As part of the Trump administration’s editorial revisionism, agencies like the Department of State are seeking to change how architects can publish and describe the work they complete for the federal government. AN recently learned of a communication aimed at revisiting previously approved content for release and altering language about sustainability for projects completed by the Overseas Building Operations, which is “the single real property manager for the planning, acquisition, design, construction, operations, maintenance, and disposal of U.S. governmental diplomatic and consular property overseas.” Dated February 19, 2025, and directed to “all prime and subcontractors supporting projects for the Overseas Building Operations (OBO),” the memo subjects new releases to “re-review”: “Any content cleared prior to January 20, 2025, that is included in new public-facing materials must be submitted for re-review and clearance to ensure alignment with current executive orders aimed at making the United States stronger, safer, and more prosperous.” Additionally, the memo stated that before resubmission, “all references to sustainability or diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) shall be removed.” The memo also directed the removal of sustainability language: Sustainability features should be framed through the lens of the new administration’s priorities by: Focusing on building performance Using language like “adaptation” rather than “resilience” Removing the terms “LEED,” “climate,” and “sustainability” AN has reached out to architecture firms with projects under construction with the OBO for comment to learn more about how this change to sustainability language affects their work. Words like “climate crisis,” “climate science,” and “diversity,” among others, appear on an incomplete list of words that have been flagged to “limit or avoid,” according to reporting in The New York Times. Already, one consulate project was submitted to AN for coverage but was then placed on hold as press material was required to be resubmitted for review. “Due to NDAs and client confidentiality,” the architect was not able to speak with AN about this process, according to a spokesperson. When asked for comment last month, a representative from the USGBC was not aware of the memo. The OBO is the client for major U.S. embassy and consulate projects around the world designed by the country’s leading architects. Projects with budgets totaling billions of dollars are currently under construction: Richärd Kennedy Architects is designing a new consulate in Rio de Janeiro, as well as an embassy in Qatar (with a budget of $336 million) and one in Mauritius ($301 million). Ennead is designing a new consulate in Nogales, Mexico ($203 million), and another one in Thailand ($273 million); both include Page as the architect of record. SHoP is designing a new embassy in Milan ($351.2 million). In Montenegro, the second phase of a new embassy designed by Beyer Blinder Belle with Integrus is under construction ($264.4 million). Since FY2008, OBO required LEED certification as a “contractual requirement for all capital projects,” and as of FY2010, LEED Silver was the minimum level of achievement. There has been no news as to if this standard has been updated or abandoned during the Trump administration. As mentioned in a 2021 article in AN by A. J. Artemel, sustainability plays a “double role” in embassy projects: It is both meant to respond to climate change (largely by reducing operational energy) while mitigating practical concerns, like electrical grids that might become unreliable due to outages or unrest. The edits to sustainability language made under the Trump administration largely shift the description to the latter category, instead of the former: Sustainability is now described as optimization or performance. Many of the projects were designed in an eco-technical manner with sustainability as a major design driver, so it remains to be seen how the projects’ key aspects will be promoted. A quick review of website edits reveals how OBO project descriptions have been updated. In Brasília, Brazil, Studio Gang is completing an embassy with Page ($556 million). A description from December 2024 mentioned the project’s “safe, secure, functional, and resilient architecture” that will provide “a sustainable and engaging space for the future of U.S.-Brazilian relations.” Now, the text substitutes “efficient” for “resilient” and removes “sustainable”—but adds the goal of making the U.S. “safer, stronger, and more prosperous.” Mention of LEED Silver has been removed, as has PROCEL, “an energy-savings certification mandated for all new Brazilian federal buildings.” A mention of the region’s “biodiversity” was also edited out of the text. Miller Hull is designing a new embassy in Malawi. A prior description from last year had a section titled “Resilience & Stewardship” that promoted the target for LEED Gold certification; now the section omits mention of LEED and is titled “Building Performace.” (Sticklers will note that “performance” is spelled wrong.) Additionally, the mention of “diversity”—as in, “the diversity and richness of U.S. and Malawian cultural heritage”—was removed; now the embassy “embodies U.S. creativity and heritage.” In Mexico City, a new embassy designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects with Davis Brody Bond is under construction ($943 million). In a previous version of the website, one section was dedicated to sustainability: “The new complex incorporates rigorous sustainability and energy-saving goals to reduce environmental impact, optimize building performance, and enhance resiliency.” Now the section is titled “Building Optimization” and begins: “This project reduces risk and cost associated with security and maintenance while enhancing resilience to natural hazards.” Water efficiency and low-maintenance plants are mentioned, but the prior description’s target of LEED Gold for the complex has been removed. As recently as last September, the Department of State was praising OBO’s sustainability efforts: An article for State Magazine about a range of projects in Mexico praised the widespread use of passive shading to reduce solar heat gain. The OBO projects mentioned above are already so far along in budget allocations and construction timelines that the physical removal of any significant sustainability components seems unlikely. What remains to be seen is if any sustainability features that aid in lowering the operating costs of buildings over their lifespans—and thus saving taxpayer dollars—will actively be removed from efforts that are earlier in the design process: The OBO portfolio portal provides links for Acquired Sites and In Planning & Design, but both web pages are listed as “currently under construction.” AN has reached out to OBO for comment. Are you working on a relevant project and would like to share your experience with AN? Email us, DM us, or message us on Signal: @archpaper.95.

One-stop shops where people can go to find salvaged building materials in the name of circularity are popping up around the U.S. In San Antonio, the Material Innovation Center (MIC) works with contractors, reuse stores, and corporate donors to take in excess woodwork, windows, lumber, siding and other materials after buildings get demolished. This debris gets channeled toward affordable housing, all thanks to MIC. Another outfit, Reuse Innovation Center, is based in Bellingham, Washington, and services the Pacific Northwest. To boost its own circular economy, New York City is following suit. Dave Bennink of the Circular Construction Network and Building Deconstruction Institute shared plans this week to build the New York City Reuse Innovation Center (NYC-RIC), what Bennink says will become a “center of circular construction.” NYC-RIC will be located in Brooklyn, Bennink said, but the group is still looking for space. It will contain a “reusable building material store, a showroom, classroom, and a collaborative maker/remanufacturing space called the CoLab,” he said. Bennink is actively looking for businesses who’d like to move into the space and synergistically work “towards circularity in the built environment.” Growing New York’s Circular Economy The idea came a few years ago when Bennink was recruited by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) to help incorporate circular principles at the forthcoming Science Park and Research Campus (SPARC), a new education and healthcare hub in Kips Bay, Manhattan, for CUNY—with a masterplan by SOM. After partnering with NYCEDC at SPARC, Bennink saw an opportunity to apply circular principles at myriad other projects all over town, including Stony Brook’s Center of Climate Solutions on Governors Island, also designed by SOM. He now has 16 projects here in New York City. “After I got involved at SPARC, and saw how the city was valuing circular construction, I realized I needed to create a reuse innovation center in the New York City area to help make that possible,” Bennink told AN. “The Reuse Innovation Center will be a circular business cooperative with, say, around 15 and 20 businesses all working together in a synergistic way toward building a circular economy in the built environment,” Bennink added. “So we’ll have businesses that take buildings apartment, and we’ll have businesses that put buildings back together. We’ll have businesses that make products for buildings that are circular in nature, made of reclaimed and recycled content.” Bennink said that he’s now looking for space in Brooklyn to make it all happen. A large floor plate will provide the opportunity to charge affordable rents to businesses looking to get involved. This will save businesses the hassle of renting their own space, and their own equipment. In turn, NYC-RIC will pool together resources and tools, while also placing likeminded business owners in proximity to one another, creating knowledge spillovers. NYCEDC has already taken strides to build cleaner buildings, aside from its work with Bennink at SPARC and on Governors Island. In 2023, NYCEDC launched the “New York City Mass Timber Studio” to encourage wood construction. The program allocates grants to “selected teams to conduct design, technical, and economic feasibility assessments for mass timber.” Moving forward, NYC-RIC is now soliciting businesses to work with. To apply for space in the incubator, applicants can use this Google Form.

Located on Amory Street in Brookline, this handsome Arts and Crafts style residence dates to about 1908 and while clearly Craftsman in style, does appear to follow the horizontality and form of the Prairie School of architecture, popularized by famed architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. While the architect of this house is unclear, we do know that the first owners were Mr. Frank T. Partridge and his wife, Edith Stevens Partridge. The stucco house features a horizontal belt course, shallow hip roof with broad eaves supported by brackets, and elaborate entry and porches. The colors enhance the architecture of the home perfectly. 

“Since the Beginning and End of Time” (2024), hand-embroidery, bells, and shell buttons on hand-stitched indigo-dyed kapa (barkcloth) garment, approx. 50 x 44 inches. All images courtesy of Lehuauakea, shared with permission Reviving an Ancestral Hawaiian Tradition, Lehuauakea Reimagines Kapa in Bold Textile Works April 22, 2025 Kate Mothes “My favorite thing about kapa is that it is simultaneously ancestral, ancient, and contemporary,” says Lehuauakea (Kanaka Maoli), who recently received the Walker Youngbird Foundation grant for emerging Native American artists. Kapa, the Indigenous Hawaiian practice of clothmaking, uses the inner bark of the wauke, or paper mulberry tree, to create garments and textiles. For Lehuauakea, the technique forms the foundation of a practice rooted in the artist’s Hawaiian lineage and material traditions. Softening the fibers enough to create cloth requires a labor-intensive method of soaking pieces of bark. Through an arduous process of beating and stretching with tools like the iʻe kuku, a thin, pliable fabric emerges. “It is a very malleable material that reflects the current state of the natural environment, and the surrounding community and personal hand of the maker,” Lehuauakea tells Colossal. “It requires a level of patience and perseverance while also paying close attention to the nature of the bark and pigments you are working with.” “Still Finding My Way Back Home” (2025), kapa (barkcloth), reclaimed Japanese fabrics, indigo and madder root dyes, ceramic beads, bells, earth pigments, hand-embroidery, and metal leaf, approx. 18 x 9 feet Kapa is derived from ancient Polynesian practices—it’s called tapa in other parts of the Pacific—and Hawaiians elaborated on the custom by incorporating watermarks, natural pigments, and fermentation. Traditionally, kapa possessed both practical and spiritual qualities, as it was used for everyday apparel and bedding but also served as a carrier of mana, or healing life force. When the U.S. controversially annexed the territory and the import of cotton amped up in the late 19th century, the practice all but died out. Lehuauakea’s interest in kapa emerged when their family relocated to Oregon when they were young. Over time, the artist felt increasingly disconnected from their home and sought a way to conjure a link to their Hawaiian ancestry. “I remembered learning about kapa as a child and how we’d use patterns to tell stories, so in my junior year of college I taught myself how to carve ʻohe kāpala, or traditional carved bamboo printing tools used for decorating finished kapa,” the artist says. Then it was onto learning how to make the barkcloth itself, with the help of artisan and mentor Wesley Sen, spurring Lehuauakea’s passion for the medium. “Puka Komo ʻEkahi: Portal to Grant Permission” (2024), earth pigments and metal leaf on kapa (barkcloth), 28 x 28 inches Fascinated by the potential to not only continue a time-honored Kanaka Maoli art form but also to experiment and push the boundaries of the material, Lehuauakea makes large-scale installations, hand-stitched garments, mixed-media suspended works, and hand-painted two-dimensional compositions— “in other words, forms that you wouldn’t see in ancestral samples of pre-contact Hawaiian kapa,” they say. The artist continues: As an Indigenous cultural practitioner and artist, I believe it is important to have a solid foundation in the traditional knowledge of the practice before attempting to expand on it or experiment with more contemporary expressions of the medium because I am not singular in this work; I am simply building on a tradition that was passed down through many generations before me, and I can only hope that I am able to inspire future generations to continue it. Lehuauakea is currently working toward solo exhibitions at the Center for Contemporary Art Santa Fe and Nunu Fine Art in New York City, exploring ideas around Native Hawaiian cosmology, celestial cycles, and the relationship between Native Hawaiian language and pattern. Find more on the artist’s website. “Kūmauna” (2024), earth pigments hand-painted on kapa (barkcloth), 26 x 48 inches Detail of “Still Finding My Way Back Home” “I Walk With My Ancestors (1 of 2)” (2024), earth pigment and wildfire charcoal hand-painted on kapa (barkcloth), 29 x 61.5 inches “Night Eyes” (2024), earth pigments and wildfire charcoal hand-painted on kapa (barkcloth), 78 x 18.5 inches “Mele o Nā Kaukani Wai (Song of a Thousand Waters)” (2018), mixed mulberry papers, handmade plant dyes and mineral pigments, gouache, ceramic beads, and thread, approx. 11 x 8 feet Detail of “Mele o Nā Kaukani Wai (Song of a Thousand Waters)” Next article

Veteran UK retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S) has apologised to customers after a cyber incident of a currently undisclosed nature forced multiple public-facing services offline, with shoppers predictably taking to social media in their droves to lament the outages. In a note published on the afternoon of 22 April, the company revealed it had been “managing a cyber incident” affecting contactless payments and online click-and-collect services over the Easter Bank Holiday. According to reports, a second technical problem occurred at the weekend affecting only contactless payments. “As soon as we became aware of the incident, it was necessary to make some minor, temporary changes to our store operations to protect customers and the business and we are sorry for any inconvenience experienced,” a spokesperson said. “Importantly, our stores remain open and our website and app are operating as normal. “Customer trust is incredibly important to us, and if the situation changes an update will be provided as appropriate,” they added. M&S additionally said it has enlisted third-party cyber forensics to assist with incident management, and is taking further actions to protect its network and ensure it can continue to maintain its customer services. Computer Weekly also understands the cyber attack has been reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). “The incident at Marks & Spencer serves as a reminder of the interdependencies in modern retail operations. The disruption to click-and-vollect services and contactless payments underscores how any technical issue can have far-reaching consequences across an entire organisation,” said Javvad Malik, lead security awareness advocate at KnowBe4. “M&S's prompt communication and engagement with the ICO demonstrate a commendable level of transparency and regulatory compliance. However, the event also reveals potential gaps in cyber resilience and crisis management strategies.” Although unconfirmed at this stage, the nature of the attack’s impact, and the language deployed by M&S, suggests that the retailer may be dealing with the impact of a ransomware attack on certain systems. But regardless of the precise nature of the incident, it is by no means an isolated one, with retailers frequently in the crosshairs of threat actors. For example, retailers have high public brand awareness upon which cyber criminals like to capitalise for their own fame and notoriety. Added to this, cyber criminals can use the seasonal nature of the retail sector to ramp up pressure on the victim by disrupting their business at a critical point and making them more likely to cave to extortion demands – the timing of the M&S incident over the long Easter weekend may bear this out. Meanwhile, the growth of omnichannel approaches to retail increases the exposed attack surface, as does adoption of new technologies, such as AI-powered recommendation engines. According to NCC Group, the consumer cyclicals (non-essential purchases) and non-cyclicals (essential purchases) sectors, which both encompass retailers in general, were the second and fifth most targeted verticals by cyber criminal ransomware gangs in the first half of 2024. “There is an urgent need for all sectors to respond to this increased targeting from threat actors, but especially those storing huge amounts of data,” said Matt Hull, global head of threat intelligence at NCC Group. “Now more than ever businesses should expect to be a target for cyber criminals and take a proactive approach to security rather than waiting for potential threats to strike.” Read more about retail technology An Ericsson report finds retailers identified networking and IT as the biggest frustration, with two-fifths suffering loss of revenue at remote branch locations because of poor connectivity. When Tesco Clubcard was developed 30 years ago, using the technology of the time to analyse data was a long shot, but it grew into a scheme that birthed retail loyalty as we know it today. UK supermarkets continue to deal with the impact of a ransomware attack on the systems of supply chain software supplier Blue Yonder, which is disrupting multiple aspects of their businesses including deliveries.

Two of the UK’s leading female cyber practitioners – Secureworks threat intelligence knowledge manager Rebecca Taylor and CybAid founder and Hewitt Partnerships managing director Amelia Hewitt – are to launch a book for women starting and navigating careers in the cyber security sector. The duo describe their co-authored book, Securely Yours, as a practical, agony aunt-style guide, drawing on both Taylor and Hewitt’s lived experience in the still male-dominated security industry. They aim to tackle a range of topics, including active allyship, the ever-present spectre of burnout, and building a professional brand. Many of these topics are drawn from questions posed by others whom the women have mentored during their careers. “No topic is too taboo,” they said. Although Securely Yours reflects on the experiences of and questions raised by women specifically, the authors hope its practical advice will be helpful to anybody looking to advance their security careers, from whatever background, as well as serving as a resource for those in positions of privilege to better support inclusion in security. “It’s been an immense privilege to share not only our experiences and the advice we’ve gained across our careers, but the insights of a range of incredible individuals who have each had their own journeys within cyber, to create a resource we hope has something for every reader,” said Hewitt. “I am fortunate to have had an amazing cyber security career, and I want others to have the same,” added Taylor. “I feel an accountability within me to elevate, support and mentor underrepresented groups to own their platforms, voices and opportunities. This book is a manifestation of that. I truly hope it makes a difference and helps those wanting to thrive in cyber know that they can do it, that we have their back and that they’re not alone on their journey,” she said. Taylor began her career at Secureworks – now part of Sophos – in an administrative role, before taking advantage of a forward-thinking internal culture at the business to develop her career and security expertise. In a 2024 interview with Computer Weekly, she said: “I started doing lots of studying and learning in the background, and through mentorship and exposure around the business, really focused on progressing my career.” Taylor now works on multiple diversity initiatives – not just gender – both within and outside the business. Over the years, she has supported many other women in the industry with mentoring and other guidance. As pushback against official diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives becomes stronger, community support networks – which are often underpinned by mentorships – are becoming particularly valuable for underrepresented groups in security and the wider technology industry. However, recent research conducted by US-based non-profit Woman in Cybersecurity (WiCyS) found that 57% of women in the sector feel excluded from career and growth opportunities, and 56% do not feel they are respected. This is leading to a situation where almost 40% feel they are unable to be their authentic selves in the workplace, and given security suffers from high rates of workforce attrition and burnout, Hewitt and Taylor said it is imperative that more is done to help people feel supported and respected at all stages of their careers. Securely Yours will be available from 1 May 2025 on Amazon, and its launch will be accompanied by a podcast series to expand on the conversations started in the book and offer additional support. Read more about women in cyber Women make up a higher percentage of new entrants to the cyber security profession, particularly among younger age groups, and are increasingly taking up leadership positions and hiring roles, but challenges persist. IBM signs on to a partnership deal in support of the popular NCSC CyberFirst Girls scheme, designed to foster gender diversity in the cyber security profession. ISC2’s Clar Rosso talks about diversifying the cyber workforce and supporting cyber professionals as they keep up with growing compliance and security policy demands.

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