signals...