“Was your interior designer Ayn Bland?” Barely ten minutes into Mountainhead, the first feature film from Succession creator Jesse Armstrong, the viewer is confronted with one of the film’s central tenets: beige is bad.Articulated by Jeff (Ramy Youssef), the movie does a lot to engage this train of thought. Its central characters—tech bro founders Randall (Steve Carrell), Hugo (Jason Schwartzman), and Venis (Cory Michael Smith)—are pitted against not just each other, but the world writ large as it begins to crumble around them, mostly thanks to their own machinations.But when did our current beige malaise set in? Much of the recent divisiveness might be attributed to the Kardashians, whose homes are synonymous with muted putty tones: “less is more” taken to its only logical conclusion—least is best. The aesthetic has occasionally gone viral, with the TikTok account Sad Beige even garnering notoriety for documenting the lifelessness of children’s retail offerings in the voice of German documentary filmmaker Werner Herzog.Warner Bros.The cast of Mountainhead, the new HBO Original film from Succession creator Jesse Armstrong.Social media is as much a progenitor of the trend as it is the platform to document it and repackage it for frictionless consumption. Beige is safe, easy, legible—if your entire house has been unpacked from Amazon boxes, why fight the natural inclination to just live in one? The Mountainhead home might be the lair of a fictional tech boss, but the aesthetics remain the same up and down the corporate ladder.The color family has its own troubled history: “khaki,” which is derived from the Urdu term for “dusty,” originated in mid-19th-century colonial India, as the critic and author Andrea Codrington noted in an eerily prescient 2001 essay for Cabinet magazine that further elaborates on beige’s latent potential for evil. Mountainhead, then, sees the hue returning to its roots, becoming shorthand for what Armstrong sees as everything that’s wrong with the world: complacency, exhaustion, and boredom.MACALL POLAY. SMPSPAnother beige couch in the Mountainhead house. Armstrong’s camera treats the home, designed by local Utah firm Upwall Design, as a character in and of itself, with lingering shots of quietly humming servers, spiraling staircases and vacant driveways presenting solitude and menace as two sides of the same coin. Town & Country reported that production designer Stephen Carter liked the property for its The Shining-esque vibes. He wasn’t wrong. “There’s a solitary nature to that house, too,” star Steve Carrell told The Salt Lake Tribune. “You feel like you’re away from everything.”Another word for that feeling—articulated by scenes of the men laying about the home glued to their phones as scenes of worldwide terror stream in—would be dissociation. Think home is where the heart is? Mountainhead makes a compelling case that it's often just another a bad trip.Sean SantiagoDeputy EditorSean Santiago is ELLE Decor's Deputy Editor, covering news, trends and talents in interior design, hospitality and travel, culture, and luxury shopping. Since starting his career at an interior design firm in 2011, he has gone on to cover the industry for Vogue, Architectural Digest, Sight Unseen, PIN-UP and Domino. He is the author of The Lonny Home (Weldon Owens, 2018), has produced scripted social content for brands including West Elm and Streeteasy, and is sometimes recognized on the street for his Instagram Reels series, #DanceToDecor

The tower takes shape as two sets of overlapping cylinders, clad with prefabricated panels intended to evoke clouds. PROJECT The Butterfly + First Baptist Church Complex ARCHITECT Revery Architecture PHOTOS Ema Peter When you fly into Vancouver, the most prominent structure in the city’s forest of glass skyscrapers is now a 57-storey edifice known as the Butterfly. Designed by Revery Architecture, the luxury residential tower is the latest in a string of high-rises that pop out of the city’s backdrop of generic window-wall façades.  The Butterfly’s striking form evolved over many years, beginning with studies dating back to 2012. Revery principal Venelin Kokalov imagined several options, most of them suggesting a distinct pair of architectural forms in dialogue. Renderings and models of the early concepts relay a wealth of imagination that is sorely missing from much of the city’s contemporary architecture, as land economics, zoning issues, and the profit motive often compel a default into generic glass-and-steel towers. The earliest concepts look starkly different—some evoke the Ginger and Fred building in Prague (Frank Gehry with Vlado Milunić, 1996); others the Absolute Towers in Mississauga (MAD with Burka Varacalli Architects, 2009). But one consistent theme runs through the design evolution: a sense of two Rilkean solitudes, touching.  On each floor, semi-private sky gardens offer an outdoor place for residents to socialize. Client feedback, engineering studies, and simple pragmatics led to the final form: two sets of overlapping cylinders linked by a common breezeway and flanked by a rental apartment on one side and a restored church doubling as a community centre on the other. The contours of the floorplan are visually organic: evocative of human cells dividing. The roundness of the main massing is complemented by curvilinear balustrades that smoothly transform into the outer walls of each unit. It’s an eye-catching counterpoint to the orthogonality of the city’s built landscape. The two adjacent buildings—built, restored, and expanded as part of a density bonus arrangement with the city—help integrate this gargantuan structure with the lower-rise neighbourhood around it.  The Butterfly is a high-end, high-priced residential tower—one of the few typologies in which clients and communities are now willing to invest big money and resources in creative, visually astonishing architecture. That leads to a fundamental question: what is the public purpose of a luxury condo tower?  A public galleria joins the renovated First Baptist Church to the new building. Serving as a welcoming atrium, it allows for community access to the expanded church, including its daycare, full gymnasium, multi-purpose rooms, overnight emergency shelter, and community dining hall equipped with a commercial kitchen. Whatever one feels about the widening divide between the haves and have-nots in our big cities, this building—like its ilk—does serve several important public purposes. The most direct and quantifiable benefits are the two flanking buildings, also designed by Revery and part of the larger project. The seven-storey rental apartment provides a modest contribution to the city’s dearth of mid-priced housing. The superbly restored and seismically upgraded First Baptist Church has expanded into the area between the new tower and original church, and now offers the public a wider array of programming including a gymnasium, childcare facility, and areas for emergency shelter and counselling services for individuals in need.  The church’s Pinder Hall has been reimagined as a venue for church and community events including concerts, weddings, and cultural programming. The Butterfly’s character is largely defined by undulating precast concrete panels that wrap around the building. The architects describe the swooping lines as being inspired by clouds, but for this writer, the Butterfly evokes a 57-layer frosted cake towering above the city’s boxy skyline. Kokalov winces when he hears that impression, but it’s meant as a sincere compliment. Clouds are not universally welcome, but who doesn’t like cake?  Kokalov argues that its experiential quality is the building’s greatest distinction—most notably, the incorporation of an “outdoors”—not a balcony or deck, but an actual outdoor pathway—at all residential levels. For years the lead form-maker at Bing Thom Architects, Kokalov was responsible for much of the curvilinearity in the firm’s later works, including the 2019 Xiqu Centre opera house in Hong Kong. It’s easy to assume that his forte and focus would be pure aesthetic delight, but he avers that every sinuous curve has a practical rationale.  The breezeways provide residents with outdoor entries to their units—an unusual attribute for high-rise towers—and contribute to natural cooling, ventilation, and daylight in the suites. Defying the local tower-on-podium formula, the building’s façade falls almost straight to the ground. At street level, the building is indented with huge parabolic concavities. It’s an abrupt way to meet the street, but the fall is visually “broken” by a publicly accessible courtyard.   The tower’s layered, undulating volume is echoed in a soaring residential lobby, which includes developer Westbank’s signature—a bespoke Fazioli grand piano designed by the building’s architect. After passing through this courtyard, you enter the building via the usual indoor luxe foyer—complete with developer Westbank’s signature, an over-the-top hand-built grand piano designed by the architect. In this case, the piano’s baroquely sculpted legs are right in keeping with the architecture. But after taking the elevator up to the designated floor, you step out into what is technically “outdoors” and walk to your front door in a brief but bracing open-air transition.  The main entrance of every unit is accessed via a breezeway that runs from one side of the building to another. Unglazed and open to the outside, each breezeway is marked at one end with what the architects call (a little ambitiously) a “sky garden,” in most cases consisting of a sapling that will grow into a leafy tree in due course, God and strata maintenance willing. This incorporation of nature and fresh air transforms the condominium units into something akin to townhouses, albeit stacked exceptionally high.  The suites feature a custom counter with a sculptural folded form. Inside each unit, the space can be expanded and contracted and reconfigured visually—not literally—by the fact that the interior wall of the secondary bedroom is completely transparent, floor to ceiling. It’s unusual, and slightly unnerving, but undeniably exciting for any occupants who wish to maximize their views to the mountains and sea. The curved glass wall transforms the room into a private enclave by means of a curtain, futuristically activated by remote control. The visual delight of swooping curves is only tempered when it’s wholly impractical—the offender here being a massive built-in counter that serves to both anchor and divide the living-kitchen areas. It reads as a long, pliable slab that is “folded” into the middle in such a way that the counter itself transforms into its own horseshoe-shaped base, creating a narrow crevice in the middle of the countertop. I marvel at its beauty and uniqueness; I weep for whoever is assigned to clean out the crumbs and other culinary flotsam that will fall into that crevice.  A structure made of high-performance modular precast concrete structural ribs arcs over a swimming pool that bridges between the building’s main amenity space and the podium roof. The building’s high-priced architecture may well bring more to the table than density-bonus amenities. On a broader scale, these luxe dwellings may be just what is needed to help lure the affluent from their mansions. As wealthy residents and investors continue to seek out land-hogging detached homes, the Butterfly offers an alternate concept that maintains the psychological benefit of a dedicated outside entrance and an outrageously flexible interior space. Further over-the-top amenities add to the appeal. Prominent among these is a supremely gorgeous residents-only swimming pool, housed within ribs of concrete columns that curve and dovetail into beams.   The ultimate public purpose for the architecturally spectacular condo tower: its role as public art in the city. The units in any of these buildings are the private side of architecture’s Janus face, but its presence in the skyline and on the street is highly public. By contributing a newly striking visual ballast, the Butterfly has served its purpose as one of the age-old Seven Arts: defining a location, a community, and an era. Adele Weder is a contributing editor to Canadian Architect. Screenshot CLIENT Westbank Corporation, First Baptist Church | ARCHITECT TEAM Venelin Kokalov (MRAIC), Bing Thom (FRAIC, deceased 2016), Amirali Javidan, Nicole Hu, Shinobu Homma MRAIC, Bibi Fehr, Culum Osborne, Dustin Yee, Cody Loeffen, Kailey O’Farrell, Mark Melnichuk, Andrea Flynn, Jennifer Zhang, Daniel Gasser, Zhuoli Yang, Lisa Potopsingh | STRUCTURAL Glotman Simpson | MECHANICAL Introba | ELECTRICAL Nemetz & Associates, Inc. | LANDSCAPE SWA Group (Design) w/ Cornelia Oberlander & G|ALA – Gauthier & Associates Landscape Architecture, Inc. (Landscape Architect of Record) | INTERIORS Revery Architecture | CONTRACTOR Icon West Construction (new construction); The Haebler Group (heritage) | LIGHTING ARUP (Design) & Nemetz (Engineer of Record) | SUSTAINABILITY & ENERGY MODELlING Introba | BUILDING ENVELOPE RDH Building Science, Inc. | HERITAGE CONSERVATION Donald Luxton & Associates, Inc.| ACOUSTICS BKL Consultants Ltd. | TRAFFIC Bunt & Associates, Inc. | POOL Rockingham Pool Consulting, Inc. | FOUNTAIN Vincent Helton & Associates | WIND Gradient Wind Engineering, Inc. | WASTE CONSULTANT Target Zero Waste Consulting, Inc. | AREA 56,206 M2 | BUDGET Withheld | COMPLETION Spring 2025 ENERGY USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 106 kWh/m2/year | WATER USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 0.72 m3/m2/year As appeared in the June 2025 issue of Canadian Architect magazine The post The Butterfly takes flight: The Butterfly, Vancouver, BC appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Tumor Has ItJun 1, 10:00 AM EDT / by Noor Al-Sibai400 Women Are Suing Pfizer Over Birth Control Shot That Allegedly Gave Them Brain TumorsThe pharmaceutical giant allegedly knew about the risks... but didn't warn patients.Jun 1, 10:00 AM EDT / Noor Al-SibaiImage by Beata Zawrzel / NurPhoto via Getty / FuturismRx/MedicinesRecent research has linked Pfizer's widely-used Depo-Provera birth control shot to massively increased risk of developing brain tumors — and hundreds of women are suing the pharmaceutical giant over it.According to a press release filed on behalf of the roughly 400 plaintiffs in the class action suit, the lawsuit claims that Pfizer and other companies that made generic versions of the injectable contraceptive knew of the link between the shot and the dangerous tumors, but didn't properly warn users.The suit follows a study published by the British Medical Journal last year that found that people who took the progestin-based shot for a year or more were up to 5.6 times more likely to develop meningioma, a slow-building brain tumor that forms, per the Cleveland Clinic, on the meninges, or layers of tissue that covers the brain and spinal cord.Though Pfizer attached warning labels about meningioma to Depo-Provera sold in Canada in 2015 and the UK, Europe, and South Africa after the 2024 study was published, no such label was deployed in the United States — a failure which according to the lawsuit is "inconsistent [with] global safety standards."In an interview with the website DrugWatch, one of the suit's plaintiffs, who was identified by the initials TC, said that she had been "told how great Depo-Provera was" and decided to start it after an unplanned pregnancy that occurred when she'd taken the since-discontinued birth control pill Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo."I thought it would be more reliable and convenient since I wouldn’t have to take it daily," TC told the site, referencing the four annual injections Depo-Provera requires. "I had no idea it would lead to such serious health problems."After being on the contraceptive shot for three years — and experiencing intense headaches, months-long uterine bleeding, and weight gain — the woman finally consulted her doctor and was diagnosed with meningioma. She's since been undergoing treatment and experienced some relief, but even that experience has been "physically and emotionally draining" because she has to get regular MRIs to monitor the tumor, which likely isn't fatal but still greatly affects her quality of life."It’s a constant worry that the tumor might grow," TC said, "and the appointments feel never-ending."That fear was echoed by others who spoke to the Daily Mail about their meningioma diagnoses after taking Depo-Provera. Unlike TC, Andrea Faulks of Alabama hadn't been on the shots for years when she learned of her brain tumors, which caused her years of anguish.Faulks told the British website that she'd begun taking the medication back in 1993, the year after it was approved by the FDA in the United States. She stopped taking it only a few years later, but spent decades having splitting headaches and experiencing dizziness and tremors. After being dismissed by no fewer than six doctors, the woman finally got an MRI last summer and learned that she had a brain tumor — and is now undergoing radiation to shrink it after all this time."I know this is something I'm going to have to live with for the rest of my life, as long as I live," Faulks told the Daily Mail.Currently, the class action case against Pfizer on behalf of women like Faulks and TC is in its earliest stages as attorneys representing those hundreds of women with brain tumors start working to make them whole.Even if they receive adequate payouts, however, that money won't take away their suffering, or give them back the years of their life lost to tumors they should have been warned about.Share This ArticleImage by Beata Zawrzel / NurPhoto via Getty / FuturismRead This Next

Gironda Residence | © Simone Bossi Located just steps from Piazza del Popolo in Ravenna, the Renaissance-era Casa Guaccimanni holds centuries of architectural and historical weight. Constructed in the fifteenth century for the Venetian podestà Nicolò Giustinian, the building evolved through noble ownership and later became home to Vittorio and Alessandro Guaccimanni, sons of Risorgimento figure Luigi Guaccimanni. Architecturally, the structure is characterized by a tripartite plan with a central corridor flanked by large rooms, an interior courtyard with a double loggia, and decorative elements spanning Renaissance to Neoclassical periods. Once concealed beneath plaster, its frescoed veranda and exposed wooden ceilings speak to a layered history of intervention, concealment, and rediscovery. Gironda Residence in Casa Guaccimanni Technical Information Architects1-13: Giovanni Mecozzi Architetti Location: Casa Guaccimanni, Via Armando Diaz, Ravenna, Italy Client: Emanuela Docimo Project Years: 2022 – 2024 Original Structure: 15th Century Photographs: © Andrea Sestito, © Simone Bossi, © Omar Sartor The new and the old never touch, but gently brush against each other, maintaining a distance capable of generating tension. – Giovanni Mecozzi Gironda Residence in Casa Guaccimanni Photographs © Omar Sartor © Andrea Sestito © Andrea Sestito © Andrea Sestito © Omar Sartor © Simone Bossi © Simone Bossi © Simone Bossi © Omar Sartor © Omar Sartor © Omar Sartor © Andrea Sestito © Omar Sartor Design Intent: Reversibility and Temporal Tension The recent architectural project by Giovanni Mecozzi Architetti centers on the noble floor of the palazzo, reinterpreted as a contemporary residence named Gironda. Rather than imposing a new visual regime onto the historic shell, the intervention operates with restraint, foregrounding the building’s original character while establishing new spatial and material conditions. At the core of the project lies a design philosophy rooted in reversibility. Mecozzi’s intervention resists permanence. The furnishings and spatial devices introduced into the historic rooms are self-supporting and detached from the structure. No new element makes physical contact with the floors, ceilings, or walls, preserving the integrity of the original surfaces. This strategy avoids irreversible alterations and allows the architecture to remain temporally flexible. Architect Giovanni Mecozzi articulates this approach succinctly: “The new and the old never touch, but gently brush against each other, maintaining a distance capable of generating tension.” This spatial tension is not decorative but conceptual, prompting occupants to consider the relationship between historical continuity and contemporary transformation. The design does not attempt to erase time but rather exposes its layers through careful juxtaposition. The project draws conceptual and chromatic inspiration from Ravenna’s early Christian and Byzantine mosaics. Rather than replicate ornamental motifs, Mecozzi extracts abstract qualities such as color, luminosity, and surface texture, integrating them as subtle spatial references throughout the residence. Gironda Residence Material Strategy Access to the residence is organized through a longitudinal hallway that bisects the plan, connecting a balcony on the north façade with a loggia overlooking the garden to the south. This corridor becomes a spine for circulation and orientation, punctuated by entries into five main rooms: the kitchen, veranda, and three independent suites. Each suite functions as a self-contained spatial environment. The original large rooms have been reimagined with integrated volumes housing diverse domestic functions: bathrooms, saunas, walk-in closets, reading nooks, and home cinemas. These new programmatic layers are embedded within freestanding furniture structures, which operate more as inhabitable objects than architectural partitions. Color becomes an operative tool for spatial differentiation. The three principal suites, the Gold Room, the Blue Room, and the Green Room, are introduced chromatically through thresholds that face the main corridor. This prelude of color sets the tone for each room’s unique interior experience. Within, glossy glass tiles, gilded surfaces, and a reduced palette of materials establish a scenographic yet restrained environment. The flooring, a Venetian terrazzo installed during earlier restoration work in the 2000s, has been retained. Its beveled borders and rounded corners respond to the proportions of each room, reinforcing a visual continuity that binds the new interventions with the inherited context. In contrast to the historical envelope, the furniture and spatial devices employ a language of monochromatic forms and minimal detailing, occasionally verging on neoplastic abstraction. This tension between old ornament and new abstraction is one of the project’s defining features. Furnishings curated by Atelier Biagetti, known for their theatrical and ironic sensibility, further enrich the atmosphere. These pieces do not mimic the historical setting but create moments of visual friction and playful ambiguity, enhancing the multi-temporal character of the interiors. Architectural Significance and Cultural Dialogue The Gironda residence exemplifies a growing discourse in contemporary architecture around adaptive reuse that neither mimics nor erases the past. Rather than treating heritage as a constraint or an aesthetic to be curated, Mecozzi engages it as an active agent in spatial transformation. The project is a case study in reversible architecture, where temporality is embedded in the design, not just its historical references. This intervention prompts broader questions about the role of preservation in contemporary practice. Can architectural interventions occupy historic contexts without becoming parasitic or nostalgic? Mecozzi’s project suggests that they can adopt a posture of critical distance and conceptual clarity. Gironda does not attempt to restore Casa Guaccimanni to a previous state or impose a singular vision of modernity. Instead, it crafts a dialogue between past and present, structured through spatial strategies, material choices, and chromatic cues. In doing so, it opens a new chapter in the building’s ongoing life, one that is fully contemporary yet deeply rooted in architectural memory. Gironda Residence in Casa Guaccimanni Plans Floor Plan | © Giovanni Mecozzi Architetti Golden Room Layout | © Giovanni Mecozzi Architetti Door Detail | © Giovanni Mecozzi Architetti Gironda Residence in Casa Guaccimanni Image Gallery About Giovanni Mecozzi Giovanni Mecozzi is an Italian architect based in Ravenna, Italy, and the founder of Giovanni Mecozzi Architetti (GMA), a multidisciplinary studio specializing in architecture, interior design, and landscape projects. After graduating from the University of Ferrara with an architecture degree, Mecozzi gained international experience working in Spain, including collaborating with Mendaro Arquitectos in Madrid. Upon returning to Italy, he co-founded GMA, focusing on projects emphasizing the relationship between architecture, the client, and the context, with a particular interest in renovating and transforming historical buildings.  Credits and Additional Notes Design Team: Giovanni Mecozzi, Cecilia Verdini, Filippo Minghetti Construction: Edilcostruzioni (Leoni Andrea) Electrical Systems: Elektra Service (Andrea Baiardi) Mechanical and Hydraulic Systems: Nuova OLP Structural Alterations: Not applicable (intervention is fully reversible) Custom Furniture: Idea Legno (Paolo Berdondini) Curtains and Fabrics: Selezione Arredamenti, Ravenna Lighting: Viabizzuno (via Tutto Luce, Cesena) Resin Coatings and Flooring: Kerakoll Rugs and Carpeting: Centro Moquette, Rimini Bathroom Furnishings: Salaroli, Ravenna Furniture, Artwork, and Design Objects Selected by: Atelier Biagetti (Milan) Furniture Designers: Alberto Biagetti and Laura Baldassarri

May 30, 20255 min readWhy This Hurricane Season Has Experts on EdgePredictions for an above-average number of storms, communities that are still recovering and cuts to the National Weather Service have meteorologists and other experts worried about this hurricane seasonBy Andrea Thompson edited by Dean VisserCategory 4 Hurricane Florence as seen from the International Space Station in 2018. ESA/NASA–A. GerstJune 1 marks the official start of the hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean—and once again, the season looks like it will be busy.Though it is impossible to tell this far in advance exactly when storms will form and where they might hit, the presence of hurricane-friendly environmental conditions this season—along with the federal government cuts and policy chaos—have experts worried about the accuracy of forecasts and the resulting safety of communities. Scientific American asked several forecasters and hurricane researchers what they were most concerned about this year.Warm oceans may mean a busy hurricane seasonOn 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.Seasonal forecasts—including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s—put the odds in favor of having more storms than average this season, which will last until November 30. NOAA predicts 13 to 19 named storms, meaning those of tropical storm strength (with winds of 39 to 74 miles per hour) or higher. Of those, six to 10 are expected to become hurricanes (with winds of more than 74 mph). And among those hurricanes, three to five are expected to reach major hurricane status—meaning they will have winds that will fall within Category 3 (those of 111 to 129 mph) or a stronger category on the Saffir-Simpson scale.The expectations of an active season arise from a combination of a favorable atmospheric environment and abundant ocean heat to fuel storms. For one thing, there’s no El Niño in place right now to influence winds in a way that tends to shred storms apart, says Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University, whose team releases its own seasonal forecast each year.And waters in the Gulf of Mexico are extremely warm right now, providing ample fuel for the convection that drives tropical cyclones. “Over 60 percent of the Gulf is at record or near-record warmth for the time of year, and waters east of Florida and around the Bahamas are as warm as we’ve seen them for the start of any hurricane season in the satellite era,” says Michael Lowry, a hurricane specialist at WPLG Local 10 News in Miami. Warm ocean water in these areas can cause storms to rapidly intensify right before landfall, giving communities less time to prepare for the onslaught. This is a major concern for Jill Trepanier, a hurricane researcher at Louisiana State University. “That is just a devastating situation when it occurs,” she says.It’s a situation that has played out many times in recent years, including with Hurricanes Beryl and Milton last season. “The sticky heat of the Gulf is a worrisome trend that’s undoubtedly fueling the spate of big hurricane hits along the Gulf Coast over the past decade or so,” Lowry says. “This is consistent with recent research that suggests the Gulf has seen a significant increase over the past 42 years in the number of days where it can support high-end hurricanes.”Because of that abundant hurricane fuel, “I would not be surprised if we see early-season activity well ahead of the peak” of activity in September, says Marshall Shepherd, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Georgia.Several experts noted that this year’s conditions have some slight differences from the most recent seasons. For one, “the waters of the deep tropical Atlantic east of the Caribbean—often a bellwether for overall hurricane season activity—are the coolest we’ve seen them to start a hurricane season since 2021,” Lowry says. But, he adds, they are “still plenty warm ... and forecast to remain so, which should favor above-average activity.”Though the overall message is that this will be a busier-than-normal season, it is not predicted to be quite as busy as those of the past few years. Klotzbach is worried that could lead to complacency. “My biggest concern is that, because the seasonal forecasts are a bit less aggressive than last year..., people may tend to let their guard down,” he says.Communities are still recoveringInevitably, each time a new hurricane season begins, some communities are still reeling from storms from the previous year—and often even further back in time. This year “places in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas are still recovering from Helene, Milton and Debby,” Shepherd says, citing three of the worst storms of the 2024 season.An aerial view of destroyed houses in Port St Lucie, Fla., after a tornado hit the area and caused severe damage as Hurricane Milton swept through on October 11, 2024.Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/AFP via Getty ImagesA National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report released last year warned that the Gulf Coast in particular risked being in “perpetual disaster recovery” mode. The report noted that seven hurricanes struck the region in 2020 and 2021 alone.It’s entirely possible that some of the communities pummeled in recent years could face hurricane peril again this year. “With projections of average to above-average activity, all it takes is one storm to compound an already bad situation for many people,” Marshall says.NWS and FEMA cutsPiled atop these concerns is the situation within the federal government, with substantial budget and staffing cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). “It remains to be seen what the impacts of reduced staffing across relevant NOAA offices and agencies will be,” says Brian McNoldy, a tropical storm researcher at the University of Miami. “But any loss of expertise, data collection capabilities and around-the-clock monitoring is troubling during critical, high-impact situations.”Though the National Hurricane Center (NHC) monitors the development of tropical storms and hurricanes and produces the main forecasts, local NWS offices still play a crucial role in providing more localized warnings about storm surge, flooding and winds. Many offices in hurricane-prone areas are understaffed, says Jeff Masters, a writer at Yale Climate Connections and a former Hurricane Hunter at NOAA. Among those, the NWS’s Houston and Miami offices are suffering the largest staff shortages. The NWS has asked staff from other offices to move into some of these open slots.Lowry and Masters also point out that the cuts have reduced the number of weather balloons launches. Balloon data are crucial for understanding the larger atmospheric patterns that determine where a hurricane will go—and who might need to evacuate or take other precautions.There is one positive note: “I was very pleased to see the Hurricane Hunters reinstated,” Trepanier says, referring to three of the meteorologists who fly specialized, equipment-laden planes directly into storms to gather data that significantly improve forecasts. “Though it isn't enough to offset the concern, it is a move in a good direction.”James Franklin, former chief of the NHC’s Hurricane Specialist Unit, says he is concerned about trainings for emergency managers that were canceled earlier this year Their absence could leave areas less prepared and less able to know what decisions to make based on forecasts. “When training has to be cut down…, it just makes those kinds of mistakes on the emergency management side more likely to occur,” he says.Finally, another big worry is simply the government’s ability to respond with help for victims when a storm hits. Masters’ biggest worry is that FEMA won't “be capable of managing a major disaster right now.”Reports by CNN and other news outlets have cited internal FEMA memos that report the loss of 30 percent of full-time staff. “I wrote the plan FEMA uses to respond to hurricanes,” says Lowry, a former employee of both the NHC and FEMA, “and it’s hard to imagine the agency will be able to meet its mission-critical functions this season with such depleted staffing and without a fully revised plan.”

html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" Together with Italy's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Italy's Ministry of Environment and Energy Security, CIHEAM Bari, the World Bank Group's Connect4Climate program, Brazil's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Bloomberg Philanthropies, CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and Höweler + Yoon have unveiled AquaPraça, a floating cultural plaza that will serve as the focal point of COP30 in Belém, Brazil. AquaPraça serves as a forum for international climate discussion by utilizing sensing technologies and Archimedes' principle to adjust to shifting sea levels and occupancy demands. It will make its transatlantic journey to the Amazonian city, where it will become a permanent cultural landmark, after making its premiere at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. The architecture of AquaPraça, which spans more than 400 square meters (4,000 square feet), physically carves out public space from the sea, establishing a tangible conversation between natural forces and the constructed environment. Using the concepts of buoyancy, displacement, and equilibrium, the submersible structure floats. AquaPraça continuously adjusts its holding and releasing capacity to keep a low freeboard with the surrounding water level. At eye level, the audience witnesses the dynamic variations of sea level rise, resulting in fresh insights into urban and ecological systems. AquaPraça's aim is to act as a civic catalyst. It can accommodate more than 150 people for cultural events, workshops, symposia, and exhibitions. It will make its sustainable journey to Belém after making its debut at the Biennale Architettura in September 2025. There, it will be a crucial component of the Italian Pavilion at COP 30, showcasing Italy's architectural and climate action thoughts to a worldwide audience. As a permanent legacy of the summit in the Amazon, the platform will continue to be a component of Belém's cultural infrastructure after the summit. A special international alliance makes AquaPraça possible. It was started in collaboration with the Ministry of Environment and Energy Security and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation in Italy. It is also supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the World Bank's Connect4Climate program, CIHEAM Bari, Brazil's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and others. The establishment emphasizes the goal of bringing disparate communities together and promoting ecological thought globally. There is a formal procedure in place for expressing interest."In 1979, Aldo Rossi launched the Teatro del Mondo at the first Biennale Architettura, positing that architecture could engage with the past," said Carlo Ratti, professor at MIT and the Politecnico di Milano, co-founder of CRA, and curator of the Biennale Architettura 2025.""Today, AquaPraça shows how architecture can engage with the future—by responding to climate and engaging with nature rather than resisting it,” Ratti added."AquaPraça lets visitors meet the sea at eye level," said Eric Höweler, co-founder of Höweler + Yoon and a Professor at Harvard University. "Its sloping surfaces and shifting levels embody a delicate equilibrium." "It’s a platform, both literal and figurative, for deepening our collective understanding and experience of sea level rise and the impacts of climate change on global cities and communities," added J. Meejin Yoon, co-founder of Höweler + Yoon and the Gale and Ira Drukier Dean at Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, “and seeking collective solutions."Image © Agnese BediniImage © Agnese BediniImage © Agnese BediniImage © Agnese BediniImage © Agnese BediniImage © Agnese BediniLeading cutting-edge steel construction firm Cimolai is now building AquaPraça in northeastern Italy. It will be exhibited on September 4, 2025, at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, before traveling to Brazil. A permanent floating monument in the Amazon, it will be anchored in Belém from November 10–21, 2025, as part of the Italy Pavilion at COP30. It is an architectural example of flexibility and communication in the face of climate change.Project factsProject name: AquaPraçaArchitects: CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati (Coordinator) and Höweler + Yoon ArchitectureTeam MembersCRA-Carlo Ratti Associati: Carlo Ratti (Principal), Andrea Cassi (Principal), Luca Bussolino (Strategy), Gizem Veral (Architect), Sonia Simone (Architect), Rodolfo Siccardi (Senior Architect), Gary di Silvio (Architect/3D Artist), Pasquale Milieri (Architect/3D Artist), Gianluca Zimbardi (Architect/3D Artist); Höweler + Yoon Architecture: J Meejin Yoon (Principal), Eric Höweler (Principal), Asli Baran Grace (Project manager), Shuang Chen (Designer), Selin Sahin (researcher), David Hamm (Technical Advisor) Supporters: Ministero degli Affari Esteri e della Cooperazione Internazionale; Ministero dell’Ambiente e della Sicurezza Energetica; Bloomberg Philanthropies; Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and PlanningIn collaboration with: Ciheam Bari, the World Bank Group’s Connect4Climate Program Technical Collaborators: Elettra Bordonaro, Argun Paragamyan, and Luciana Martinez, Light Follows Behaviour; Cristiano Bottino, Studio FM; Mykola Murashko, Davide Spina, Julio Ramirez, and Eren Sezer, Maestro Technologies; Corrado Curti, IngeMBP; Luca Infanti, Luca Vian, Simone Andreatta, Filippo Bellomo, and Mario Nattero, CIMOLAI; Roberto Prever and Antonio Vatta, NAOS; Ruben Pescara and Lodovica Bontempelli, NMLex; Domenico Perrotta, DP38.All images courtesy of CRA and Höweler + Yoon Architecture.All exhibition images © Agnese Bedini.> via Carlo Ratti Associati

May 30, 20256 min readInside the Lifesaving Power of Doppler Weather RadarDoppler radar is one of the most revolutionary and lifesaving tools of modern meteorology, which has experts worried about outages because of recent staffing cuts and conspiracy theoriesBy Andrea Thompson edited by Dean Visser Mfotophile/Getty ImagesOutside every National Weather Service (NWS) office around the U.S. stands what looks like an enormous white soccer ball, perched atop metal scaffolding several stories high. These somewhat plain spheres look as ho-hum as a town water tower, but tucked inside each is one of modern meteorology’s most revolutionary and lifesaving tools: Doppler radar.The national network of 160 high-resolution radars, installed in 1988 and updated in 2012, sends out microwave pulses that bounce off raindrops or other precipitation to help forecasters see what is falling and how much—providing crucial early information about events ranging from flash floods to blizzards. And the network is especially irreplaceable when it comes to spotting tornadoes; it has substantially lengthened warning times and reduced deaths. Doppler radar has “really revolutionized how we’ve been able to issue warnings,” says Ryan Hanrahan, chief meteorologist of the NBC Connecticut StormTracker team.But now meteorologists and emergency managers are increasingly worried about what might happen if any of these radars go offline, whether because of cuts to the NWS made by the Trump administration or threats from groups that espouse conspiracy theories about the radars being used to control the weather. “Losing radar capabilities would “take us back in time by four decades,” says Jana Houser, a tornado researcher at the Ohio State University. If they go down, “there’s no way we’re going to be effective at storm warnings.”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.How Doppler radars workThe NWS installations form a network called the Next Generation Weather Radar, or NEXRAD. Inside each giant white sphere is a device that looks like a larger version of a home satellite TV dish, with a transmitter that emits pulses in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Those pulses bounce off raindrops, snowflakes, hailstones—what meteorologists collectively call hydrometeors—and back to the dish antenna. (The pulses also sometimes bounce off bats, birds and even moving trains, which yield characteristic radar patterns that experts can usually identify.)Amanda MontañezThe power of the returning signals lets experts create a picture of size, shape and intensity of any precipitation—and this is what you see on a phone app’s radar map or a TV broadcast.But NEXRAD can do much, much more than show how hard it’s raining. Within its sphere, each unit rotates and scans up and down through the sky, helping forecasters see what is happening at multiple levels of a storm system. These vertical profiles can show, for example, whether a tornado is forming or a storm is creating a downburst—a rapid downward blast of wind. “Doppler radar basically allows us to see in the clouds,” Hanrahan says.And then there’s the “Doppler” part itself. The name refers to a phenomenon that’s familiar to many, thanks to the electromagnetic waves’ acoustic counterpart. We’ve all experienced this, often most obviously when we hear an emergency vehicle siren pass nearby: the pitch increases as the car gets closer and decreases as it moves away. Similarly, the returning radar bounce from a rain droplet or piece of tornadic debris that is moving toward the emitter will have a shorter wavelength than the pulse that was sent out, and the signal from an object moving away from the radar will have a longer wavelength. This allows the radar to efficiently distinguish the tight circulation of a tornado.These two images show how dual-polarization helps NWS forecasters detect a tornado that is producing damage. The left image shows how the Doppler radar can detect rotation. Between the two yellow arrows, the red color indicates outbound wind, while the green color indicate inbound wind, relative to the location of the radar. The right image shows how dual-polarization information helps detect debris picked up by the tornado.NOAAThe nation’s radar system was upgraded in 2012 to include what is called dual polarization. This means the signal has both vertically and horizontally oriented wavelengths, providing information about precipitation in more than one dimension. “A drizzle droplet is almost perfectly spherical, so it returns the same amount of power in the horizontal and in the vertical,” Hanrahan says, whereas giant drops look almost like “hamburger buns” and so send back more power in the horizontal than the vertical.Are Doppler radars dangerous? Can they affect the weather?Doppler radars do not pose any danger to people, wildlife or structures—and they cannot affect the weather.Along the electromagnetic spectrum, it is the portions with shorter wavelengths such as gamma rays and ultraviolet radiation that can readily damage the human body—because their wavelengths are the right size to interact with and damage DNA or our cells. Doppler radars emit pulses in wavelengths about the size of a baseball.Amanda MontañezBeing hit by extremely concentrated microwave radiation could be harmful; this is why microwave ovens have mesh screens that keep the rays from escaping. Similarly, you wouldn’t want to stand directly in front of a radar microwave beam. Military radar technicians found this out years ago when working on radars under operation, University of California, Los Angeles, climate scientist Daniel Swain said during one of his regular YouTube talks. They “had experiences like the candy bar in their pocket instantly melting and then feeling their skin getting really hot,” he said.Similar to how a microwave oven works, when the microwave signal from a radar hits a hydrometeor, the water molecules vibrate and so generate heat because of friction and reradiate some of the received energy, says Cynthia Fay, who serves as a focal point for the National Weather Service’s Radar Operations Center. But “microwave radiation is really not very powerful, and the whole point is that if you stand more than a couple dozen feet away from the dome it's not even really going to affect your body, let alone the global atmosphere,” Swain adds.At the radar’s antenna, the average power is about 23.5 megawatts (MW) of energy, Fay says. (A weak or moderate thunderstorm may generate about 18 MW in about an hour.) But the energy from the radar signal dissipates very rapidly with distance: at just one kilometer from the radar, the power is 0.0000019 MW, and at the radar’s maximum range of 460 kilometers, it is 8.8 x 10–12 MW, Fay says. “Once you’re miles away, it’s just really not a dangerous amount” of energy, Swain said in his video.A supercell thunderstorm that produced an F4 tornado near Meriden, KS, in May 1960, as seen from the WSR-3 radar in Topeka (left). A supercell thunderstorm that produced an EF5 tornado in Moore, OK, in May 2013, as seen from a modern Doppler weather radar near Oklahoma City (right).NOAAAnd Doppler radars spend most of their time listening for returns. According to the NWS, for every hour of operation, a radar may spend as little as seven seconds sending out pulses.The idea that Doppler radar can control or affect the weather is “a long-standing conspiracy [theory] that has existed really for decades but has kind of accelerated in recent years,” Swain said in his video. It has resurfaced recently with threats to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration radar system from an antigovernment militia group, as first reported by CNN. The Washington Post reported that the group’s founder said that its members were carrying out “attack simulations” on sites in order to later destroy the radars,—which the group believes are “weather weapons,” according to an internal NOAA e-mail. NOAA has advised radar technicians at the NWS’s offices to exercise caution and work in teams when going out to service radars—and to notify local law enforcement of any suspicious activity.“NOAA is aware of recent threats against NEXRAD weather radar sites and is working with local and other authorities in monitoring the situation closely,” wrote a NWS spokesperson in response to a request for comment from Scientific American.What happens if weather radars go offline?NOAA’s radars have been on duty for 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year since 1988 (with brief downtimes for maintenance and upgrades). “It’s amazing what workhorses these radars have been,” Hanrahan says.The image on the left shows a reflectivity radar image of a supercell thunderstorm that produced several tornadoes on April 19, 2023, near Oklahoma City, OK. The hook shape present often indicates rotation within the storm. The image on the right show velocity information that corresponds to the reflectivity image. Very strong inbound winds (green colors) are next to very strong outbound winds (bright red/yellow colors). This very strong inbound/outbound “couplet” indicates the very strong rotation of a tornado.NOAABut they do require that periodic maintenance because of all the large moving parts needed to operate them. And with Trump administration cuts to NOAA staffing and freezes on some spending, “we just got rid of a lot of the radar maintenance technicians, and we got rid of the budget to repair a lot of these sites,” Swain said in his video. “Most of these are functioning fine right now. The question is: What happens once they go down, once they need a repair?”It is this outage possibility that most worries weather experts, particularly if the breakdowns occur during any kind of severe weather. “Radars are key instruments in issuing tornado warnings,” the Ohio State University’s Houser says. “If a radar goes down, we’re basically down as to what the larger picture is.”And for much of the country—particularly in the West—there is little to no overlap in the areas that each radar covers, meaning other sites would not be able to step in if a neighboring radar is out. Hanrahan says the information provided by the radars is irreplaceable, and the 2012 upgrades mean “we don’t even need to have eyes on a tornado now to know that it’s happening. It’s something that I think we take for granted now.”

In this edition of SLICED, the 3D Printing Industry news digest, we compile the latest developments across the additive manufacturing (AM) sector, including equipment-sharing partnerships, market expansions in Europe and Mexico, and new standards working groups. Today’s edition features reseller appointments, research consortium launches, large-format platform integrations, dental appliance automation, and calls for conference speakers. Read on for updates from AM 4 AM, Meltio, One Click Metal, Axtra3D, Nikon SLM Solutions, Formnext 2025, and more. Emerging partnerships from AM 4 AM, and Meltio Kicking off with partnerships, Luxembourg’s materials R&D firm AM 4 AM has partnered with Stockholm aluminum powder supplier Gränges Powder Metallurgy (GPM), relocating the Swedish supplier’s materials characterization park to AM 4 AM’s facility. Under the agreement, AM 4 AM will operate GPM’s particle size analyzers, thermal testers, and mechanical-testing rigs to accelerate development cycles and strengthen quality control across both companies’ product lines. AM 4 AM Co-founder Maxime Delmée noted that access to GPM’s instrumentation will enable faster iteration and more data-driven decision-making. Highlighting benefits, GPM Managing Director Peter Vikner explained that relocating the equipment to AM 4 AM addressed both firms’ R&D requirements while leveraging AM 4 AM’s operational capabilities. Moving on, Spanish wire-laser metal 3D printer manufacturer Meltio has announced partnerships with Monterrey-based service provider Alar, and academic institution  Tecnológico de Monterrey.With this move, Alar will integrate the award-winning M600 industrial wire-laser 3D printer into its production lines, while the institution has acquired a Meltio M450 for academic training and industry collaboration.  Additionally, the Spanish manufacturer has also announced additive manufacturing integrator Sitres Latam as its official distributor. Meltio’s wire-feed deposition process, which supports stainless steel, titanium, Inconel, and copper, offers mechanical properties on par with conventionally manufactured parts while reducing waste and emissions. “This alliance with Sitres, Alar, and Tecnológico de Monterrey is fundamental to promoting real and functional metal 3D printing solutions in Mexico,” said Alar CEO Andrea Alarcón. Meltio partners with Alar, SITRES, and Tecnológico de Monterrey to expand metal 3D printing capabilities in Mexico. Photo via Meltio. One Click Metal and Axtra3D Appoint New Resellers in Iberia Turning to resellers and distribution, German metal 3D printing systems developer One Click Metal has expanded into Portugal through a collaboration with Lisbon’s industrial additive manufacturing services provider 3D Ever. The agreement gives local businesses direct access to One Click Metal’s cartridge-based powder handling systems and Lab Module for rapid material changes, alongside region-specific training and post-installation support. Founded in 2017, 3D Ever operates a multi-technology showroom—covering covering stereolithography (SLA), selective laser sintering (SLS), fused filament fabrication (FFF), and direct metal laser sintering (DMLS)—and hosts open-house events and technical workshops to integrate 3D printing into customer workflows. “Portugal is a dynamic market for additive manufacturing,” said One Click Metal’s Global Sales Director Martin Heller, “and 3D Ever’s deep industry knowledge makes them the ideal partner.” Meanwhile, Milan-based photopolymer 3D printer innovator Axtra3D has named Spain and Portugal’s Maquinser S.A. as its professional reseller for Hi-Speed SLA systems. Maquinser will showcase the Lumia X1 platform combining Hybrid PhotoSynthesis and TruLayer technologies at three major industry events through June: the International Machine-Tool Fair (EMAF) in Porto, Portugal; the Subcontratación Industrial & Addit3D expo in Bilbao, Spain; and the MindTECH manufacturing technology fair in Porto. “Axtra3D’s Hi-Speed SLA strikes the balance between surface quality, precision, and material flexibility,” said Maquinser CEO Christian Postigo. Andreas Tulaj, SVP Europe Sales at Axtra3D, added that Maquinser’s regional presence ensures localized support, rapid deployment, and customer-specific solutions across automotive, aerospace, energy, and mold-making sectors. Axtra3D appoints Maquinser S.A. as official reseller for Spain and Portugal. Image via Maquinser. 3MF Consortium and Ecosistema GO! Launch AM Research Initiatives On the research corner, the Microsoft-backed standards organization 3MF Consortium has formed a 6-Axis Toolpath Working Group to define open data structures for robotic and multi-axis AM workflows. The effort invites professionals using industrial robots and advanced CNC platforms to develop a 3MF extension that encodes non-planar toolpath data, enabling seamless interoperability across design, toolpath generation, and machine control software. Originally created to surpass STL and OBJ for complex manufacturing data, the 3MF format already supports units, materials, lattices, slice data, and metadata. This new working group will build on modules like the Beam Lattice Extension to integrate multi-axis motion paths, with open-source reference implementations available via the consortium’s GitHub repository. Elsewhere in Europe, Spain’s Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI)-backed Ecosistema GO! Project (coordinated by Leitat with partners Aitiip, Idonial, Aimen, Addimat, HP, and Meltio) has launched to map national AM capabilities and drive industrial adoption. The initiative will publish a structured “map of capabilities” covering infrastructure, specialization areas, and R&D projects, while hosting workshops in automotive, energy, and aerospace to share success stories and define adoption strategies. “Ecosistema GO! aligns capabilities, generates synergies, and accelerates AM’s real incorporation into Spanish industry,” said IAM3DHUB General Secretary David Adrover. Open for new members through December 2025, the consortium aims to serve as Spain’s reference network for additive manufacturing. The 3MF Consortium invites participants to join its newly launched 6-Axis Toolpath Working Group. Image via 3MF Consortium. Dental Production Boosted by DMP Flex 200 Integration at DynaFlex In dental applications, U.S. orthodontic manufacturer DynaFlex has upgraded its digital workflow with the DMP Flex 200 metal 3D printer from 3D Systems, supplied and installed by their official supplier Nota3D. Featuring a 500 W laser and enlarged build platform, the system has increased DynaFlex’s production speeds by up to 80% for small custom components such as fixed appliances and bands. Matt Malabey, DynaFlex’s Director of Operations, noted that integrated software for orientation, nesting, and support generation further streamlines workflow: “Automation tools and improved onboarding allow us to scale smarter and faster.” The Flex 200 supports LaserForm CoCr, Stainless Steel 316 L, and Ti Gr23 alloys, aligning material properties with clinical performance standards. Prusa Research Opens EasyPrint to All Mobile Users Shifting to software, Czech desktop 3D printer maker Prusa Research has launched EasyPrint, a cloud-powered slicer embedded in the official PRUSA mobile app and accessible via Printables.com. It lets users prepare and send G-code directly from smartphones and tablets, automatically detecting compatible printers and applying the correct print profiles. An interactive 3D preview allows models to be moved, rotated, scaled and batch-arranged on virtual beds, while basic settings such as copy count and object size are consolidated into a one-click workflow. EasyPrint began as an invite-only beta used to collect performance metrics and optimize scalability before opening to everyone once preliminary tests proved the service smooth, according to Ondřej Drebota, Prusa’s Head of Country Development Managers & Partnerships Manager. All G-code generation runs in the cloud, enabling even low-powered devices to handle complex workflows, and users can download prepared files for offline printing. Prusa plans to extend EasyPrint compatibility to non-Prusa printers in future updates, broadening its reach across the 3D printing community. Nikon SLM Solutions and DynaFlex Upgrade Metal AM Workflow On 3D platform news, German metal 3D printer manufacturer Nikon SLM Solutions has integrated Freiburg’s automated depowdering specialist Solukon’s SFM-AT1500-S system at its Long Beach, California AM Technology Center. Paired to German manufacturer’s NXG 600E large-format 3D printer, the SPR-Pathfinder-driven unit handles parts up to 1,500 mm tall and 2,100 kg total weight, automating powder removal for industrial-scale metal components. Nikon SLM Solutions’ COO Gerhard Bierleutgeb stressed the importance of closely linking printing and automated depowdering for optimal production flow. Solukon’s CTO Andreas Hartmann added that the SFM-AT1500-S was custom-engineered to meet Nikon’s requirements for high-mass, complex geometries while maintaining a compact installation footprint. Andreas Hartmann, CEO/CTO of Solukon, and Joshua Forster, Production Manager at Nikon SLM Solutions. Photo via Solukon. Formnext 2025 Announces Call for Speakers Looking ahead to events, Germany’s trade-fair organizer Mesago Messe Frankfurt GmbH has opened its call for speakers for the upcoming Formnext 2025, to be held November 18-21 in Frankfurt. Submissions for the Industry Stage (covering sustainability, AI, standards, and talent) and the Application Stage (focusing on sectors like automotive, aerospace, and medical) remain open through June. Mesago’s Vice President Christoph Stüker explained that the multistage program is central to Formnext’s mission of disseminating AM knowledge and driving new applications. Additionally, Vice President Sascha F. Wenzler noted that the speaking slots offer an ideal platform for experts to share insights, build their profiles, and forge valuable industry connections. Adding to that, materials supplier participation at Formnext Asia Shenzhen 2025 has jumped 68% year-on-year, with booth bookings already at 70% capacity for the 26–28 August event at Shenzhen World Exhibition & Convention Center. The expanded materials segment, now covering advanced polymers, composites and specialised alloys, will feature over 30 exhibitors in metal powders (including Acc Material, JSJW New Material and Tiangong Technology), ceramics (Wuhan 3DCERAM, Nanoe France) and polymers (eSUN, SUNLU).  Louis Leung, Deputy General Manager of Guangzhou Guangya Messe Frankfurt, highlighted China’s rapid ascent as an AM leader, noting that national policy support and investment have fuelled double-digit growth in the domestic materials sector. Fringe activities include the 3D Print Farm Conference on filament supply chains and an expanded Laser & AM Forum, while related events, Formnext Asia Forum Tokyo (25-6 September) and Formnext Frankfurt round out the global network. Exhibitor registrations remain open online. A panel discussion recorded live at the Industry Stage during Formnext 2024. Photo via Formnext/Mesago Messe Frankfurt GmbH. Take the 3DPI Reader Survey — shape the future of AM reporting in under 5 minutes. Ready to discover who won the 20243D Printing Industry Awards? Subscribe to the 3D Printing Industry newsletter to stay updated with the latest news and insights. Featured image shows a panel discussion recorded live at the Industry Stage during Formnext 2024. Photo via Formnext/Mesago Messe Frankfurt GmbH. Anyer Tenorio Lara Anyer Tenorio Lara is an emerging tech journalist passionate about uncovering the latest advances in technology and innovation. With a sharp eye for detail and a talent for storytelling, Anyer has quickly made a name for himself in the tech community. Anyer's articles aim to make complex subjects accessible and engaging for a broad audience. In addition to his writing, Anyer enjoys participating in industry events and discussions, eager to learn and share knowledge in the dynamic world of technology.