PAZ Kaffi is the AEC newsroom of PAZ Academy Zürich — daily dispatches on architecture, computational design, BIM and AI.
W45 recap: Gaussian curvature as tooling cost, Pilatus Arena's 47 m girders, Swiss winter TWh, Geneva's 16.5 % flip, and site checks in Python.
09 NOV
On 11 November, Graphisoft and PAZ show how PAZ-BOX brings modular timber system rules into Archicad as a custom add-on, from design to fabrication.
09 NOV
CH
Lucerne's new CHF 192M administration in Emmen gives 2,000 staff 1,200 desks and 66 service spaces. Follow where the parking demand goes next door.
08 NOV
Euler's 1744 buckling load, P = π²EI/(KL)², explained from first principles: why length is squared, Baker's tubes, Tetmajer's Zurich fix, Karamba3D BLFac.
08 NOV
Mistral Large 4's 1.05 T-parameter weights are on Hugging Face. What the hardware costs, what self-hosting demands, and what it means for Swiss AEC offices.
08 NOV
Black Mirror series 3 turns ten. Nosedive's 4.5 rent gate and San Junipero's server hall show why every housing scheme should draw its entry rules.
07 NOV
CH
Swissolar's Solarmonitor 2026: 9.5 GW of PV made 2.2 TWh last winter and 93,500 batteries hold 1.4 GWh. What spot-linked feed-in means for your design.
07 NOV
CH
Eight 47 m steel girders, a 10 m cantilever and 372 homes that help fund the hall: HAUS-9 reads Kriens' Pilatus Arena and Tower in one section.
07 NOV
A 65-line Python script turns a Swiss address into terrain height via swisstopo's free API and applies the SIA 261 snow formula, self-checked against a court.
"The machine doesn't have taste. We have taste. The machine has a tempo."
06 NOV
CH
Graphisoft's archicad Python package hit 30.3000 on 7 Oct 2026. Our self-study course maps the interface, Python from zero, and scripts from A to Z.
06 NOV
In 1960 Science dated doomsday to 13 November 2026. Why von Foerster's hyperbola worked, and why every fitted formula in your office needs its data range.
06 NOV
Drag one wall and the integration core jumps a room. Benedikt, Turner and Hillier & Hanson in one playable grid, with a Python hack and a Grasshopper move.
A studio in District B-12 has been operating in three time zones for nineteen months, with a permanent night shift that handles the regulator's queue while the rest of the world sleeps. The model: caffeine, clear handoffs, and a refusal to pretend that buildings are designed during business hours. We embedded for two nights.
W45 recap: Gaussian curvature as tooling cost, Pilatus Arena's 47 m girders, Swiss winter TWh, Geneva's 16.5 % flip, and site checks in Python.
Every morning at 04:00 the press in the basement of the kaffi spits out 2,400 broadsheets in a font we cut ourselves. The kids pick them up on the way to site, fold them into their toolbelts, and read them at lunch with grease on their fingers. The feed has not killed this. The feed has made it more useful — a single, slow, opinionated edit of a day too noisy to read live.
The print desk takes one position per story. The web desk runs a hundred. Both can be true. The point is that someone, somewhere, is still willing to pick.
There is a reason the best façade we ran this month was sketched on a napkin in the kaffi at 06:12 and not generated in a prompt. The hand still knows things the model has to be told twice.
Every studio we visit now hires straight into a 22:00–06:00 rotation. The juniors love it. The seniors who fought to get out of it find it harder to argue with the throughput numbers.
Hybrid CLT + steel core. Topping out by Q3.
Robotic masonry hits a real spec, not a demo.
And why the big vendors are quietly nervous.
Maps, owners, opening hours, kaffi quality.
The AEC dispatch lands in your inbox at 04:42 CET. Twelve stories, one bad joke, zero PR fluff. We sign each one.
The airlock is still sealed. Join the dispatch for now — VIP seats get called there first.
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