September 22, 2023
A screenshot of Project Sunroof shows the map data offered by the pilot project, which is meant to help consumers plan solar installations for their homes. (Credit: CNBC)
What can Google’s new API do for real estate?
The behemoth we all know and love recently announced that it is planning to sell new mapping APIs that would allow companies to build products that use energy and environmental data. With data on over 350 million buildings (up from 60 million in 2017), they envision a range of potential customers beyond just climate tech firms — companies like Zillow, Redfin, and Marriott Bonvoy.
Our imagination can start to run wild with how real estate developers, architects, or city administrators could also utilize this immense data. Would it be possible to find more infill opportunities that intersect with environmental resources? Will Zillow have a new green filter on listings, to show only those that are solar powered?
You could imagine a company like Cedar—a mapping platform that suggests design options for sites based on a simplified property search, site analysis, zoning, code compliance, and financial modeling—could be supercharged with the use of this API.
What do you see as the waterfall effect of Google’s new tool on the built environment? Feel free to respond, would love to hear your thoughts!
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MUST-READS
Meet Matus Vallo, Bratislava’s Hipster Mayor-Architect // The Economist
Three Benefits of Adaptive Reuse Projects // D Magazine
How to Cool Down a City [Interactive Map] // New York Times
Old West Virginia Steel Mill Becomes a Green-Energy Powerhouse // WSJ
Children: Left Behind by Suburbia // ENU
One of Denver’s poorest neighborhood got a rebrand. Did it need it? // FastCompany
The Ground-Floor Window Into What’s Ailing Downtowns // New York Times
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IDEA SPOTLIGHT
Probiotic Tiles
Currently on display in the exhibition, Small Space in the City at Roca London Gallery, is the product of architect and professor Richard Beckett’s research. On display are “probiotic tiles” made of recycled concrete and mixed with soil from a Finnish forest. The soil contains “millions of microbes” with multiple strains, fungi, protozoa, “and probably a few harmful bacteria as well, but only in small amounts.” The architect will sit in a small, enclosed space, in close proximity to these tiles. And because the tiles are porous, he expects that airflow will help them shed some of the microbes onto or near his body, after which, the effects will be measured. According to Beckett:
“Through living next to [microbes] and being next to them, you get them on your skin, you breathe them, they populate your microbiome,” he told me on a more recent call. “Those kinds of exposures are the ones that we need for our immune systems to be constantly tested, and when your immune system is not tested regularly on these small levels, it becomes lazy and it doesn’t regulate itself.”
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