To this day, Jaws remains the best example of Steven Spielberg‘s genius as a filmmaker. He somehow took a middling pulp novel about a killer shark and turned it into a thrilling adventure about masculinity and economic desperation. And to the surprise of no one, the massive success of Jaws spawned a lot of knockoffs, a glut of movies about animals terrorizing communities. None of these reach the majesty of Jaws, of course. But here’s the thing—none of them had to be Jaws. Sure, it’s nice that Spielberg’s film has impeccably designed set pieces and compelling characters, but that’s not the main reason people go to animal attack movies. We really just want to watch people get attacked. And eaten. With such standards duly lowered, let’s take a look at the best animal attack movies that came out in the past half-century since Jaws first scared us out of the water. Of course this list doesn’t cover every movie inspired by Jaws ( for example Godzilla Minus One, which devotes its middle act to a wonderful Jaws riff), and some can argue that these movies were less inspired by Jaws than other nature revolts features, such as Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Birds. But every one of these flicks owes a debt to Jaws, either in inspiration or simply getting people interested in movies about animals eating people. Those warning aside, lets make like drunken revelers on Amity Island and dive right in! 20. Sharknado (2013) Sharknado almost doesn’t belong on this list because it’s less a movie and more of a meme, a precursor to Vines and TikTok trends. Yes, many fantastic movies have been made off of an incredibly high concept and a painfully low budget. Heck, that approach made Roger Corman’s career. But Sharknado‘s high concept—a tornado sweeps over the ocean and launches ravenous sharks into the mainland—comes with a self-satisfied smirk. Somehow, Sharknado managed to capture the imagination of the public, making it popular enough to launch five sequels. At the time, viewers defended it as a so bad it’s good-style movie like The Room. But today Sharknado‘s obvious attempts to be wacky are just bad, making the franchise one more embarrassing trend, ready to be forgotten. 19. Orca (1977) For a long time, Orca had a reputation for being the most obvious Jaws ripoff, and with good reason—Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis, who would go on to support Flash Gordon, Manhunter, and truly launch David Lynch‘s career with Blue Velvet, wanted his own version of the Spielberg hit. On paper he had all the right ingredients, including a great cast with Richard Harris and Charlotte Rampling, and another oceanic threat, this time a killer whale. Orca boasts some impressive underwater cinematography, something that even Jaws largely lacks. But that’s the one thing Orca does better than Jaws. Everything else—character-building, suspense and scare scenes, basic plotting and storytelling—is done in such a haphazard manner that Orca plays more like an early mockbuster from the Asylum production company (makers of Sharknado) than it does a product from a future Hollywood player. 18. Tentacles (1977) Another Italian cheapie riding off the success of Jaws, Tentacles at least manages to be fun in its ineptitude. A giant octopus feature, Tentacles is directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis, a man whose greatest claim to fame is that he annoyed first-time director James Cameron so much on Piranha II: The Spawning that he activated the future legend’s infamous refusal to compromise with studios and producers. Tentacles somehow has a pretty impressive cast, including John Huston, Shelly Winters, and Henry Fonda all picking up paychecks. None of them really do any hard work in Tentacles, but there’s something fun about watching these greats shake the the octopus limbs that are supposed to be attacking them, as if they’re in an Ed Wood picture. 17. Kingdom of the Spiders (1977) Spielberg famously couldn’t get his mechanical shark to work, a happy accident that he overcame with incredibly tense scenes that merely suggested the monster’s presence. For his arachnids on the forgotten movie Kingdom of the Spiders, director John “Bud” Cardos has an even more formative tool to make up for the lack of effects magic: William Shatner. Shatner plays Rack Hansen, a veterinarian who discovers that the overuse of pesticides has killed off smaller insects and forced the tarantula population to seek larger prey, including humans. These types of ecological messages are common among creature features of the late ’70s, and they usually clang with hollow self-righteousness. But in Kingdom of the Spiders, Shatner delivers his lines with such blown out conviction that we enjoy his bluster, even if we don’t quite buy it. 16. The Meg (2018) The idea of Jason Statham fighting a giant prehistoric shark is an idea so awesome, it’s shocking that his character from Spy didn’t already pitch it. And The Meg certainly does deliver when Statham’s character does commit to battle with the creature in the movie’s climax. The problem is that moment of absurd heroism comes only after a lot of long sappy nonsense. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! It’s hard to figure out who is to blame for The Meg‘s failure. Director Jon Turteltaub hails from well-remembered Disney classics Cool Runnings and National Treasure. But too often he forgets how to pace an adventure film and gives into his most saccharine instincts here. One of the many Chinese/Hollywood co-produced blockbusters of the 2010s, The Meg also suffers from trying to innocuously please too wide an audience. Whatever the source, The Meg only fleetingly delivers on the promise of big time peril, wasting too much time on thin character beats. 15. Lake Placid (1999) I know already some people reading this are taking exception to Lake Placid‘s low ranking, complaining that this list isn’t showing enough respect to what they consider a zippy, irreverent take on a creature feature, one written by Ally McBeal creator David E. Kelley and co-starring Betty White. To those people, I can only say, “Please rewatch Lake Placid and then consider its ranking.” Lake Placid certainly has its fun moments, helped along by White as a kindly grandmother who keeps feeding a giant croc, Bill Pullman as a dumbfounded simple sheriff, and Oliver Platt as a rich adventurer. Their various one-liners are a pleasure to remember. But within the context of a movie stuffed with late ’90s irony, the constant snark gets tiresome, sapping out all the fun of a killer crocodile film. 14. Open Water (2003) Like Sharknado, Open Water had its fans for a few years but has fallen in most moviegoers’ esteem. Unlike Sharknado, Open Water is a real movie, just one that can’t sustain its premise for its entire runtime. Writer and director Chris Kentis draws inspiration from a real-life story about a husband and wife who were accidentally abandoned in the middle of the ocean by their scuba excursion group. The same thing happens to the movie’s Susan Watkins (Blanchard Ryan) and Daniel Travis (Daniel Kintner), who respond to their predicament by airing out their relationship grievances, even as sharks start to surround them. Kentis commits to the reality of the couple’s bleak situation, which sets Open Water apart from the thrill-a-minute movies that mostly make up this list. But even with some shocking set pieces, Open Water feels too much like being stuck in car with a couple who hates each other and not enough like a shark attack thriller. 13. Eaten Alive (1976) Spielberg’s artful execution of Jaws led many of the filmmakers who followed to attempt some semblance of character development and prestige, even if done without enthusiasm (see: Orca). Not so with Tobe Hooper, who followed up the genre-defining The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with Eaten Alive. Then again, Hooper draws just as much from Psycho as he does Jaws. Neville Brand plays Judd, the proprietor of a sleazy hotel on the bayou where slimy yokels do horrible things to one another. Amity Island, this is not. But when one of the visitors annoy Judd, he feeds them to the pet croc kept in the back. Eaten Alive is a nasty bit of work, but like most of Hooper’s oeuvre, it’s a lot of fun. 12. Prophecy (1979) Directed by John Frankenheimer of The Manchurian Candidate and Grand Prix fame, Prophecy is easily the best of the more high-minded animal attack movies that followed Jaws. This landlocked film, written by David Seltzer, stars Robert Foxworth as Dr. Robert Verne, a veterinarian hired by the EPA to investigate bear attacks against loggers on a mountain in Maine. Along with his wife Maggie (Talia Shire), Verne finds himself thrown into a conflict between the mining company and the local Indigenous population who resist them. Prophecy drips with an American hippy mentality that reads as pretty conservative today (“your body, your choice” one of Maggie’s friends tells her… to urge her against getting an abortion), making its depictions of Native people, including the leader played by Italian American actor Armand Assante, pretty embarrassing. But there is a mutant bear on the loose and Frankenheimer knows how to stage an exciting sequence, which makes Prophecy a worthwhile watch. 11. Piranha 3D (2010) Piranha 3D begins with a denim-wearing fisherman named Matt, played by Richard Dreyfuss no less, falling into the water and immediately getting devoured by the titular flesh-eaters. This weird nod to Matt Hooper and Jaws instead of Joe Dante’s Piranha, the movie Piranha 3D is supposed to be remaking, is just one of the many oddities at play yhere. Screenwriters Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg have some of the wacky energy and social satire of the original film, but director Alexandre Aja, a veteran of the French Extreme movement, includes so much nastiness in Piranha 3D that we’re not sure if we want to laugh or throw up. Still, there’s no denying the power of Piranha 3D‘s set pieces, including a shocking sequence in which the titular beasties attack an MTV/Girls Gone Wild Spring Break party and chaos ensues. Furthermore, Piranha 3D benefits from a strong cast, which includes Elizabeth Shue, Adam Scott, and Ving Rhames. 10. Anaconda (1997) With its many scenes involving an animal attacking a ragtag group on a boat, Anaconda clearly owes a debt to Jaws. However, with its corny characters and shoddy late ’90s CGI, Anaconda feels today less like a Jaws knockoff and more like a forerunner to Sharknado and the boom of lazy Syfy and Redbox horror movies that followed. Whatever its influences and legacy, there’s no denying that Anaconda is, itself, a pretty fun movie. Giant snakes make for good movie monsters, and the special effects have become dated in a way that feels charming. Moreover, Anaconda boasts a enjoyably unlikely cast, including Eric Stoltz as a scientist, Owen Wilson and Ice Cube as members of a documentary crew, and Jon Voight as what might be the most unhinged character of his career, second only to his crossbow enthusiast from Megalopolis. 9. The Shallows (2016) The Shallows isn’t the highest-ranking shark attack movie on this list but it’s definitely the most frightening shark attack thriller since Jaws. That’s high praise, indeed, but The Shallows benefits from a lean and mean premise and clear direction by Jaume Collet-Serra, who has made some solid modern thrillers. The Shallows focuses almost entirely on med student Nancy Adams (Blake Lively), who gets caught far from shore after the tide comes in and is hunted by a shark. A lot of the pleasure of The Shallows comes from seeing how Collet-Serra and screenwriter Anthony Jaswinski avoid the problems that plague many of the movies on this list. Adams is an incredibly competent character, and we pull for her even after the mistake that leaves her stranded. Moreover, The Shallows perfectly balances thrill sequences with character moments, making for one of the more well-rounded creature features of the past decade. 8. Razorback (1984) Jaws, of course, has a fantastic opening scene, a thrilling sequence in which the shark kills a drunken skinny dipper. Of the movies on this list, only Razorback comes close to matching the original’s power, and it does so because director Russell Mulcahy, who would make Highlander next, goes for glossy absurdity. In the Razorback‘s first three minutes, a hulking wild boar smashes through the rural home of an elderly man in the Australian outback, carrying away his young grandson. Over the sounds of a synth score, the old man stumbles away from his now-burning house, screaming up into the sky. Sadly, the rest of Razorback cannot top that moment. Mulcahy directs the picture with lots of glossy style, while retaining the grit of the Australian New Wave movement. But budget restrictions keep the titular beast from really looking as cool as one would hope, and the movie’s loud, crazy tone can’t rely on Jaws-like power of suggestion. 7. Crawl (2019) Alexandre Aja’s second movie on this list earns its high rank precisely because it does away with the tonal inconsistencies that plagued Piranha 3D and leans into what the French filmmaker does so well: slicked down and mean horror. Set in the middle of a Florida hurricane, Crawl stars Kaya Scodelario as competitive swimmer Haley and always-welcome character actor Barry Pepper as her father Dave, who get trapped in a flooding basement that’s menaced by alligators. Yet as grimy as Crawl can get, Aja also executes the strong character work in the script by Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen. Dave and Haley are real people, not just gator-bait, making their peril feel all the more real, and their triumphs all the sweeter. 6. Piranha (1978) Piranha is the only entry on this list to get a seal of approval from Stephen Spielberg himself, who not only praised the movie, even as Universal Pictures planned to sue the production, but also got director Joe Dante to later helm Gremlins. It’s not hard to see why Piranha charmed Spielberg, a man who loves wacky comedy. Dante’s Looney Tunes approach is on full display in some of the movie’s best set pieces. But Piranha is special because it also comes from legendary screenwriter John Sayles, who infuses the story with social satire and cynicism that somehow blends with Dante’s approach. The result is a film about piranha developed by the U.S. military to kill the Vietnamese getting unleashed into an American river and making their way to a children’s summer camp, a horrifying idea that Dante turns into good clean fun. 5. Slugs (1988) If we’re talking about well-made movies, then Slugs belongs way below any of the movies on this list, somewhere around the killer earthworm picture Squirm. But if we’re thinking about pure enjoyable spectacle, it’s hard to top Slugs, a movie about, yes, flesh-eating slugs. Yes, it’s very funny to think about people getting terrorized by creatures that are famous for moving very, very slowly. But Spanish director Juan Piquer Simón, perhaps best known for his equally bugnuts giallo Pieces (1982), pays as little attention to realism as he does to good taste. Slugs is filled with insane and ghastly sequences of killer slugs ending up in unlikely places, swarming the floor of someone’s bedroom or inside a fancy restaurant, and then devouring people, one methodical bite at a time. 4. Deep Blue Sea (1999) When it comes to goofy ’90s CGI action, it’s hard to top Deep Blue Sea, directed by Renny Harlin and featuring sharks with genetically enhanced brains. Deep Blue Sea doesn’t have a strong sense of pacing, it lacks any sort of believable character development, and the effects looked terrible even in 1999. But it’s also the only movie on this list that features LL Cool J as a cool chef who recites a violent version of the 23rd Psalm and almost gets cooked alive in an oven by a genius-level shark. It’s scenes like the oven sequence that makes Deep Blue Sea such a delight, despite its many, many flaws. The movie tries to do the most at every turn, whether that’s clearly reediting the movie in postproduction so that LL Cool J’s chef becomes a central character, stealing the spotlight form intended star Saffron Burrows, or a ridiculous Samuel L. Jackson monologue with a delightfully unexpected climax. 3. Alligator (1980) In many ways, Alligator feels like screenwriter John Sayles’ rejoinder to Piranha. If Joe Dante sanded down Piranha‘s sharp edges with his goofy humor, then Alligator is so filled with mean-spiritedness that no director could dilute it. Not that Lewis Teague, a solid action helmer who we’ll talk about again shortly, would do that. Alligator transports the old adage about gators in the sewers from New York to Chicago where the titular beast, the subject of experiments to increase its size, begins preying on the innocent. And on the not so innocent. Alligator shows no respect for the good or the bad, and the film is filled with scenes of people getting devoured, whether it’s a young boy who becomes a snack during a birthday party prank or an elderly mafioso who tries to abandon his family during the gator’s rampage. 2. Grizzly (1976) Grizzly stands as the greatest of the movies obviously ripping off Jaws precisely because it understands its limitations. It takes what it can from Spielberg’s masterpiece, including the general premise of an animal hunting in a tourist location, and ignores what it can’t pull off, namely three-dimensional characters. This clear-eyed understanding of everyone’s abilities makes Grizzly a lean, mean, and satisfying thriller. Directed by blaxploitation vet William Girdler and written by Harvey Flaxman and David Sheldon, Grizzly stars ’70s low-budget king Christopher George as a park ranger investigating unusually vicious bear attacks on campers. That’s not the richest concept in the world, but Girdler and co. execute their ideas with such precision, and George plays his character with just the right amount of machismo, that Grizzly manages to deliver on everything you want from an animal attack. 1. Cujo (1983) To some modern readers, it might seem absurd to put Cujo on a list of Jaws knockoffs. After all, Stephen King is a franchise unto himself and he certainly doesn’t need another movie’s success to get a greenlight for any of his projects. But you have to remember that Cujo came out in 1983 and was just the third of his works to get adapted theatrically, which makes its Jaws connection more valid. After all, the main section of the film—in which mom (Dee Wallace) and her son Tad (Danny Pintauro) are trapped in their car and menaced by the titular St. Bernard—replicates the isolation on Quint’s fishing vessel, the Orca, better than any other film on this list. However, it’s not just director Lewis Teague’s ability to create tension that puts Cujo at the top. Writers Don Carlos Dunaway and Lauren Currier key into the complicated familial dynamics of King’s story, giving the characters surprising depth. It’s no wonder that Spielberg would cast Wallace as another overwhelmed mom for E.T. The Extraterrestrial the very next year, proving that he still has a soft spot for animal attack movies—even if none of them came close to matching the power of Jaws.

May 28, 20257 min readWhy Is NASA Shuttering This Iconic Institute in New York City?Since 1966 NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies has been at the forefront of Earth and planetary science from its location in upper Manhattan. Now a Trump administration directive is ejecting its scientists to parts unknownBy Christopher Cokinos edited by Lee BillingsPhoto of the building housing NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, at the corner of Broadway and West 112th Street in New York City. Cirofono via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)In the early 1980s, then real estate developer Donald Trump famously tried to evict a group of New York City residents from a rent-controlled building that he wanted to replace with a luxury high-rise. The tenants eventually beat back the plan.Today President Trump is having more luck with NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).Ensconced on six floors of a building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, GISS has been a small-but-mighty source of world-changing scientific research for more than a half-century. NASA scientists first moved into the building, which another federal agency leases from GISS’s institutional partner, Columbia University, in 1966. Last month, at the behest of the Trump administration, NASA officials told GISS it had to move out before the end of May. In response, more than 100 staffers have abandoned the facility, leaving its tastefully decorated halls and offices littered with boxes, papers and packing tape.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Although it may be best known to the public indirectly (its building often appeared in the hit sitcom Seinfeld as the site of “Monk’s Café”), GISS has been a leader in Earth science and climate research for decades. The work within its halls was crucial for sparking broader public awareness of anthropogenic climate change in the 1980s and has contributed to cutting-edge weather forecasting and multiple interplanetary missions, as well as the underpinnings of the past, present, and future habitability of Earth and other worlds.Yet now that rich legacy and prospects for further breakthrough research are at risk, GISS personnel say, jeopardized by the White House’s demands for notionally better government efficiency. Ironically, however, the effective eviction of GISS may well result in more costs to taxpayers rather than less.A Federal Mandate to “Institutionally Couch Surf”GISS itself has not been disbanded. But without a physical home and under the looming threat of a White House–proposed 50 percent cut to the entirety of NASA’s science for the 2026 federal fiscal year, the Institute’s future can only be called uncertain. Many of its staff are now operating as academic nomads—working remotely and scrambling to secure office space at other locations in the city.“We’re being told to institutionally couch surf,” says one senior GISS researcher, who, like many others in this story, asked not to be identified because of the possibility of reprisal.In April Makenzie Lystrup, director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, which technically includes GISS, e-mailed GISS personnel about the eviction, explaining it was part of White House efforts to review government leases.Sources familiar with the situation, however, tell Scientific American the termination was specifically set in motion earlier this spring by an employee of the U.S. DOGE Service (a newly minted federal entity that was, until recently, led by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk). That employee, the sources say, approached NASA administrators, who ultimately agreed to the move out of fear of losing their jobs.A GISS scientist recounts the sudden events: “On Wednesday afternoon of April 23, NASA GISS workers were informed that there would be an all-hands Thursday morning meeting (the next day) with folks from HQ ... the topic of which was not mentioned,” the scientist says. “The next morning, we were promptly told ... the decision was made to vacate our building by the end of May and that the decision was made as part of a broader DOGE assessment of federal leased spaces. They also mentioned that this decision was made by NASA within just a few days.” According to this scientist, the move deadline changed several times. This account is supported by others who spoke to Scientific American.Multiple GISS personnel consulted for this story say there will be no cost savings because the $3-million-per-year lease on the space remains in place through 2031. That lease is between Columbia and the General Services Administration (GSA), a federal agency that is tasked with providing workspace for some governmental employees. Even if a new tenant is found, the lease is likely to remain in force because terminating it will result in major financial penalties per the leasing agreement. The lease, they say, is about half the current commercial rate in New York City, and for now, the GSA continues to pay rent.“Columbia is fully committed to our longstanding collaboration with NASA and the scientific research at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies,” said Millie Wert, a spokesperson for the university, when reached for comment for this article.The suddenness of the move has stunned GISS researchers and personnel, one of whom calls the decision “idiocy.”“One hundred and thirty scientists must move all their books and office equipment,” the senior researcher told Scientific American shortly after GISS received the eviction notice. “A library and $400,000 in tech must be moved out. We also have historical items here: Where are we supposed to put them?” Much of this material is reportedly going into storage at warehouse space in New Jersey.Another staffer adds that “we have no information about what will be discarded.... Ironically, many of us decided not to accept new furniture [recently] because our existing 1950s furniture is perfectly good—and that would save the taxpayer money.”As GISS employees packed their belongings, they saw workers dismantling a recently renovated conference room and a brand-new security system, according to documents obtained by Scientific American from the departing staff. The documents also note that computers and servers are “at risk of damage while being moved in haste.”Two protest letters against the eviction that were sent from the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers (IFPTE) to particular congressional representatives and senators, respectively, noted that a recent renovation of GISS is nearly complete at a cost of more than $6 million. In the letter to members of the House of Representatives, IFPTE called the dispersal of staff and equipment “blatantly wasteful financially.”An Institutional “Diaspora”GISS is globally renowned for tracking and predicting climate conditions with GISTEMP (GISS Surface Temperature Analysis), along with other datasets and modeling that involve planetary science beyond Earth and that are focused on weather, fire and agriculture on our world. GISS also has played roles in missions across the solar system, the discovery of the big bang’s all-sky afterglow, and more.According to firebrand climate researcher and former GISS director James Hansen, now retired from NASA, the institute was deliberately located in New York City because physicist Robert Jastrow, its founder, wanted a NASA center that was not a closed campus. Being in the heart of a city with academia and industry outside the door has been an asset to GISS, according to Hansen and others. The process of developing GISS began modestly, with “Jastrow ... interviewing people in an office over a furniture store in Silver Spring, Md.,” Hansen says. “The ‘GISS Formula’ ... was to have a minimum government staff, which allowed the research focus to change with time as the need dictated.”One such focus was the high levels of carbon dioxide on Venus, which Hansen was studying decades ago. That led to his trailblazing work on what was then called “the greenhouse effect,” including his famous testimony before Congress on human-driven climate change in 1988.Climate modeling, says a different senior GISS researcher, “is what drove the development of supercomputing, [and] we continue to use the same Earth climate modeling to understand Venus and Mars and constrain their potential habitability.” From climate feedback loops to ocean heat transport, GISS is at the center of important science, its researchers say.But the GISS dispersal, along with other disruptions, such as frozen grants and proposed science budget cuts at NASA, the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, among other agencies, “represent a monumental step backwards,” a GISS scientist says, “not just for understanding a climate that will still change due to human activities ... but also for operational weather prediction that saves lives due to forecast and warnings, pollution and contamination assessments.”GISS’s current director Gavin Schmidt tells Scientific American that “the issue of whether to do something with the GISS lease goes back a year or two due to a shift in how these things are paid for at NASA.... [The agency] commissioned an external panel to look at [this], and they concluded (last year) that the status quo was the most efficient plan. I am not privy to who decided to raise that idea again in recent weeks.”Other GISS researchers complain that, to their knowledge, no administrators above Schmidt went to bat for keeping the institute in its building.“I think there was pushback initially at HQ,” Schmidt says, “but by the time we were told at GISS, it was a done deal.”Concerns now include the lack of in-person interaction and a general loss of support for postdoctoral researchers. “It’s pretty dire,” one scientist says.“I’m now watching people who have dedicated their entire careers to understanding the most pressing issues of our time deciding whether they might have to leave the place they’ve built their life around,” says Alessandra Quigley, an early-career scientist, who is affiliated with GISS. “This is the only positive takeaway I can find: the fact this administration cares so much about ending climate science just demonstrates how important [this science] is, and I hope the public comes to see that, too.”While Lystrup called GISS’s work “critical” and promised support during the transition in her e-mail, which was obtained by Scientific American , Schmidt says that “people are shell-shocked and anxious—and that is not conducive to doing high-quality science.”He adds that “we will nonetheless push through and try and make the GISS diaspora function as well as it can. We have been contacted with many offers to help.”Asked for comment by Scientific American, a NASA spokesperson referred to the situation as “part of the administration’s government-wide review of leases to increase efficiency.” While NASA “seeks and evaluates options for a new space for the GISS team,” the spokesperson added, the institute’s work remains “significant” and “critical.”But at least one GISS researcher isn’t convinced. Angry that the agency didn’t do more to stop the eviction and even had tasked officials with frequent check-ins to ensure the move was underway, the researcher says, simply, “NASA is the new thug.”

Brought to you by: Architect: BNIMCompletion Date:2024Location: Johnston, IowaIn the human cardiovascular system blood, oxygen, and the heart can’t function without one another. At LifeServe Blood Center, a laboratory and blood donation center in Iowa, the building’s integrated design operates the same way: If you take away any component, it doesn’t work as it should. BNIM Architects designed the facility in Johnston, Iowa, to account for privacy, where needed, while also delivering a building that puts its life-saving vocation front and center. LifeServe previously operated out of a former bank downtown. Age, a lack of parking logistics, and a separation of spaces within the building were among the challenges. For its new headquarters it was apparent LifeServe needed a space that wholeheartedly reflected its mission to support long, healthy lives. Horizontally oriented shading devices were implemented on the south- and west-faces. (Kendall McCaugherty) “Being an institution that supports life in the way that they do, the whole idea of well-being was important to them, also longevity in terms of being responsible with regards to materials and building a facility that would last,” Rod Kruse, principal at BNIM, told AN. LifeServe’s new site is located in a suburban setting with easy access to the interstate. The move addressed the need for parking and easy access to its distribution network. For BNIM, working on LifeServe was a real “discovery process,” according to Kruse, which required understanding how the company’s services operate and how a new facility could make these processes more efficient. The 56,290-square-foot building serves myriad purposes: as corporate headquarters, donor center, blood processing laboratory, and as a garage for a fleet of commercial vehicles. The site allows for ease of traffic flow for LifeServe’s fleet of vehicles. (Kendall McCaugherty) The long, linear site spans from east to west; this orientation informed the building’s programming and its facade system. Public-oriented spaces were largely placed to the south side, while support areas such as the bus traffic and lot occupy the north and west faces. The massing comprises two long, horizontal volumes set off from one another in plan. An opening for bus traffic flow was located between the building and the garage area. A primary goal of the facade system was to deliver comfort without compromising character. A robust shading scheme installed over the large spans of glazing was the best solution. BNIM’s design considered glare and heat gain. The firm opted for horizontal shading fins, as solar studies found a horizontal orientation worked better than vertical on the south-, east-, and west-facing elevations. Studies also informed the ideal spacing for the blades, so as to control the amount of light entering the building. They were spaced to also afford views out toward the tree-lined landscape. While typically laboratories are dark, internal spaces with little to no natural light, at LifeServe they were located to take advantage of natural light. Inside, shading devices, like daylight and glare sensors, also keep solar gain at bay. Inside, so that new equipment could be added, ducting and mechanics were systemized on the ceiling. (Kendall McCaugherty) “The facade system basically becomes the architecture and the character of the building,” Kruse added. “It’s a functional element that really results in the architectural expression.” Corten steel was applied on the facade sparingly to leave room for large spans of glass. The shading devices installed on the glazed portions of the building were specified with a similar reddish-brown hue. Precast concrete is largely enveloped by the exterior shading devices but left exposed to face the bus stalls and garage facilities. A diagram shows the installation of the shading system and screens. (Courtesy BNIM) To conceal the bus lot, at the north end, a custom-designed screen serves as an organizational device. It completes the building visually, while also projecting its identity. The pattern on the metal paneling was inspired by blood cells viewed under a microscope. Using imagery, BNIM developed the pattern in its own software. Inside, flexibility was key. To accommodate changing technologies LifeServe needed lab space that could adapt to new equipment. Power distribution was run through the floor, and all the ducting and mechanics were systemized on the ceiling, allowing for future upgrades. Much like the facade, and the human body itself, the interiors operate as an integrated system where aesthetics drive functionality—or perhaps the other way around. Project Specifications Design Architect: BNIM Architect of Record: BNIM Landscape Architect: Confluence Client: LifeServe Blood Centers Contractor: Hansen Company Client Representative: Formation Group Structural Engineer: Raker Rhodes Engineering Lighting Design: MODUS Civil Engineer: Civil Design Advantage Facade System: Tubelite Cladding: Tekko Steel, Petrarch, PDM Precast, David Bear Glass: Vitro Windows: Kingspan, Solatube Doors: Tubelight, Wayne Dalton, Stanley, Uniq-Wall, VT Industries Interior Finishes: Mannington, Delta, Autex, Linea, Bradley, Tarkett, Concreteworks East, Nevamar, Corian, Cambria Fixtures: Waldinger

It's shocking! Scientists figure out how the brain forms emotional connections Neural recordings track how neurons link environments to emotional events. Jacek Krywko – May 21, 2025 4:07 pm | 16 Credit: fotografixx Credit: fotografixx Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Whenever something bad happens to us, brain systems responsible for mediating emotions kick in to prevent it from happening again. When we get stung by a wasp, the association between pain and wasps is encoded in the region of the brain called the amygdala, which connects simple stimuli with basic emotions. But the brain does more than simple associations; it also encodes lots of other stimuli that are less directly connected with the harmful event—things like the place where we got stung or the wasps’ nest in a nearby tree. These are combined into complex emotional models of potentially threatening circumstances. Till now, we didn’t know exactly how these models are built. But we’re beginning to understand how it’s done. Emotional complexity “Decades of work has revealed how simple forms of emotional learning occurs—how sensory stimuli are paired with aversive events,” says Joshua Johansen, a team director at the Neural Circuitry of Learning and Memory at RIKEN Center for Brain Science in Tokyo. But Johansen says that these decades didn’t bring much progress in treating psychiatric conditions like anxiety and trauma-related disorders. “We thought if we could get a handle of more complex emotional processes and understand their mechanisms, we may be able to provide relief for patients with conditions like that,” Johansen claims. To make it happen, his team performed experiments designed to trigger complex emotional processes in rats while closely monitoring their brains. Johansen and Xiaowei Gu, his co-author and colleague at RIKEN, started by dividing the rats into two groups. The first “paired” group of rats was conditioned to associate an image with a sound. The second “unpaired” group watched the same image and listened to the same sound, but not at the same time. This prevented the rats from making an association. Then, one day later, the rats were shown the same image and treated with an electric shock until they learned to connect the image with pain. Finally, the team tested if the rats would freeze in fear in response to the sound. The “unpaired” group didn’t. The rats in the “paired” group did—it turned out human-like complex emotional models were present in rats as well. Once Johansen and Gu confirmed the capacity was there, they got busy figuring out how it worked exactly. Playing tag “Behaviorally, we measured freezing responses to the directly paired stimulus, which was the image, and inferred stimulus which was the sound,” Johansen says. “But we also performed something we called miniscope calcium imaging.” The trick relied on injecting rats with a virus that forced their cells to produce proteins that fluoresce in response to increased levels of calcium in the cells. Increased levels of calcium are the telltale sign of activity in neurons, meaning the team could see in real time which neurons in rats’ brains lit up during the experiments. It turned out that the region crucial for building these complex emotional models was not the amygdala, but the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), which had a rather specialized role. “The dmPFC does not form the sensory model of the world. It only cares about things when they have emotional relevance,” Johansen explains. He said there wasn’t much change in neuronal activity during the sensory learning phase, when the animals were watching the image and listening to the sound. The neurons became significantly more active when the rats received the electric shock. In the “unpaired” group, the active neurons that held the representations of the electric shock and the image started to overlap. In the “paired” group, this overlap also included the neuronal representation of the sound. “There was a kind of an associative bundle that formed,” Johansen says. After Johansen and Gu pinpointed the neurons that formed those associative bundles, they started looking at how each of these components works. Detraumatizing rodents In the first step, the team identified the dmPFC neurons that sent output to the amygdala. Then they selectively inhibited those neurons and exposed the rats from the “paired” group to the image and the sound again. The result of disconnecting the dmPFC neurons from the amygdala was that rats exhibited a fear response to the image but no longer feared the sound. “It seems like the amygdala can form the simple representations on its own but requires input from the dmPFC to express more complex, inferred emotions,” Johansen says. But there are still a lot of unanswered questions left. The next thing the team wants to take a closer look at is the process that enables the brain to tie an aversive stimulus, like the shock, to one that was not active during the aversive event. In the “paired” group of rats, some multi-sensory neurons responding to both auditory and visual stimuli apparently got recruited. “We haven’t worked that out yet,” Johansen says. "This is a very novel type of mechanism.” Another thing is that the emotional model Johansen and Gu induced in rats was relatively simple. In the real world, especially in humans, we can have many different aversive outcomes tied to the same triggers. A single location could be where you got stung by a wasp, attacked by a dog, robbed of your wallet, and dumped by your significant other—all different aversive representations with myriad inferred, indirect stimuli to go along with them. “Does the dmPFC combine all those representations into sort of a single, overlapping representation? Or is it a really rich environment that bundles different aversive experiences with the individual aspects of these experiences?” Johansen asked. “This is something we want to test more.” Nature, 2025.  DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09001-2 Jacek Krywko Associate Writer Jacek Krywko Associate Writer Jacek Krywko is a freelance science and technology writer who covers space exploration, artificial intelligence research, computer science, and all sorts of engineering wizardry. 16 Comments

Bringing Mojang’s beloved blocky sandbox videogame to the big screen posed a wide range of creative and technical challenges for Sony Pictures Imageworks. In this in-depth conversation, VFX Supervisor Seth Maury breaks down the studio’s work on Jared Hess’ hit The comedy adventure from Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures stars Jack Black, Danielle Brooks, Sebastian Hansen, Jason Momoa, Jennifer Coolidge, and Emma Myers. Hess directs; Roy Lee, Jon Berg, Mary Parent, Cale Boyter, Momoa, Jill Messick, Torfi Frans Ólafsson and Vu Bui produce, with Todd Hallowell, Jay Ashenfelter, Kayleen Walters, Brian Mendoza and Jon Spaihts serving as executive producers. Oscar winner Dan Lemmon serves as the production VFX supervisor. The film is based on the hugely popular game Minecraft, first released by Sweden’s Mojang Studios in 2011 and purchased by Microsoft for $2.5 billion in 2014, which, immerses players in a low-res, pixelated “sandbox” simulation where they can use blocks to build entire worlds.  Here's the final trailer: The studio handled environments and character animation for a number of key scenes in the movie, including Welcome to Midport Village, the attack on Midport Village, the Elytra wingsuit canyon chase, the diamond mines, Woodland Mansion – including the zombie baby atop a chicken fight and Endermen showdown. They also handled the Nitwit work where Jennifer Coolidge’s Vice Principal Marlene hit a Nitwit with her car… the romantic dinner they shared afterwards, and the scene in her office. “In the diamond mines, Garrett wants to take a bit of a detour because he wants to sneak some diamonds into his pocket as he needs the money,” Maury says. “Then the piglins chase him through the mine very briefly. We also did the creeper farm stuff where the big Great Hog and some piglins were chasing Henry, Garrett and Steve before it all blows up.” Maury says that the production relied on a combination of boards, previs, stuntvis, and live-action plates to build sequences. One example is the wingsuit chase. “They had boarded it, prevised it, then shot it based on the previs,” he explains. “They had Jack and Jason and some stunt guys for stuff that was a little more problematic physically to do. They shot plates for all of that.” Imageworks took those plates and roughed out the animation. “We were basically mocking up or doing postvis for those shots… moving cameras through the environments with those plates so that we had something that was more representative of what the final shots were going to look like.” While not fully animated at that stage, the postvis helped inform the cut. Maury notes, “It’s so rough that it’s not like, ‘Oh look at all the time I spent animating this character.’ It was like, ‘Hey look, we got this working so that you could say it’s moving through the environment in a real way.’” The goal was to create animation-ready sequences that could maintain spatial consistency. “You don’t want the actors going 500 kilometers an hour here and now going 20 kilometers an hour over there,” Maury elaborates. “Why does this feel weird? Because the clouds are suddenly blurry on one and not in the other.” To help populate complex sequences, Imageworks used motion capture for background animation - especially for piglins during the village raid. “We were lucky to have Derek Tannahill as a supervisor on the show,” Maury says. “He had access to the mocap suit. So a lot of the piglins in the background are actually Derek. A lot of the villagers are actually Derek too.” Maury adds, “I think there were three pigs that were kind of medium-sized, which would be the closest to a human. There were three smaller ones and three that were a little bit bigger. And then there was a couple that were just really, really, really big.” Rather than guessing what would be needed later, they mocapped a wide batch of piglin behaviors in advance, like “Do one as a heavy pig, do one as a light pig, do one as a twitchy pig, do one as, you know, a really, really frantic pig.” Those were then applied to characters of different sizes to keep variation high and repetition low. “If you’ve got a guy swinging his arm, then another guy swinging his arm in the exact same way, it’s obvious,” he says. “So even if we had a great take, we didn’t want to overuse it.” For stunt-heavy scenes like the Midport piglin raid, the production had actors perform full choreography ahead of filming. According to Maury, “They shot the whole thing with stunt actors in a fake version of the set at the proper scale and size. It was really great. So when they actually shot the sequence itself on set with the real actors, we had that choreography to work from.” Maury says they focused on matching the stunt choreography with CG characters. “If the stunt actors did something that looked great, there’s no need to replace them. We just needed to find a way to get the piglins to fit in the same space.” Of course, blocky piglin characters take up more room than humans. “If you’ve got two humans side by side and then you put in a piglin that’s twice as wide, sometimes you had to copy the performance but move them over so that they would fit,” he says. “It’s like trying to put a bunch of cars on an elevator - they're so big they can’t fit in that space. So, you copy the motion, but sometimes you have to shift them over a bit to make it work.” Maury continues, “Those shots were pretty straightforward in the sense that they had practical actors in those costumes, right? So, we were doing head replacements on those characters because those costumes were quite large. You didn't put a little tiny Beetlejuice head on this big body. But, there's not a lot of guesswork in there as far as what needs to go into the shot. It's put the heads on the characters and then if they want more characters in the background, you add them in the same kind of style as they are in the practical costumes.” The infamous Garrett - baby zombie fight atop a chicken drew attention from early trailers - and required a very specific approach. “That was all keyframe animation except for the characters outside,” Maury says. “You can’t mocap a baby with really, really short limbs and a giant head riding a chicken.” Still, the production had live-action reference. “They shot this sequence again with the stuntvis team,” Maury explains, “then boarded it, shot it as best they could with the actors and stunt performers they had, and then gave us plates.” Using that as a base, the team refined it for animation. He adds, “It was just a lot of keyframe work. You look at it and go, ‘Okay, what’s the funniest, silliest thing that we can have in here?’” Creating motion that felt faithful to the game’s aesthetic while viewable on screen required experimentation. “For example,” he says, “trying to get the Great Hog to move in a way that felt aggressive… it didn’t have the body structure to move fast. That was a bit of an experiment.” The Endermen posed similar challenges. “In the game, they’re very static,” Maury notes. “They don’t bend their legs. So, there was a lot of back and forth. Do the limbs bend? Do they not bend? Do we have them take real steps?” Maury goes on to explain that character proportions created their own physical logic. “Imagine my head is this big [he gestures]. If I turn that too fast, it’s not going to feel like it weighs 40 kilograms. It’s going to feel like Styrofoam. So, we slowed stuff down.” These kinds of adjustments helped translate the game’s visual shorthand into something legible on film. Maury and his team had to figure out how to get needed weight and feel without the characters seeming too stiff. In the game, they slide almost like chess pieces. A number of characters, particularly villagers, were shot in partial costume and composited later. “They had their arms like this, with blocky stuff on them,” Maury gestures again. “We were doing head replacements because the costumes were quite large.” In some cases, the studio extended background crowds digitally. “They might have only had six costumes available for any given shot,” he continues. “If they wanted more characters, we’d add them in the same style in CG. That’s not overly complex - you’re populating a background to feel natural.” He goes on to say that all animals were fully CG. “There wasn’t anyone in an animal costume. They were added in after.” With so many characters and objects flying through the air, matching the logic of physical motion was essential. If cameras show characters flying past things really fast and then stop on a dime, they start to feel fake. “We tried to keep the camera behaving with the same rules as the flying characters. It has to feel like it’s within the same physical constraints.” That required close coordination between layout and animation. “Our initial blocking passes for flying sequences really helped because we didn’t want to reinvent each one of those shots later.” Looking back, Maury says one of the most rewarding aspects of the show was the team itself. “It might have been the longest show I’ve worked on. But because of the timing - the streaming pullback, the strikes - a lot of VFX folks I hadn’t worked with in years became available. So, I ended up working with Derek and a bunch of leads and artists I already knew.” “It wasn’t just my department,” he continues. “It was lighting, comp. The show was really stacked. And I got to work with people I’d normally only see in the coffee line.” Maury also got to enjoy the film with his family. “It was the first time I went to the theater with my kids for something I worked on. They’re Minecraft fans. That was great.” As for the reception, he’s measured. “It’s a fun, silly film. And if you laugh at it because it’s silly, then great. But it’s not Shawshank Redemption. Why would someone review it like it was going to be? Sometimes you just want to go [to the movies] and have a good time.” Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.

Around two years ago, we were contacted by Antoine Richard, a researcher from the University of Luxembourg working on a paper relating to ML vision-based navigation of lunar rovers. As there is no GPS on the moon, rovers require other methods of spatial positioning if they are to be automatically maneuvered. Antoine was interested in a machine-vision approach, which required a set of synthetic training data created from somewhat accurate lunar regolith (moon dirt) textures. He contacted us to propose a collaboration partially sponsored by the University and Spaceport Rostock, where we would fly to their lab in Rostock, Germany, to scan the regolith simulant. Once we were able to cover our own travel costs thanks to support from our Patreon supporters, we had free rein for a week to scan as much as we could in their facility. The Simulation Antoine himself accompanied us to assist in the layout of the material to simulate lunar conditions as much as possible, along with Frank Koch and Lasse Hansen from Spaceport Rostock. This involved careful scattering of the dust with various techniques, using mostly gardening and kitchen tools to attempt to recreate the nature of the moon’s surface. Although the simulated regolith is made in such a way as to copy the substance on the moon as closely as possible – by grinding specific types of rock into extremely fine powder – the moon has no atmosphere, and so the dust behaves rather differently than it does here on earth. Because there is no friction to slow the dust down once it becomes airborne, for example after a meteor impact, the surface is riddled with tiny craters. The Danger Likewise due to the lack of atmosphere, the regolith has little to abrade the sharp edges of the dust particles away. This makes the fine power extremely rough and easily scratches any sensitive camera equipment that it comes into contact with, even in the air. It also makes it carcinogenic, so breathing the dust is dangerous to your health. Dealing with this threat was one of the primary challenges of the trip, as we had to wait for the dust to settle (literally) after each arrangement, which took 1-2 hours, and then be careful not to disturb the surface while we scanned it. We were also required to wear N95 face masks while working near the material, and employed several air quality monitors which notified us when we were being too rigorous with the arrangement of the dust. The Process For normal terrestrial scans, it is typical to walk back and forth across the surface you are scanning to capture a dense grid of images. These images are then fed into a photogrammetry software for mesh reconstruction. But as we could not physically walk across the regolith without disturbing dangerous clouds of dust, we constructed a single axis automated gantry which could suspend our camera and flash and automatically scan a row of images. Then from the sides, we could manually move the rig along the other axis. Each 7×4 meter scan took approximately 2-3 hours to capture this way. On the side, we also captured smaller 40cm macro scans of the regolith, intended to be used for smaller-scale renders or in combination with the larger scans to add detail. The Data Each scan consisted of approximately 1500 photos, totaling 1 million megapixels (or a terapixel if you like) and resulted in reconstructed geometry made of 1.7 billion polygons. A screenshot of one of the surface scans. By the end of the week, we had successfully scanned 20 textures. As part of our promise to Antoine, we are also releasing all the raw data under the public domain (CC0) for any other researchers who wish to take advantage of it, or any photogrammetry artists who want to build their own geometry from the scans. The total dataset is ~800GB, but you can download each scan individually: moon_01 + moon_02 (79 GB) moon_03 + moon_04 (87 GB) moon_dusted_01 (34 GB) moon_dusted_02 (48 GB) moon_dusted_03 (41 GB) moon_dusted_04 (38 GB) moon_dusted_05 (34 GB) moon_flat_macro_01 (35 GB) moon_flat_macro_02 (8.1 GB) moon_footprints_01 + moon_footprints_02 (49 GB) moon_macro_01 (38 GB) moon_meteor_01 + moon_meteor_02 (91 GB) moon_rock_01 (5.1 GB) moon_rock_02 (4.4 GB) moon_rock_03 (4.9 GB) moon_rock_04 (4.8 GB) moon_rock_05 (4.6 GB) moon_rock_06 (4.6 GB) moon_rock_07 (4.5 GB) moon_tracks_01 + moon_tracks_02 (40 GB) moon_tracks_03 + moon_tracks_04 (37 GB) Please do let us know if you do anything interesting with this data, we and the Spaceport Rostock team would love to hear about it. If you have any trouble downloading the files, we also have them on a Nextcloud server that we can share with you. Just get in touch and we’ll give you access freely. Additionally, we scanned 7 regular boring terrestrial rocks coated in the regolith to make them appear more like lunar rocks in order to help visual reconstruction of a simulated lunar environment. For fun, we captured an HDRI in the middle of the regolith pit – a precarious adventure – and lit it using their monstrous halogen bulb meant to simulate the high-contrast low-angle lighting often found on the moon. With the light reflected off the white ceiling you don’t quite get the same effect, but it was interesting to capture nonetheless. The Assets Here is the full collection of assets we created in this project: The Demo As with all of Poly Haven’s other asset collections, we like to showcase what artists can do with our assets by creating a render. James took all of the scans that the team has put together over the last two years and built a beautiful simulation of a lunar environment in Blender. The scene file for this render will be made available soon.

Table of Contents Table of Contents Table of Contents What is A Minecraft Movie about? Is A Minecraft Movie worth watching? 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Now the blockbuster film adapted from the game, dubbed A Minecraft Movie, is headed to households everywhere. From creepers and piglins to villages and the Nether, the film is full of staples from Mojang's crafting game. But that doesn't mean you need to have played the game before to see it (although a primer wouldn't hurt). It stars Jack Black, Jason Momoa, Emma Myers, Danielle Brooks, and Sebastian Hansen and is directed by Jared Hess — the man known for Napoleon Dynamite, the kookiest film of the 2000s. In other words, you know you're in for a dang good time whether you know anything about Minecraft or not. Here's everything you need to know about how to watch A Minecraft Movie at home. You May Also Like What is A Minecraft Movie about?A Minecraft Movie follows four misfits (Momoa, Brooks, Myers, and Hansen) as they get sucked into the Overworld of Minecraft, a realm where everything is made of cubes (yes, everything — even the living creatures). While it seems like an imaginative playground, it's also under siege from a dire threat. To get back home, they'll have to team up with expert crafter and resident Steve (Black) to keep the Overworld safe."'This place makes no sense,' Natalie (Myers) says at one point with a tinge of exasperation, and she is speaking for all of us uninitiated. While it is largely coherent, A Minecraft Movie is all over the place. But no one in the audience is here for the plot. They’re either watching A Minecraft Movie for their love of the Minecraft world or because they love someone who loves it and isn’t old enough to drive themselves to the movie theater. As far as video game adaptations and children’s films go, A Minecraft Movie is so much better than it needs to be," Mashable reviewer Kimber Myers writes.Check out the official trailer for a better glimpse into the world of Minecraft: Is A Minecraft Movie worth watching?We weren't expecting A Minecraft Movie to win awards or anything — it's a kids' movie about a video game mostly unbeknownst to adults. So, the 48 percent critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes is hardly a shock. But audiences, kids and kid-at-heart adults, are largely loving it. It currently holds an 86 percent audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. A Minecraft Movie is also the box office champion of 2025 thus far — and by a considerable amount. The video game adaptation tops the list of highest-grossing movies of the year at $410 million domestically and $911 million worldwide. "It’s fun and funny, fully engaged with the spirit of the game, in which creativity and imagination rule. 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Susan Clark, whose singular vision for Radnor has reshaped the landscape of contemporary design curation, stands at the threshold of the gallery’s most ambitious chapter yet – Evolution in Form – a sun-drenched penthouse perched 70 floors above Manhattan within the soaring Sutton Tower. Her influence on how we experience design in residential contexts has been transformative, creating dialogue between object and space that transcends traditional gallery paradigms. The transition from previous locations to this light-filled, 5,000-square-foot penthouse marks more than a change of address. It represents a conceptual shift in Clark’s approach to presenting contemporary design. She has deliberately embraced a cleaner, more minimalist aesthetic that responds to the architectural vocabulary of Thomas Juul-Hansen’s residential tower – now the tallest on Manhattan’s East Side at 850 feet. “I’m delighted to open our newest location at Sutton Tower with this new collection of works,” states Susan Clark. “In many ways, Evolution in Form reflects not only our exploration of new creative horizons with our designers, but also our desire to create an evolving dialogue between design and architecture. The spaces we show in give us specific problems to solve, and specific potential to fulfill. It’s a more meaningful exercise for designers, and a more relevant way to show designs. At Sutton Tower, the collection’s exploration of soft, textured materiality and authentic, personal design language comes into a new focus.” The light spills across the unvarnished surface of Toshio Tokunaga’s newest dining table, catching in the shallow ripples of hand-planed Japanese Zelkova wood. This 350-year-old timber, touched only by traditional Kanna techniques rather than modern machinery, holds centuries of growth within its grain. The exhibition’s centerpiece, Sebastian Cox’s Sendal collection, stands as a powerful testament to the potential of regenerative design practices. Cox, whose work exclusively uses wild-sourced British wood and natural finishes, has created pieces that hover between substantiality and lightness. The collection’s armoire, credenza, and console table feature an undercut base that creates a floating effect, reducing the visual weight of even the most massive forms. Evolution in Form brings together work that explores the tension between tradition and innovation across materials and techniques. The collection most notably includes Radnor’s first venture into outdoor furniture – the Pausa sofa collection by longtime collaborators Bunn Studio. These sculptural rattan pieces with their generous proportions and enveloping forms connect historical craft traditions with contemporary sensibilities. For more information on Radnor’s Evolution in Form, visit radnor.co. Photography by William Jess Laird.

Pine Heath Townhouse / Studio Hagen HallSave this picture!© Felix Speller•London, United Kingdom Architects: Studio Hagen Hall Area Area of this architecture project Area:  284 m² Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2023 Photographs Photographs:Felix Speller Manufacturers Brands with products used in this architecture project Manufacturers:  Fritz Hansen, panoramah!®, Bette, Haxch , A.J. Brett & Co Ltd, Anthony, Archie Shine, Artemide, Baina, Balsan, Bertazzoni, Cassina, Cavendish Equipment, Cielo, Crosswater, Elliots of Newbury, F&E Joinery, FLOS, Frama, Guzzini, +22 More SpecsLess Specs Save this picture! Text description provided by the architects. Set within a leafy enclave of the Hampstead Conservation Area in North London, a modernist townhouse now stands confidently refurbished for a young couple and their daughter, expertly designed by emerging architecture and interiors practice, Studio Hagen Hall. The home is part of a handsome cluster of nine properties, including five townhouses originally designed by South African architect Ted Levy, Benjamin & Partners in the late 1960s, representing a key part of progressive post-war design thinking in London's built history. Externally, each of the neighboring homes appears uniformly designed with subtle reference to Cape Town coastal developments in the 50s and 60s, but interiors have since been sporadically renovated, and the majority of them stripped of their modernist character. 'Pine Heath' is one of the last remaining houses to retain many original features still intact throughout.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Drawn to the original, mid-century charm and interiors of the home, the clients briefed Studio Hagen Hall to revive the tired terraced house into a warm, broken plan, polished home for their growing family, with a keen focus on upgrading its overall energy efficiency and performance. As long-time followers of the practice and admirers of previous completed projects, including Canyon House, the clients appointed Studio Hagen Hall in 2021 for its approachability, extensive experience in modernist restorations, and ability to deliver technically challenging architecture with warm, sensitive, and timelessly crafted interiors. Studio Hagen Hall was initially appointed to lightly refurbish the home, involving only the kitchen, bathrooms, and windows, but on careful inspection, realized that the home's true potential lay in much wider renovation. Studio Hagen Hall proposed a bespoke restoration encompassing the whole house that would improve operational efficiency and reduce overall project costs in the long term, and ultimately introduce a more sophisticated and pragmatic series of living spaces to suit a functional, life-long home.Save this picture!Alongside the aesthetic and energy-improvement brief for Pine Heath, spatial planning needed much consideration throughout the property. The new arrangement lays out a defined relationship between indoor and outdoor zones. A more logical connection is re-established between the entrance, kitchen, and living areas, and large amounts of storage and multi-purpose functionality are introduced into these communal spaces. Previously a three-bedroom home, Studio Hagen Hall has utilized the property's five stories to deliver a cleverly and subtly zoned floor plan, balancing social family space with distinct areas for rest, utility, work, and play. It now comprises an additional fourth guest bedroom suite-cum-gym in the basement, plus a new office and guest sleeping pod in the eaves of the property. The original central stairwell and timber-clad ceilings acted as a cue to reinstating the modernist characteristics of Pine Heath. The aged Paraná pine, a highly sought-after endangered species, formed the foundation for the project's material palette and further references Studio Hagen Hall's sensitive design choices to work around and preserve original, indelible detail throughout the home.Save this picture!Save this picture!Other intentional devices are employed by Studio Hagen Hall to improve sightlines and accentuate spatial flow between each room. In the bedrooms, old doors and openings have been replaced with floor-to-ceiling pocket doors maintained at 2.5 meters high, and subtly re-aligned to allow perfect views all the way from the front to the back of the house. Storage spaces in the bedrooms, once running laterally, now run perpendicular so that windows and views are completely unfettered and viewed through deep timber-lined portals. On entry, visitors are greeted by a generous hallway and a built-in cloak area complete with a bench, with direct vistas reaching the terraced patio and communal gardens to the rear of the home. Navigating this visual journey, occupants are carried along acute horizontal datum lines, and a tile grid that continues throughout the whole house; window sills, joinery, and spaces with angular changes cut at 45-degree angles, highlight Studio Hagen Hall's meticulous and exceedingly satisfying approach to spatial design.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!The new bespoke kitchen nods to the client and Studio Hagen Hall's shared interest in quality craftsmanship, showcased in dynamic, yet sensitive, material detailing. Brushed stainless steel worktops sit deftly atop the bespoke cabinetry, individually fitted to mask all domestic appliances such as the fridge, dishwasher, and bespoke extractor fan hood. Custom-designed and milled sapele handles mirror existing mahogany accents throughout the house. Period details of the original modernist kitchen have been accentuated for contemporary use; textured, stippolyte glass cabinetry together with a sweeping curved timber fascia now envelopes the kitchen, aligning with the original horizontal window datum and framing the serving hatch to the dining area. Custom mechanical louvre window shutters are installed above the sink, providing privacy from the street when required. A warm yet refined palette forms the basis for the interior mood of Pine Heath. The joinery has been expertly crafted in a complementary veneer, subtly stained to match the original Paraná pine strip ceiling and stair cladding within the home. Studio Hagen Hall added textures and colors to elevate the atmosphere, with rich greens tying the house together, displayed in the raised living area, stairwell, and covering all of the bespoke upholstered furnishings in the living, dining, and sleeping spaces.Save this picture!Save this picture!Earthen colors come together to create dramatic interior focal points, in the color-drenched tiled bathrooms punctuated by browns, greens, and blues, selectively chosen to complement the cherry wood joinery, seamless mirror glazing, and bespoke barisol lighting. Microcement flooring flows through the upper floors, deepening the relationship between materiality and ambience. In numerical terms, Pine Heath now reads at a much higher thermal performance. Studio Hagen Hall retained the appearance of the original fenestration by replacing the original single-glazed aluminum windows with a custom hybrid solution, comprising timber frames with aluminum and vacuum glazing inserts.Save this picture!Beyond the upgrade to the glazing, insulation was added internally to key areas of the concrete and brick structure to drastically reduce cold-bridging. Trickle and adjustable air vents in each room provide fresh airflow via the new centralized mechanical extract ventilation system. The property also features integrated solar panels, an air-source heat pump, underfloor heating, and full roof insulation to meet and more than exceed standard energy efficiency requirements. An exemplar in sensitively considered architecture and interior design, Pine Heath demonstrates a deep understanding of how toLondon modernist house transformation.Save this picture! Project gallerySee allShow less About this officeStudio Hagen HallOffice••• Published on May 15, 2025Cite: "Pine Heath Townhouse / Studio Hagen Hall" 15 May 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1029797/pine-heath-townhouse-studio-hagen-hall&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save世界上最受欢迎的建筑网站现已推出你的母语版本!想浏览ArchDaily中国吗?是否 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

Rewilding, Rigour and Radical Care: Practice Visits in CopenhagenCopenhagen’s architecture is generous to the public realm and Copenhagen’s architects were even more so to us. Day two began at the shared office space of Johansen Skovsted Arkitekter, Djernes & Bell and Kim Lenschow, over coffee and Baku pastries. In this collaborative, little ecosystem of a workplace, the three practices share lunch, end-of-year parties and knowledge – a testament to the collaborative nature that ran through all of the practices we visited. Johansen Skovsted’s extensive experience in architectural reuse, landscape rewilding and rewetting offered a fascinating approach to working within existing ecological systems and utilising architecture to improve components of that as opposed to reworking the entire structure of the landscape. It’s an approach that can inform our work in various remote Indigenous communities in Australia, where we should be looking for smaller-scale solutions that support existing social, cultural, and environmental systems, rather than attempting to rebuild them. As Djernes & Bell director Justine Bell reminded us, that is not the role of the architect.Bell remarked that the architect’s role in this work lies in our professional expertise in land use, existing structures, storytelling and the synergy in communicating potential futures – how landscapes can look and how buildings can feel. Their rigour in material testing and resource-mapping encouraged vigorous conversation around climactic materiality, vernacular architecture and construction methods. Bell, a South African architect, noted that both Australia and South Africa often look to Europe for answers, when, in fact, more relevant ideas are emerging from home. As many Australian architects grapple  with integrating colonial vernaculars with Indigenous knowledge systems, we can also look to vernacular architecture, not to overly romanticise it, but to understand and reinterpret these ideas through a contemporary lens. These kinds of projects rely on the humility of the architect to engage with experts in agriculture, biology, geology, rewetting and research.Through Copenhagen’s built environment principle of not building new, we’ve come to understand – through the lens of these architectural practitioners – the idea of making what is necessary with what is available. The labour involved in reusing existing buildings, conducting material research and constructing the architecture that has been redefining Copenhagen for the past decade reflects the same care that continues to be invested in a building throughout its life span.“Buildings that have included the most labour are taken care of the most,” said Bell. I’ve seen this ethos at work first-hand in my own work in regional and remote communities in Australia. When communities are involved in the design – through consultation, iterative design and revalidating form translation – and in the construction – by engaging local builders, sub-contractors, suppliers, ongoing contracts, the buildings are valued as more than just structure and form. They become  part of the system of the community: spatially, economically and culturally. The post DST Day 2 – Marni Reti appeared first on Australian Institute of Architects.