Source: BDPPlans for a district centre at the heart of the Wichelstowe development in Swindon have been approved.The scheme, designed by BDP, aims to create a vibrant hub for the growing community, which will eventually encompass 4,000 homes.The development is located on both sides of the Wilts & Berks Canal, providing a new focal point for public activities and services.The approved plans, submitted in two separate applications by Swindon Borough Council, include two zones: Canalside East and Canalside West.The district centre is intended to offer flexible spaces for day and evening use throughout the year.Source: BDPNick Ellis, associate architect at BDP, said: New neighbourhoods are vital in providing the much-needed housing that the country so desperately needs; however, it is also crucial to create a vibrant centre to help knit the community together and of course make them enjoyable places to live.The mixture of uses is key to ensuring the area caters to everyones needs and that the space is used and enjoyed at different times of the day and year. We have put great thought into the design of the district centre to promote social cohesion with lots of outdoor and indoor communal space, whilst making the most of the canal and including plenty of greenery.Canalside West will include a health centre with a pharmacy next door, as well as a community centre and workspace located on the upper levels. Four retail units, designed to accommodate restaurants, shops, and cafes, will feature a covered walkway at the front.Above these units, there will be 12 one and two bedroom apartments.Source: BDPCanalside East will house a gym with space for a caf, which will connect to the towpath along the canal. This side of the development will also feature 14 one- and two-bedroom apartments above the ground-floor facilities.Both areas will be linked by a public square, which is envisioned as a space for markets, events, and other leisure activities. A footbridge over the canal will connect the development to towpaths for walking, jogging, and cycling.BDPs design incorporates sustainability and biodiversity measures, including a biodiverse roof andsolar panels.BDP also provided landscape architecture and mechanical and electrical services for the project.The Wichelstowe development is one of the largest local authority joint ventures in the UK, delivered by Swindon Borough Council in partnership with Barratt Homes and David Wilson Homes.

The Elizabeth line has boosted jobs and housebuilding for London, according to analysis from Transport for London.A reportAbbey Wood has emerged as one of the largest regeneration areas in London, with a 6% increase in new homes.Source: ShutterstockThe line has seen more than 500 million passenger journeys since it openedMeanwhile, TFL said between 2015 and 2022, there were 378,000 jobs created within one kilometre of Elizabeth line stations.During this period, the highest job growth in London occurred around Liverpool Street station in the City.The line, which connects Reading and Heathrow Airport with Shenfield and Abbey Wood via central London, opened late, in May 2022, and over budget at nearly 19bn.Since then, more than 500 million passenger journeys have been made making it the single busiest railway service in the UK.> Also read:UK has underinvested by 30 Elizabeth lines and is stuck in growth doom loop, says IPPR

Looking forthe most recentMini Crossword answer?Click here for today's Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands and Connections puzzles.Pretty easy clues today, so you should be able to get today's NYT Mini Crossword answered quickly. Here's a big, fat meatball of a hint for 1 Across. Need some help with today's Mini Crossword? Read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.The Mini Crossword is just one of many games in the Times' games collection. If you're looking for today's Wordle, Connections and Strands answers, you can visitCNET's NYT puzzle hints page.Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini CrosswordLet's get at those Mini Crossword clues and answers. The completed NYT Mini Crossword puzzle for Jan. 13, 2025. NYT/Screenshot by CNETMini across clues and answers1A clue: Raygun or Moo Deng, in 2024Answer: MEME5A clue: Avoid, as one's taxesAnswer: EVADE7A clue: Sotomayor of the Supreme CourtAnswer: SONIA8A clue: Comical routines in a school talent showAnswer: SKITS9A clue: "I only eat unleavened bread now; I'm on the path of ___ resistance!" (groaner)Answer: YEASTMini down clues and answers1D clue: Like a roommate who leaves dishes in the sink and socks on the sofaAnswer: MESSY2D clue: Bring to mindAnswer: EVOKE3D clue: Ending with ego, pyro- or klepto-Answer: MANIA4D clue: Polishes, as an articleAnswer: EDITS6D clue: "___ of Eden" (Steinbeck novel)Answer: EASTHow to play more Mini CrosswordsThe New York Times Games section offers a large number of online games, but only some of them are free for all to play. You can play the current day's Mini Crossword for free, but you'll need a subscription to the Times Games section to play older puzzles from the archives.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer?Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Connections puzzles.Today'sStrandspuzzle is kind of a fun one. We all know about times such as 5 o'clock or 3:30 P.M., but there are an awful lot of ways to indicate the time of day that aren't numerical, and this puzzle really makes you dig for those. If you need hints and answers, read on.Also, I go into depth about therules for Strands in this story.If you're looking for today's Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visitCNET's NYT puzzle hints page.Read more:NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So FarHint for today's Strands puzzleToday's Strands theme is:Hole foodsIf that doesn't help you, here's a clue: Salt and poppyseed are other varieties.Clue words to unlock in-game hintsYour goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle's theme. If you're stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints, but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:BEEN, SEEN, REEL, BEER, LEER, SEVEN, SAME, MAIL, REVEL, SEVERAnswers for today's Strands puzzleThese are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you've got all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:PLAIN, GARLIC, SESAME, RAISIN, BLUEBERRY, EVERYTHINGToday's Strands spangramToday's Strands spangram isBAGELS.To find it, start with the B that's four letters down on the far right row, and wind over and up. The completed NYT Strands puzzle for Jan. 13, 2025. NYT/Screenshot by CNET

Looking for the most recentregular Connections answers? Click here for today's Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.Connections: Sports Editioncan be a killer, but today wasn't super hard. I can't say that I knew what the category name was for each color category, but I had a sense of which words matched up where.Read on for hints and answers for today's Connections: Sports Edition puzzle.For now, the game is in beta, which means the Times is testing it out to see if it's popular before adding it to the site's Games app. You can play it daily for now for free and then we'll have to see if it sticks around.Read more: NYT Has a Connections Game for Sports Fans. I Tried ItHints for today's Connections: Sports Edition groupsHere are four hints for the groupings in today's Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.Yellow group hint: Are you really hurt?Green group hint: Don't pass the ball.Blue group hint: Fight for a medal.Purple group hint:Phrase with a word similar to "hat."Answers for today's Connections: Sports Edition groupsYellow group: Fake a foulGreen group: Football running playsBlue group: Olympic combat sportsPurple group:____ capRead more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English WordsWhat are today's Connections: Sports Edition answers? The completed NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for Jan. 13, 2025. NYT/Screenshot by CNETThe yellow words in today's ConnectionsThe theme is fake a foul. The four answers are act, dive, embellish and flop.The green words in today's ConnectionsThe theme is football running plays. The four answers are blast, counter, off-tackle and sweep.The blue words in today's ConnectionsThe theme is Olympic combat sports. The four answers are boxing, judo, taekwondo and wrestling.The purple words in today's ConnectionsThe theme is ____ cap. The four answers are baseball, rally, salary and swim.

Tom Coughlin at the 2025 CESCoughlin AssociatesDigital storage and memory enable all of our consumer devices and applications, whether running on a local device or from the cloud. My next blogs will look at various digital storage products and some AI related technology I saw at the 2025 CES in Las Vegas. This article talks about CES announcements from SanDisk, Kioxia, SK hynix, Micron, Samsung and Macronix.Lets start with Western Digital and its SanDisk brand, soon to be spun out as a separate company. The first of these products is the SanDisk Creator Phone SSD, part of the companys Creator storage series, a few of which are shown below. It is designed for producing content on the move and can record 4K resolution video at 60fps videos in Apple ProRes format. It attaches to MagSafe-compatible smartphones and offers capacities up to 2TB and performance of up to 1000MB/s read and up to 950MB/s write.SanDisk Creator series of SSD products at the 2025 CESTom Coughlin and SanDiskThe Creator line also includes a microSD card with capacities up to 1TB and card reader, an SD UHS-II card with capacities up to 1TB, a phone drive with both lightning and USC-C connectors and capacities up to 128GB for allowing movement of content between phones and other devices, a USB-C flash drive, a Creator Pro portable SSD with capacities up to 4TB and a sleek looking desktop drive.SanDisk also released an Extreme Pro dual USB-A and USB-C drive and a video game Fortnight Peely Edition SSDs and USB drives for gamers to store clips videos of their games. The SSD version comes with a redeemable pick-axe.MORE FOR YOUKIOXIA was showing a number of products at a meeting room during the 2025 CES. This included scalable BiCS 3D flash memory technology solutions, SSDs and software for AI, flash memory solutions for automotive, consumer and industrial applications and a lineup of KIOXIA SSDs. These included UFS solutions for automotive applications such as the UFS 3.1 product in a test bed shown on the right below as well as a number of enterprise and data center SSDs shown to the left below.KIOXIA products at the 2025 CESCoughlin AssociatesSSDs have become primary storage in many data centers and they provide high performance data movement to support computation intensive applications such as various types of AI training and inference.KIOXIA introduced UFS version 4.0 embedded flash memory devices for automotive applications. The company said that these products have achieved SPICE level 2 certification. The Automotive Software Process Improvement and Capability dEtermination (SPICE) is based upon the ISO/IEC 33000 series of standards. These standards are an internationally recognized framework for assessing and improving software development process tailors to the automotive industry.SK hynix had a large memory exhibit in the central hall at the 2025 CES. The company focused on memorys role in AI training and inference. The focus of the companys CES exhibit was its AI data center. The exhibit featured the companys high bandwidth memory, HBM, server DRAM, eSSD, compute express link, CXL 2, products, and processing in memory, PIM, products.SK hynix showed its HBM3E products, an extended version of HBM3. This includes up to 16 stacked DRAM chips providing up to 48GB with electrical connections using through silicon vias, TSVs, shown below. The company also showed DDR5 RDIMM and MCR DIMM, high-speed server DRAM modules tailored for data center environments as well as its eSSD (enterprise SSD) solutions, including the PS1010, PEB110, and PE9010, also shown below.SK hynix memory and storage products at the 2025 CESSK hynix imagesSK hynix showed some of its CXL products, CMM-DDR54 and CMM-Ax. The companys PIM solutions include GDDR6-AiM and AiMX6, a high-speed, low-power accelerator card which performs computational functions. AiMX stands for Accelerator-in-Memory Based Accelerator. They also showed on-device AI solutions.SK hynix also showed consumer-oriented memory devices. These included LPCAMM2, the mobile NAND solution ZUFS9 4.0, and PCB01for on-device AI PCs. The LPCAMM2 is shown in some detail below.SK hynix LPCAMM2 memory at the 2025 CESCoughlin AssociatesDuring his CES keynote talk on Sunday night, Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA announced that Micron HBMs and DDR memories were being used in the latest GPU product from NIVIA. I visited the Micron meeting room at the CES and took pictures of generation 9 NAND flash and DRAM 300mm wafers as well as four video streams playing from a quad-port SSD, see below.Images from the Micron meeting room at the 2025 CESCoughlin AssociatesMicrons booth focused on its Crucial consumer-oriented products, in particular memory for gaming systems. However, the company was also showing various consumer as well as enterprise and data center oriented memory and solid state storage products as shown below.Micron products on display at the 2025 CESCoughlin AssociatesSamsungs CES booth slogan was AI for All, and they featured AI in all of their consumer products. To enable AI Samsung needs to have storage and memory to support these applications. As the largest manufacturer of DRAM and NAND flash, they are in a good place to support this.Samsung received CES 2025 Innovation Awards for their LPDDR5X DRAM memory. This is a device made with 12nm lithographic technology, 10.7GB/s data rates, 32GB capacity and 25% lower power consumption than previous generation products. This product is aimed at data center as well as consumer and automotive applications.Samsung was also showing its HBM3E chips with 12 DRAM chip layers and 36GB capacity and giving a peak at the companys HBM4 work. Their HBM products also included a PIM HBM. Samsung says that the HBM PIM is able to process some of the logic functions by integrating an AI engine called the Programmable Computing Unit (PCU) in the memory core.Samsung is providing PIM versions of its latest HBM, LPDDR and GDDR products. The company was also showing CXL memory modules, CMM-D, with integrated CXL controllers and discussed memory pooling using CXL. The image below features some of Samsungs 2025 CES announcements.Samsung products at the 2025 CESSamsung SemiconductorSamsung was also showing LPDDR products for the automotive industry. The company also says it has been developing SSDs for SDV and next generation zonal automotive architectures. They call this product a detachable AutoSSD and allows data access to multiple SoCs through virtualization. This product is planned to ship in an E1.S-like configuration with support for PCIe Gen 4 connectivity.I interviewed Macronix CEO Miin Wu at the 2025 CES. He talked about the companys plans to introduce 3D NOR chip technology that the company hopes to introduce by the end of 2025, see image below. He said that this initial product is a 30-layer NOR that will have a capacity of 4GB and that there is a lot of interest in this stand-alone product.Macronix 3D NOR technology at the 2025 CESCoughlin AssociatesI believe that he said that there will be DDR as well as Octo and Quad configurations for the 3D NOR product. During our interview Wu also talked about the companys 3D NAND activities, saying that the company is working on controller as well as memory technologies. He said that their 48 and 96-layer 3D NAND products are available and 192-layer is coming soon. Macronix is a small company trying to do big things. I also asked him about their involvement in chiplets and he said that they are part of the UCIe consortium.SanDisk, Kioxia, SK hynix, Micron, Samsung and Macronix were showing their storage and memory solutions at the 2025 CES.

AI has become a marketing buzzword for new phone features, content creation apps, and even in major sports broadcasts like basketball, football, American football, and hockey. But unlike some technologies, the buzz has real merit. This is the case when it comes to AI in B2B sales.gettyIn 2025, B2B sellers and sales managers find themselves in a new arena where hitting quarterly sales quotas takes more than savvy selling skills. B2B sales 2025 is all about AI and automation as more organizations look to artificial intelligence to help them reach their sales goals.AI has become a marketing buzzword for new phone features, content creation apps, and even in major sports broadcasts like basketball, football, American football, and hockey. But unlike some technologies, the buzz has real merit. This is the case when it comes to AI in B2B sales.From empowering sellers by putting information at their fingertips to taking autonomous action, adoption of B2B sales AI features and capabilities will help organizations win more business and gain competitive edge. But not all AI lives up to the hype because the success of AI initiatives lies in thoughtful adoption, connection of business data, and practical use cases.AI poised to make its mark on B2B sales in 2025Despite the AI hype, sales organizations have been slow to adopt the technology. A McKinsey & Company survey last April found that only 21% had enabled generative AI for B2B buying and selling and just 22% had piloted specific use cases.That appears likely to change quickly in 2025, as companies begin ramping up their AI initiatives to increase sales productivity.McKinsey forecasts that generative AI could open up around $1 trillion worth of productivity gains across sales and marketing. Thats on top of the productivity boosts theyve gotten from traditional analytics and AI applications. Here are three critical AI trends that should top of mind for B2B sales teams in 2025:Plan for a future of AI agents: Staying up to date and determining how AI agents can benefit sales and how they should be adopted must be a strategic organizational priority.Generative AI benefits hinge on quality data: The key to successfully leveraging AI is data. With high-quality and connected data, AI algorithms have more to draw from to provide more valuable outputs to sellers.Determine the ROI of AI investments: The ROI of AI initiatives must be clear for ongoing success and organizational buy-in.1. AI agents for B2B sales emerge as top 2025 trendToday, AI agents often are more hype than anything else, but the long-term potential for autonomous AI agents in B2B sales is massive. Organizations that understand the potential and plan for the future will gain a dramatic advantage. Their sellers will be able to operate more efficiently, with the right insights.A global Capgemini survey last year found that 82% of organizations plan to integrate AI agents into their business operations within one to three years.An AI agent is essentially a program with the ability to make rational decisions and take autonomous actions by interacting with its environment, data sources, and other factors. Self-driving cars are an easy-to-understand example the platform uses real-time data, sensors, and machine learning to determine the next-best action.AI agents for B2B sales promise to boost the efficiency and effectiveness of sellers and sales operations, everything from lead generation and sales forecasting to personalized outreach, pipeline management, churn prediction and more.The power of these agents lies in the ability to surface information and act without direct user input, providing sellers and sales managers with actions or insights they didnt know they needed.Moreover, the output of these agents is contextual and less structured than traditional systems so it can extend far past traditional sales insights.2. B2B sales: Generative AI benefits depend on quality dataWhen it comes to AI-generated material, quality is the key. Theres no question that modern technology has the power to create content, copy, images, video, and more, but the novel nature of early AI generated content has faded. Impossible images composed of impossible beings doing impossible things might be interesting, but is it something a business should attach their brand to? Probably not.Most of us, including buyers and business leaders, have been bombarded by an avalanche of garbage AI content that failed to be relevant, contextual, or helpful. In the wake of these experiences, sales organizations need to take heed.But make no mistake: Generative AI for B2B sales, when harnessed correctly, is a game changer.Gartner predicts that by 2028, 60% of B2B seller work will be done through conversational user interfaces via generative AI sales technologiesup from less than 5% in 2023.The key to successfully leveraging AI is data, including customer data, sales data, and ERP data. Data is the fuel for effective AI initiatives. As long as data is high-quality and connected, AI algorithms have more to draw from to provide more valuable outputs.With that said, practical adoption of generative AI for B2B sales should focus on use cases that make sellers more effective or reduce effort. Its also critical that any content or insights AI generates have can provide users with oversight as well as insight into the origin of the output.B2B sales organizations can effectively harness generative AI to propel sales success and reduce time-to-engage as long as data is connected and outputs are provided to users in their daily workflows. Use cases can be broken down into two categories: generative content and generative insights.Generative content use cases for sales organizations are usually best focused on email creation and call scripts. In both, content needs to be tuned to each customer and contact. This includes things like correspondence cadence, tone, length, and other preferences. Sellers should be able to review and refine this content. Smaller sales organizations might also consider generative marketing collateral or advertising, but might risk losing control of their brand and overall quality.Generative insights use cases are valuable but must be contextual to business needs. Things like opportunity highlights or account summaries are great for most B2B business scenarios, but organizations can take generative insights to the next level by focusing on key groups, segments, or industries. The more that generative insights are tied to contextual needs of each opportunity, the better. In all cases, data, practical implementation, and oversight is key to success.3. AI in B2B sales: Whats the ROI?B2B sales is fundamentally a results-demanded position. Each seller holds a quota, each manager holds the quota for their team, and the trend continues up the chain to the top. And most every seller has been given a tool that failed to help them reach their goals and only slowed them down.Traditional CRM systems are a great example of this, becoming systems of record for sellers and equated to tedious data entry. But newer systems using AI can have the same flaw.Poorly implemented AI capabilities that arent routed in data or connection provide sellers with false flags. These signals add noise and detract from value. Sales organizations need to take a strong look at the true value and ROI of their AI initiatives.An EY survey of 500 senior leaders across industries found that only 36% are investing fully in data infrastructureincluding quality, accessibility and governance of data.For AI capabilities to add real value, sales organizations must ensure that opportunity scoring, deal recommendations, lead insights, and other features are relevant and rooted in data. The best approach is often systems that are designed to work together, with a common data model.For ongoing success, sales leaders need to ensure that AI capabilities are truly helping sellers. This can be done with basic qualitative research like seller interviews and win/loss buyer analysis, but should also be reinforced with clear, quantitative data analysis including win rate, time to close, lead qualification, and more.AI ROI is an overarching trend, but will become a critical factor in ongoing organizational buy-in and success. If youve failed to provide measurable results, determine factors that can measured and take corrective action in 2025.Sales success in a brave new worldWhile AI is bringing fundamental changes to the old art of selling, some things remain constant. B2B sellers must be confident, knowledgeable, empathetic, and charismatic. Behind the scenes and bravado of every seller lies a where the rubber meets the road mindsetthe knowledge that sales goals need to be attained, customer needs must be met, and quotas must be hit.Sales organizations that implement AI thoughtfully and dont take their eye of this results-driven mindset will get the most out of the technology. When AI is based on quality data and embedded into critical sales processes sellers use daily, it can help sales teams achieve real success.Run at your best. Get a free trial of SAP Sales Cloud HERE.This story also appears on The Future of Commerce.

Dutch pension fund ABP sold its Tesla stake over Musk's pay and working conditions at the company.ABP disagreed with Musk's compensation package and voted against it in June.The fund called the pay package "controversial and exceptionally high."A Dutch civil service pension fund sold its entire stake in Tesla over disapproval of CEO Elon Musk's pay package and working conditions at the company.Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP, one of Europe's largest pension funds, sold 2.8 million shares in the electric vehicle maker in September because it disagreed with Musk's pay package, Dutch outlet Het Financieele Dagblad reported Friday. The report did not detail the fund's specific concerns about labor conditions at the company.A spokesperson for ABP, which manages $552 billion overall, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In a statement to the NL Times, ABP said "we cannot and do not need to invest in everything," and that the divestment was not politically motivated. Musk has been a prominent supporter of President-elect Donald Trump, and is co-leading a commission called the Department of Government Efficiency.In 2018, Tesla's board and shareholders voted in favor of a performance-based compensation plan. The same year, a shareholder sued Tesla and Musk, arguing that Musk influenced the board's decision through his personal relationships with board members, including his brother. In January 2024, a Delaware judge ruled to strike down Musk's compensation package, siding with a shareholder. The stock option-based package could be worth tens of billions of dollars.In June, the EV maker held a second vote, which led to shareholder approval of Musk's pay. ABP voted against the pay package and called it "controversial and exceptionally high."Last month, the judge, Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick, once again ruled against the compensation package, saying that Tesla's June shareholder vote wasn't enough to pass the package.Tesla's Model Y was the best-selling car in the Netherlands in 2024, but the carmaker's sales havedeclining in Europe. New Tesla car registrations from January to November 2024 fell over 15% compared to the same period in 2023, according to European Automobile Manufacturers Association data.Tesla is worth about $1.27 trillion and its stock has risen about 74% in the past year.The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

DOGE plans to deploy its staffers to major government agencies after Donald Trump takes office.Two DOGE representatives will be embedded at each agency, The New York Times reported.The commission has been hiring since it was announced in November.Elon Musk's government efficiency commission is looking to embed staffers at government agencies to lead cost cutting efforts.Most major government agencies will be given two representatives from the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, after President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20, The New York Times reported on Sunday, citing about a dozen people who are familiar with DOGE's operations.Those who aren't deployed will instead be stationed at the US Digital Service, a branch of the White House that provides IT consulting services to federal agencies, the outlet reported.Then-President Barack Obama described the USDS as a "startup at the White House" when he created the agency in 2014.The Times added that DOGE could also have an office at the White House's Office of Management and Budget. The OMB prepares the president's budget request for Congress.Musk did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.In November, Trump announced that DOGE would be co-led by Musk and biotech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy. The commission, Trump said in his announcement, is set to conclude its work by July 4, 2026.DOGE kicked off its recruitment efforts in the same month. The commission started an account on Musk's social network X and asked applicants to send in their CVs via direct message.Thus far, the commission said it has been hiring for software engineering, information security engineering, HR, IT, and finance roles.Back in October, Musk said that DOGE would help the government to save at least $2 trillion, though he didn't specify where the savings would come from. The federal government spent $6.75 trillion in the 2024 fiscal year.Last week, Musk said that saving $2 trillion would be "the best-case outcome" for DOGE, adding that his commission had a "good shot" at saving $1 trillion."If we can drop the budget deficit from $2 trillion to $1 trillion and free up the economy to have additional growth such that the output of goods and services keeps pace with the increase in the money supply, then there will be no inflation. So that, I think, would be an epic outcome," Musk told Mark Penn, the chairman and CEO of marketing company Stagwell, in an interview on January 8.

Eisai Kawashima Industrial Park Cafeteria and Office / TAISEI DESIGN Planners Architects & EngineersSave this picture! aifotoIndustrial Architecture, OfficesKakamigahara, JapanArchitects: TAISEI DESIGN Planners Architects & EngineersAreaArea of this architecture projectArea:3587 mYearCompletion year of this architecture project Year: 2023 PhotographsPhotographs:aifotoManufacturersBrands with products used in this architecture project Manufacturers: Hokusan, SankyoAlumi, c-gate Lead Architects: Masaharu Seki, Yasufumi Nishiyama More SpecsLess SpecsSave this picture!Text description provided by the architects. This project, undertaken to rebuild the aging employee cafeterias at the production and research base of a company operating in Japan's healthcare industry, aimed to create a new base for connecting people and nature and people and people, transcending the role of simply providing meals.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!The site sits on a sandbar surrounded by the Kiso River in a natural environment blessed with abundant greenery and water sources. The design fully utilizes the advantages of the location and consciously reflects the company founder's philosophy of pursuing manufacturing and research in harmony with nature.Due to the nature of their research and manufacturing, the existing facilities were closed and windowless, with limited contact with the surrounding natural environment. Taking this into account, this project achieved an open interior space that allows plenty of natural light and ventilation with views of lush greenery. It is designed to promote employee wellness and can also be used as a satellite office or a rest area, facilitating employee communication and accelerating innovation.Save this picture!The historic primeval forest extends to the north of the building, and a new garden has been created to the south. This helped us achieve a design that connects with nature. A hybrid structure combining reinforced concrete and steel construction was adopted to achieve robustness and openness. To create a sense of connection with the greenery to the north and south, beams, equipment ducts and finishing materials were all arranged along a north-south axis.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!The south side of the first floor is a bright dining area with natural lighting and ventilation. The building features rows of horizontal windows that offer panoramic views of the surrounding greenery, and the indoor balconies and terraces under the eaves provide open spaces where one can enjoy the natural beauty of the four seasons. These spaces also function as a place for employees to interact with each other. Meanwhile, on the north side of the first floor are spaces with a calm ambiance designed to frame the view of the primeval forest using waist-high walls and hanging walls. These spaces can be used to enjoy peaceful meals or as a solo workspace that allows one to concentrate on work. The design loosely connects these spaces, allowing users to flexibly choose their work location according to their mood.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!In addition, the office on the second floor was designed to facilitate natural communication between the departments on the north and south sides by eliminating the corridor and creating a space for interaction in the center.Save this picture!This building also serves as a base to provide safety and security in case of natural disasters. It consolidates the server room and medical room into the reinforced concrete core, and is equipped with facilities and equipment for BCP measures such as solar power generators and emergency generators. The first floor was raised by approximately one meter to protect against flooding from the Kiso River. The garden, which takes advantage of the gentle slope of the site, is a universal space also usable as an outdoor plaza in case of disasters.Save this picture!This project reflects our passion for creating a new base that promotes interaction with nature, communication, and wellness.Save this picture!Project gallerySee allShow lessProject locationAddress:Kakamigahara, JapanLocation to be used only as a reference. It could indicate city/country but not exact address.About this officePublished on January 13, 2025Cite: "Eisai Kawashima Industrial Park Cafeteria and Office / TAISEI DESIGN Planners Architects & Engineers" 13 Jan 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1025596/eisai-kawashima-industrial-park-cafeteria-and-office-taisei-design-planners-architects-and-engineers&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save!ArchDaily?You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream