This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. AI is changing how we study bird migration In a warming world, migratory birds face many existential threats. Scientists rely on a combination of methods to track the timing and location of their migrations, but each has shortcomings. And theres another problem: Most birds migrate at night, when its more difficult to identify them visually and while most birders are in bed. For over a century, acoustic monitoring has hovered tantalizingly out of reach as a method that would solve ornithologists woes. Now, finally, machine-learning tools are unlocking a treasure trove of acoustic data for ecologists. Read the full story.Christian Elliot This story is from the forthcoming magazine edition of MIT Technology Review, set to go live on January 6its all about the exciting breakthroughs happening in the world right now. If you dont already, subscribe to receive a copy. A woman in the US is the third person to receive a gene-edited pig kidney Towana Looney, a 53-year-old woman from Alabama, has become the third living person to receive a kidney transplant from a gene-edited pig. Looney, who donated one of her kidneys to her mother back in 1999, developed kidney failure several years later following a pregnancy complication that caused high blood pressure. She started dialysis treatment in December of 2016 and was put on a waiting list for a kidney transplant soon after. But it was difficult to find a match. So Looneys doctors recommended the experimental pig organ as an alternative. After eight years on the waiting list, Looney was authorized to receive the kidney. Read the full story. Jessica Hamzelou Roundtables: The Worst Technology Failures of 2024 Each year, MIT Technology Review publishes a list of the worst technologies of the past 12 months. Antonio Regalado, our senior editor for biomedicine, sat down to discuss 2024s worst failures with our executive editor Niall Firth in a subscriber-exclusive online Roundtable event yesterday. Watch their conversation about what made the cut here, and to make sure you dont miss out in the future, subscribe!MIT Technology Review Narrated: Meet the radio-obsessed civilian shaping Ukraines drone defense Despite it being over 100 years old, radio technology is still critical in almost all aspects of modern warfareincluding in the drones that have come to dominate the Russia-Ukraine war. Serhii Flash Beskrestnov, who has been obsessed with radios since childhood, has become an unlikely hero of the conflict, sharing advice and intel. His work may determine the future of Ukraine, and wars far beyond it. This is our latest story to be turned into a MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which were publishing each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as its released.The must-reads Ive combed the internet to find you todays most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Conspiracy theories are still circulating about those mysterious drones What are they? And where have they come from? (NY Mag $)+ Authorities are attempting to quell public hysteria, but theories abound. (WP $)+ Realistically, theyre probably just standard drones out for a night-time flight. (AP News)2 AI poses a major threat to the power grid Thats according to the US industry watchdog, which is feeling the pressure. (FT $)+ AIs emissions are about to skyrocket even further. (MIT Technology Review)3 SpaceX and Elon Musk are under investigation US federal agencies are probing their repeated failures to comply with reporting rules. (NYT $)4 Nvidia has unveiled a tiny, affordable AI supercomputer Which is handy for roboticists looking to bypass connecting to remote data centers. (Gizmodo)+ While its not the companys most powerful device, its pretty speedy. (WSJ $)+ Microsoft is gobbling up more of Nvidias chips than anyone else. (FT $)+ Blacklisted Chinese AI chip firms gained access to cutting-edge UK tech. (The Guardian) 5 Bitcoins value is rocketing even higherThe industry continues to boom in the wake of Trumps election victory. (Bloomberg $) + So much so, luxury brands are weighing up accepting crypto payments. (Reuters)6 Hepatitis B is an extremely treatable diseaseSo why are so many people still dying from it? (New Yorker $) + Were starting to understand the mysterious surge of hepatitis in children. (MIT Technology Review)7 Earthbrieflyhad an extra second moon And scientists believe it originated from the actual moon we know and love. (New Scientist $) 8 The future of deep-sea miningA set of rules governing how we should do it is highly contentiousand up for debate.(Hakai Magazine) + These deep-sea potatoes could be the future of mining for renewable energy. (MIT Technology Review)9 Resist the temptation to outsource your Christmas shopping to a bot You never know what youll end up with. (Insider $)+ Its probably quicker to browse the web yourself. (WP $)10 Our snacks could soon be designed by AI Confectionary giant Mondelez is using the tech to tweak recipes and test new ones. (WSJ $)+ Forget cookiesthis creamy vegan cheese was made with AI. (MIT Technology Review) Quote of the day It takes a lot for an uber-wealthy, creative-type CEO, many of whom lean left, to suck it up and deal with Trump. But what choice do they have? A Washington lobbyist explains to the Financial Times why the steady stream of tech executives paying their respects to US President-elect Donald Trump shows no sign of slowing. The big story What does GPT-3 know about me? August 2022 One of the biggest stories in tech is the rise of large language models that produce text that reads like a human might have written it. These models power comes from being trained on troves of publicly available human-created text hoovered up from the internet. If youve posted anything even remotely personal in English on the internet, chances are your data might be part of some of the worlds most popular LLMs. Melissa Heikkil, MIT Technology Reviews AI reporter, wondered what data these models might have on herand how it could be misused. So she put OpenAIs GPT-3 to the test. Read about what she found.We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.) + 2024 was a seriously weird year, as evidenced by this completely bonkers list.+ Who knew Seal was such a grunge head?+ These Charli xcx Christmas mashups will haunt my dreams forever, and not in a good way.+ Next summer I feel the need to level up my sandcastle game.

AI is all about data. Reams and reams of data are needed to train algorithms to do what we want, and what goes into the AI models determines what comes out. But heres the problem: AI developers and researchers dont really know much about the sources of the data they are using. AIs data collection practices are immature compared with the sophistication of AI model development. Massive data sets often lack clear information about what is in them and where it came from. The Data Provenance Initiative, a group of over 50 researchers from both academia and industry, wanted to fix that. They wanted to know, very simply: Where does the data to build AI come from? They audited nearly 4,000 public data sets spanning over 600 languages, 67 countries, and three decades. The data came from 800 unique sources and nearly 700 organizations. Their findings, shared exclusively with MIT Technology Review, show a worrying trend: AI's data practices risk concentrating power overwhelmingly in the hands of a few dominant technology companies. In the early 2010s, data sets came from a variety of sources, says Shayne Longpre, a researcher at MIT who is part of the project. It came not just from encyclopedias and the web, but also from sources such as parliamentary transcripts, earning calls, and weather reports. Back then, AI data sets were specifically curated and collected from different sources to suit individual tasks, Longpre says. Then transformers, the architecture underpinning language models, were invented in 2017, and the AI sector started seeing performance get better the bigger the models and data sets were. Today, most AI data sets are built by indiscriminately hoovering material from the internet. Since 2018, the web has been the dominant source for data sets used in all media, such as audio, images, and video, and a gap between scraped data and more curated data sets has emerged and widened. In foundation model development, nothing seems to matter more for the capabilities than the scale and heterogeneity of the data and the web, says Longpre. The need for scale has also boosted the use of synthetic data massively. The past few years have also seen the rise of multimodal generative AI models, which can generate videos and images. Like large language models, they need as much data as possible, and the best source for that has become YouTube. For video models, as you can see in this chart, over 70% of data for both speech and image data sets comes from one source. This could be a boon for Alphabet, Googles parent company, which owns YouTube. Whereas text is distributed across the web and controlled by many different websites and platforms, video data is extremely concentrated in one platform. It gives a huge concentration of power over a lot of the most important data on the web to one company, says Longpre. And because Google is also developing its own AI models, its massive advantage also raises questions about how the company will make this data available for competitors, says Sarah Myers West, the coexecutive director at the AI Now Institute. Its important to think about data not as though its sort of this naturally occurring resource, but its something that is created through particular processes, says Myers West. If the data sets on which most of the AI that were interacting with reflect the intentions and the design of big, profit-motivated corporationsthats reshaping the infrastructures of our world in ways that reflect the interests of those big corporations, she says. This monoculture also raises questions about how accurately the human experience is portrayed in the data set and what kinds of models we are building, says Sara Hooker, the vice president of research at the technology company Cohere, who is also part of the Data Provenance Initiative. People upload videos to YouTube with a particular audience in mind, and the way people act in those videos is often intended for very specific effect. Does [the data] capture all the nuances of humanity and all the ways that we exist? says Hooker. Hidden restrictions AI companies dont usually share what data they used to train their models. One reason is that they want to protect their competitive edge. The other is that because of the complicated and opaque way data sets are bundled, packaged, and distributed, they likely dont even know where all the data came from. They also probably dont have complete information about any constraints on how that data is supposed to be used or shared. The researchers at the Data Provenance Initiative found that data sets often have restrictive licenses or terms attached to them, which should limit their use for commercial purposes, for example. This lack of consistency across the data lineage makes it very hard for developers to make the right choice about what data to use, says Hooker. It also makes it almost impossible to be completely certain you havent trained your model on copyrighted data, adds Longpre. More recently, companies such as OpenAI and Google have struck exclusive data-sharing deals with publishers, major forums such as Reddit, and social media platforms on the web. But this becomes another way for them to concentrate their power. These exclusive contracts can partition the internet into various zones of who can get access to it and who cant, says Longpre. The trend benefits the biggest AI players, who can afford such deals, at the expense of researchers, nonprofits, and smaller companies, who will struggle to get access. The largest companies also have the best resources for crawling data sets. This is a new wave of asymmetric access that we havent seen to this extent on the open web, Longpre says. The West vs. the rest The data that is used to train AI models is also heavily skewed to the Western world. Over 90% of the data sets that the researchers analyzed came from Europe and North America, and fewer than 4% came from Africa. "These data sets are reflecting one part of our world and our culture, but completely omitting others," says Hooker. The dominance of the English language in training data is partly explained by the fact that the internet is still over 90% in English, and there are still a lot of places on Earth where theres really poor internet connection or none at all, says Giada Pistilli, principal ethicist at Hugging Face, who was not part of the research team. But another reason is convenience, she adds: Putting together data sets in other languages and taking other cultures into account requires conscious intention and a lot of work. The Western focus of these data sets becomes particularly clear with multimodal models. When an AI model is prompted for the sights and sounds of a wedding, for example, it might only be able to represent Western weddings, because thats all that it has been trained on, Hooker says. This reinforces biases and could lead to AI models that push a certain US-centric worldview, erasing other languages and cultures. We are using these models all over the world, and theres a massive discrepancy between the world were seeing and whats invisible to these models, Hooker says.

A small songbird soars above Ithaca, New York, on a September night. He is one of 4 billion birds, a great annual river of feathered migration across North America. Midair, he lets out what ornithologists call a nocturnal flight call to communicate with his flock. Its the briefest of signals, barely 50 milliseconds long, emitted in the woods in the middle of the night. But humans have caught it nevertheless, with a microphone topped by a focusing funnel. Moments later, software called BirdVoxDetect, the result of a collaboration between New York University, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and cole Centrale de Nantes, identifies the bird and classifies it to the species level. Biologists like Cornells Andrew Farnsworth had long dreamed of snooping on birds this way. In a warming world increasingly full of human infrastructure that can be deadly to them, like glass skyscrapers and power lines, migratory birds are facing many existential threats. Scientists rely on a combination of methods to track the timing and location of their migrations, but each has shortcomings. Doppler radar, with the weather filtered out, can detect the total biomass of birds in the air, but it cant break that total down by species. GPS tags on individual birds and careful observations by citizen-scientist birders help fill in that gap, but tagging birds at scale is an expensive and invasive proposition. And theres another key problem: Most birds migrate at night, when its more difficult to identify them visually and while most birders are in bed. For over a century, acoustic monitoring has hovered tantalizingly out of reach as a method that would solve ornithologists woes. In the late 1800s, scientists realized that migratory birds made species-specific nocturnal flight callsacoustic fingerprints. When microphones became commercially available in the 1950s, scientists began recording birds at night. Farnsworth led some of this acoustic ecology research in the 1990s. But even then it was challenging to spot the short calls, some of which are at the edge of the frequency range humans can hear. Scientists ended up with thousands of tapes they had to scour in real time while looking at spectrograms that visualize audio. Though digital technology made recording easier, the perpetual problem, Farnsworth says, was that it became increasingly easy to collect an enormous amount of audio data, but increasingly difficult to analyze even some of it. Then Farnsworth met Juan Pablo Bello, director of NYUs Music and Audio Research Lab. Fresh off a project using machine learning to identify sources of urban noise pollution in New York City, Bello agreed to take on the problem of nocturnal flight calls. He put together a team including the French machine-listening expert Vincent Lostanlen, and in 2015, the BirdVox project was born to automate the process. Everyone was like, Eventually, when this nut is cracked, this is going to be a super-rich source of information, Farnsworth says. But in the beginning, Lostanlen recalls, there was not even a hint that this was doable. It seemed unimaginable that machine learning could approach the listening abilities of experts like Farnsworth. Andrew is our hero, says Bello. The whole thing that we want to imitate with computers is Andrew. They started by training BirdVoxDetect, a neural network, to ignore faults like low buzzes caused by rainwater damage to microphones. Then they trained the system to detect flight calls, which differ between (and even within) species and can easily be confused with the chirp of a car alarm or a spring peeper. The challenge, Lostanlen says, was similar to the one a smart speaker faces when listening for its unique wake word, except in this case the distance from the target noise to the microphone is far greater (which means much more background noise to compensate for). And, of course, the scientists couldnt choose a unique sound like Alexa or Hey Google for their trigger. For birds, we dont really make that choice. Charles Darwin made that choice for us, he jokes. Luckily, they had a lot of training data to work withFarnsworths team had hand-annotated thousands of hours of recordings collected by the microphones in Ithaca. With BirdVoxDetect trained to detect flight calls, another difficult task lay ahead: teaching it to classify the detected calls by species, which few expert birders can do by ear. To deal with uncertainty, and because there is not training data for every species, they decided on a hierarchical system. For example, for a given call, BirdVoxDetect might be able to identify the birds order and family, even if its not sure about the speciesjust as a birder might at least identify a call as that of a warbler, whether yellow-rumped or chestnut-sided. In training, the neural network was penalized less when it mixed up birds that were closer on the taxonomical tree. Last August, capping off eight years of research, the team published a paper detailing BirdVoxDetects machine-learning algorithms. They also released the software as a free, open-source product for ornithologists to use and adapt. In a test on a full season of migration recordings totaling 6,671 hours, the neural network detected 233,124 flight calls. In a 2022 study in the Journal of Applied Ecology, the team that tested BirdVoxDetect found acoustic data as effective as radar for estimating total biomass. BirdVoxDetect works on a subset of North American migratory songbirds. But through few-shot learning, it can be trained to detect other, similar birds with just a few training examples. Its like learning a language similar to one you already speak, Bello says. With cheap microphones, the system could be expanded to places around the world without birders or Doppler radar, even in vastly different recording conditions. If you go to a bioacoustics conference and you talk to a number of people, they all have different use cases, says Lostanlen. The next step for bioacoustics, he says, is to create a foundation model, like the ones scientists are working on for natural-language processing and image and video analysis, that would be reconfigurable for any specieseven beyond birds. That way, scientists wont have to build a new BirdVoxDetect for every animal they want to study. The BirdVox project is now complete, but scientists are already building on its algorithms and approach. Benjamin Van Doren, a migration biologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who worked on BirdVox, is using Nighthawk, a new user-friendly neural network based on both BirdVoxDetect and the popular birdsong ID app Merlin, to study birds migrating over Chicago and elsewhere in North and South America. And Dan Mennill, who runs a bioacoustics lab at the University of Windsor, says hes excited to try Nighthawk on flight calls his team currently hand-annotates after theyre recorded by microphones on the Canadian side of the Great Lakes. One weakness of acoustic monitoring is that unlike radar, a single microphone cant detect the altitude of a bird overhead or the direction in which it is moving. Mennills lab is experimenting with an array of eight microphones that can triangulate to solve that problem. Sifting through recordings has been slow. But with Nighthawk, the analysis will speed dramatically. With birds and other migratory animals under threat, Mennill says, BirdVoxDetect came at just the right time. Knowing exactly which birds are flying over in real time can help scientists keep tabs on how species are doing and where theyre going. That can inform practical conservation efforts like Lights Out initiatives that encourage skyscrapers to go dark at night to prevent bird collisions. Bioacoustics is the future of migration research, and were really just getting to the stage where we have the right tools, he says. This ushers us into a new era. Christian Elliott is a science and environmental reporter based in Illinois.

Submitted by WA Contentsstudio wok turns an abandoned electrical cabin into an experimental space in Italy Italy Architecture News - Dec 18, 2024 - 14:29 html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"Milan-based architecture practice studio wok has turned an abandoned electrical cabin into an experimental space in San Maurizio d'Opaglio, Italy.Named Quadrodesign HQ, the 300-square-metre building is situated inside the Quadro faucet company's headquarters, which is close to Lago d'Orta.After the offices and showroom were redesigned in 2022, which concentrated on the outside design and the restoration of a historic electrical cabin inside the property, relates to the second stage of a larger intervention.The client wanted to add fresh, adaptable, and lively areas to the property that could be used by Magistro's family, the owners of the company, and yet be used for commercial purposes or as an artist's residence.Three volumesthe cabin, the pergola, and the swimming poolemerge from a concrete platform that functions as a kind of public square, quietly yet flexibly delineating the space's multiple possible uses.Because of its unique design for an inhabited space, the renovated and repurposed electrical cabin provides an opportunity for spatial experimentation.The boundary between the interior and the exterior is almost blurred by a sliding door system, giving the impression that the interior is directly connected to the outside.Some technical amenities, including a restroom and a small kitchen, are located inside and can support outdoor activities. Thus, the structure turns into a tiny activator of the open spaces of the company.Two mezzanines connected by a system of metal stairs take advantage of the building's vertical dimension. A bed can be placed on the first intermediate slab, which is larger and composed of natural wood.The second one, which is already there and made of concrete, is transformed into a more intimate room that is directly exposed to the light coming in through a window close to the top.The color and material selections aim to create an environment that is absolute, neutral, and almost sacred. Flooded with light, the materials maintain their inherent texture and individuality without the need of extra colors.Perpendicular to the cabin, on the edge of the concrete plateau, the pergola is constructed using tubular profiles made of galvanized steel that are grouped in five spans with a regular pitch of 2.6 meters.A custom-made long kitchen counter, composed of stone and sheet metal, takes up the remaining two spans and is shielded by a ceiling composed of light corrugated iron panels. The first two spans can be used as a lounge or eating space.The intervention is completed and its perimeter is defined by a tiny swimming pool. Only partially buried in the ground, it appears to rise from the concrete floor as a monolithic anthracite stone volume, evoking the kitchen's volume and providing the space for a huge seat.General layoutPlanInterior plansSectionPergola detailsstudio wok added soft green tones and powder colors to the interiors of a bakery in Milan, Italy. In addition, the studio created cave-like, pinkish interiors for this restaurant in a beautiful setting of Porto Cervo, Italy.Project factsProject name:Quadrodesign HQArchitects:studio wokSize:300m2Client:Quadro srCompletion year:2024All images Marcello Mariana.All drawings studio wok.> via studio wok

Five anonymous designs chosen from more than 600 entries for Europes largest bespoke design and architecture museumOne of five shortlisted entries for the Helsinki museum1/5show captionMore than 600 entries in an international competition to design a landmark architecture museum in Helsinki have been whittled down to five finalists.The Foundation for the Finnish Museum of Architecture and Design and real estate company ADM have revealed the shortlist for the 10,000sq m scheme, which is expected to be among the most prominent civic buildings in the Finnish capital.None of the design teams which entered the first round of the competition in September have been named and it will remain anonymous in the second round, which is due to launch in February this year.Kaarina Gould, chief executive of the Finnish Architecture and Design Museum Foundation and member of the jury, said choosing the shortlist had been a challenging yet inspiring exercise in identifying the greatest potential amongst hundreds of interesting approaches.Gus Casely-Hayford, jury panel member and director of V&A East, said the scheme represented a generational opportunity for the architecture and design sector in Finland, and it arrives at what feels like a moment of wider intellectual and cultural reckoning.> Also read:More than 600 proposals for landmark Helsinki architecture and design museum unveiledHe described the finalists as intriguing projects that feel both timely and timeless, a shortlist of buildings that I hope Finland will be beguiled by.Only main visuals and concepts of the shortlisted proposals have been made available for public display. The jury has had access to more extensive material, including floor plans, site plans, and other documents requested in the competition brief.Beate Hlmebakk, jury panel member, architect, professor and partner at Manthey Kula in Oslo said: What these entries share is their potential to be buildings of extraordinary and lasting architectural quality. It is the jurys opinion that they all have distinct urban presence and exceptional spatial properties that allow the new museum of architecture and design to organize the rich variety of exhibitions and events their ambition calls for.The second stage of the competition will run until the end of May next year, with the final result due to be announced in September.Each shortlisted team will receive a payment of 50,000 in two instalments, 30,000 at the beginning of Stage 2 and 20,000 on completion.At the end of the competition the Jury will award prizes of 50,000, 35,000 and 25,000 for first, second and third place, with purchase options of 20,000 for the remaining two designs.The museum will be located on a site currently used as a car park on the historic South Harbour of Helsinki where the citys old town meets the Gulf of Finland.Intended as the largest bespoke design museum in Europe, and one of the largest in the world, the buildingThe building will combine the Museum of Finnish Architecture and Design Museum Helsinki into a single national museum for architecture and design which is envisaged as the biggest bespoke design museum in Europe, and one of the largest in the world.It will contain over 900,000 artefacts encompassing the history of Finnish and Nordic architecture and design, including objects, correspondence, models and photographs.The project will replace former plans for a Guggenheim museum designed by French-Japanese practice Moreau Kusunoki which were scrapped by the city council in 2016 after locals objected to such a significant site being given to a global brand.It will be part of a wider masterplan for the citys South Harbour designed by a team consisting of K2S Architects, White Arkitekter and Ramboll.Enabling works for the wider site are understood to be underway but construction of the new cultural and public realm district is yet to start.

Government says latest 66bn figure could come down after interventionThe chair of HS2 Ltd is set to step down, the Department for Transport (DfT) has announced as it revealed yet another cost rise for the project.Jon Thompson, who was a veteran civil servant before taking his role at the government-backed delivery body, will step back from his role in the spring after four years on the board.In a statement, transport secretary Heidi Alexander thanked Thompson for providing strong leadership during challenging times for the project.Source: Department for Transport / FlickrHeidi Alexander addressing a DfT all-staff meeting to welcome her as new transport secretaryThe news came alongside the DfTs six-monthly update to parliament on the progress of HS2, which revealed that the predicted cost of the scheme at completion had risen to stand at between 54bn and 66bn.This compares to the previous estimate of between 45bn and 54bn.But Alexander said the latest estimate, which was presented to HS2s board in June, did not take into account the new governments work to reset the project or factor in private financing for Euston.We do not think these figures are accurate or reliable, she added.Alexander, who recently took on the secretary of state role from Louise Haigh, said the coming months would see fresh leadership under HS2s new chief executive Mark Wild, with the government working to grip budgets and deliver the line cost-effectively for passengers and taxpayers.Jon Thompson will step down next springWild, who was previously responsible for delivering the Crossrail project, formally began as HS2 Ltds new chief executive at the start of the month.> Also read:HS2 cuts will leave line as a monument to the British mentality, Manchester mayor saysWild has been asked to undertake an assessment on cost, schedule, capability and culture and to provide an action plan for delivering remaining work as cost-effectively as possible.Until Mark Wild concludes this work, the government cannot be confident in the forecast outturn cost of the project, said Alexander.We are, therefore, managing HS2 Ltds delivery through annual funding and delivery targets for this financial year and next but with reduced delegation on contingency.It will also be necessary to agree longer-term funding for HS2 in the spending review, due to conclude next year.Alexander said most costs for the project were within the supply chain and that improved cost control would require engagement with these companies.Alexander restated that the government had no plans to reinstate the northern sections of HS2but said the department has met with the mayors of Greater Manchester and the West Midlands about proposals for a lower cost option.She said the government would set out its plan for strategic rail investment north of Birmingham in due course, including its approach to the Crewe-Manchester hybrid bill.The update the first since November 2023 after a year disrupted by a change in government also revealed that the government had completed a small number of pilot sales of land north of Birmingham.and is developing a programme to further dispose of land.While the forecast date for initial HS2 services between Birmingham and Old Oak Common is still between 2029 and 2033, there is still no current schedule estimate for delivering Euston.

Two practices worked together on the Stirling Prize-winning Accordia developmentSketch of FCBS plans for the Bath Press site, with the remaining half of CDAs consented scheme in the backgroundFormer Stirling Prize team mates Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios and Grant Associates have reunited on a mixed-use project on a historic site in Bath.The pair, which worked together on the Accordia development, named by RIBA as Britains best new building in 2008, will design the western half of the former Bath Press site for developer City & Country.The eastern half of the site will be designed by Bristol-based Alec French Architects, with the three practices together replacing CDA and landscape architect MacGregor Smith on a former scheme on the site which was approved in 2022.Bath press was built in the 1890s and was the former location of the Pitman Press, owned by publisher Isaac Pitman, who is known for creating the most widely used form of shorthand.The site was vacated in 2007 and demolished behind a retained facade and chimney in 2018 to make way for development. It was bought by City & Country for 13.8m in March this year with the existing CDA-designed consent for 277 homes.City & Country has now earmarked the western end of the site for a new development after identifying potential for a significantly enhanced architectural solution, appointing FCBS, which was founded in Bath, last month. Alec French was appointed earlier this year and has submitteed amendments to the CDA consent.An early sketch of the new proposals drawn up by the practice appears to show six blocks of three to five storeys surrounding two central garden areas, with the eastern half of CDAs consented scheme in the background.Keith Bradley, co-founder of FCBS,, said the practice would bring experienced development, sensitivity and design ambition to the developers first project in the city.For FCBS, this is our home city and have recently worked on some of Baths preeminent historic buildings, including the award-winning Bath Abbey Footprint project, and the adjacent Roman Baths and Pump Room Archway visitor facilities, he said.We are looking forward to creating some much needed, high-quality housing in the city, to follow the successes of our London, Manchester, and Cambridge residential work.This includes the RIBA Stirling Prize Accordia Project which we worked on with Bath based Grant Associates Landscape Architects, who join us on the Bath Press collaboration.Grant Associates director Keith French said the Bath Press site was layered in history, offering an important gateway into our home city and an amazing opportunity to bring it back to life.Bath Press is located within the Bath world heritage site but not within or adjacent to any conservation areas.Aerial view of the Bath Press site

As a valued reader of the Architects Journal, your feedback is important to us. Were continually striving to enhance the AJ, and wed like to hear your opinions on the AJ Buildings Library.The Buildings Library is a key resource for architects, designers and industry professionals, and we want to ensure it meets your needs. Whether you use it frequently, occasionally or not at all, your insights are invaluable in shaping its future.To help us understand how we can improve the AJ Buildings Library, we kindly ask you to complete a short survey.As a thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts, you can be in with a chance of winning a luxury hamper.The AJ Buildings Library can only be fully accessed with an AJ subscription click here for more information.We look forward to receiving your responses!AJ Buildings Library 2024-12-18Mary Douglascomment and share TagsAJ Buildings Library

Writing in a letter on Monday (16 December) seen by the AJ, the non-profit group Good Law Project told the industry regulator that it should take action against architects involved in the fatal refurbishment of Grenfell tower in 2016. It named Studio E co-founder Andrzej Jozef Maria Kuszell and lead architect Bruce Alexander Sounes in the complaint.The Good Law Project said: The complaint is that architects registered with ARB failed to act with the appropriate standard of care and in accordance with statutory guidance, which they owed as architects.We consider that the Phase 2 Report provides extensive evidence that the architects involved in the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower failed to adhere to the standards of professional conduct and practice expected of persons registered as architects under the Architects Act 1997.AdvertisementStudio E was found to have committed significant failings in multiple ways during the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower and bore a very significant responsibility for the disaster, the second report from the inquiry into the disaster found in September.The ARB said in the immediate aftermath of the report that it would consider the findings but had not announced any formal investigation against former Studio E staff, some of whom are still registered architects.A formal investigation is now under way, the AJ understands.In a statement to the BBC, the Good Law Project said the ARB had been slow to take action as the industry regulator and added: [The architects] may be held to account today [...] we, the bereaved families, will have to live with their mistakes for the rest of our lives.These architects were responsible for the architectural safety of our and our families homes. Yet none of their partners or employees had the relevant knowledge, experience or skills needed to work on a high-rise cladding project. They let us and our loved ones down.AdvertisementThe non-profit group, which signed the letter with the Fire Brigades Union, said future tragedies related to dangerous cladding could be avoided if its complaint is upheld by the ARB. The organisations said it would also give residents of other affected buildings the confidence to complain to the regulator.In a statement to the AJ, an ARB spokesperson said formal investigations have commenced into the architects involved in Grenfell Towers refurbishment to see whether they might be guilty of a disciplinary offence under the Architects Code.It continued: The Grenfell Tower fire was a national tragedy and is rightly considered one of the UKs worst modern disasters, and we are sensitive to the strong public interest of taking appropriate action without delay.The investigations must be conducted properly if they are to be effective, and can be complex, particularly when they take place in the background of potential criminal proceedings which must not be prejudiced.The ARB, which did not set out a timeframe for the investigation, added: It is ARBs policy to not comment on the detail of investigations until or unless they reach a public hearing of our Professional Conduct Committee, so that the Committee can make an independent decision based on the evidence available.Although no longer trading, Studio E has been in the voluntary liquidation process for four years after it began winding down in early 2020 an insolvency procedure that began during the second phase of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.The Grenfell inquirys chair, Martin Moore-Bick, said in his final report that Studio E had taken an unduly narrow view of its responsibilities and operated under a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of the job, which Moore-Bick said was symptomatic of a widespread failure within the wider profession.Other bodies criticised in the report included cladding manufacturers Kingspan and Arconic, which the report said had knowingly created a false market in insulation for use on buildings over 18m by claiming its product was successfully used elsewhere. Government deregulation was also heavily blamed.The Metropolitan Policesaid in Maythat no charges would arise over Grenfell before 2026 and that 19 companies and organisations, and 58 individuals were facing possible criminal charges.Possible offences include corporate manslaughter, gross negligence, manslaughter, fraud, violation of the Building Safety Act 1984 and misconduct in public office.Carter Clark, the liquidators for Studio E and representing architects Andrzej Jozef Maria Kuszell, and Bruce Alexander Sounes, have been contacted for comment.2024-12-18Gino Spocchiacomment and share

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences yesterday announced shortlists in 10 categories for the 97th Academy Awards: Visual Effects, Sound, Documentary Feature Film, Documentary Short Film, International Feature Film, Makeup and Hairstyling, Music (Original Score), Music (Original Song), Animated Short Film, and Live Action Short Film.Ten films remain in the running in the Visual Effects category for the 97th Academy Awards. The Visual Effects Branch Executive Committee determined the shortlist. All members of the Visual Effects Branch will be invited to view excerpts and interviews with the artists from each of the shortlisted films on Saturday, January 11, 2025. Branch members will vote to nominate five films for final Oscar consideration.ILM is thrilled to have contributed to five of the ten films named to the list including: Alien: RomulusDeadpool & WolverineGladiator IITwistersWickedNominations voting begins on Wednesday, January 8, 2025, and concludes on Sunday, January 12, 2025. Nominations for the 97th Academy Awards will be announced on Friday, January 17, 2025.The 97th Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 2, 2025, at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood and will be televised live on ABC, streamed live on Hulu and airs live in more than 200 territories worldwide.