View of the south façade before construction of a new residential project that now conceals Le Christin from Boulevard René Lévesque. PROJECT Le Christin, Montreal, Quebec ARCHITECT Atelier Big City PHOTOS James Brittain   PROJECT Les Studios du PAS, Montreal, Quebec ARCHITECT L. McComber in collaboration with Inform  PHOTOS Ulysse Lemerise   Nighttime, April 15, 2025. A thousand volunteers are gathering in Montreal, part of a province-wide effort to try and put numbers on a growing phenomenon in cities like Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and many others. The volunteers are getting ready to walk around targeted areas in downtown Montreal and around certain subway stations. Temporary shelters are also visited. First conducted in the spring of 2018, this survey showed that 3,149 people were in a vulnerable situation at the time. Four years later, a similar effort revealed that Montreal’s homeless population had risen to 4,690 people—and that there were some 10,000 people experiencing homelessness in the whole of the province. The 2025 numbers are expected to be significantly higher. For the organizers, this one-night snapshot of the situation is “neither perfect nor complete.” However, for nonprofit organizations and governmental bodies eager to prevent a vulnerable population from ending up on the streets, the informal census does provide highly valuable information.  Two recent initiatives—very different from one another—offer inspiring answers. The most recent one, Le Christin, was designed by Atelier Big City (led by architects Anne Cormier, Randy Cohen, and Howard Davies) and inaugurated in 2024. Studios du PAS, on the other hand, was designed by Montreal firm L. McComber, and welcomed its first tenants in 2022. Both projects involved long-standing charities: the 148-year-old Accueil Bonneau, in the case of Le Christin, and the 136-year-old Mission Old Brewery for Studios du PAS. Le Christin was spearheaded, and mostly financed, by the Société d’habitation et de développement de Montréal (SHDM), a non-profit, para-municipal corporation created in 1988. Studios du PAS was first selected by the City of Montreal to be built thanks to the Rapid Housing Initiative (RHI) program run by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). Le Christin also received a financial contribution from the CMHC towards the end of the process. Boldly coloured blind walls signal the presence of Le Christin in the center of a densely occupied city block, with entrance to the left along Sanguinet Stree. Le Christin Although sited in a very central location, near the buzzing St. Catherine and St. Denis streets, Le Christin is hard to find. And even when one suddenly spots two seven-storey-high walls, coloured lemon-zest yellow and mango orange, it’s difficult to figure out what they are about. A stroll along the tiny Christin Street finally reveals the front façade of this new facility, now home to some of Montreal’s most vulnerable citizens.  View of Le Christin’s modulated front façade. Galvanized steel panels at ground level add a soft touch while protecting the building from potential damage caused by snow plows. Le Christin is unique for a number of reasons. First among them is its highly unusual location—at the centre of a dense city block otherwise occupied by university buildings, office towers, and condo blocks. Until a few years ago, the site was home to the four-storey Appartements Le Riga. The Art Deco-style building had been built in 1914 by developer-architect Joseph-Arthur Godin, who was a pioneer in his own right: he was one of the first in Montreal to experiment with reinforced concrete structures, a novelty in the city at the time. A century later, Le Riga, by then the property of SHDM, was in serious need of repair. Plans had already been drafted for a complete renovation of the building when a thorough investigation revealed major structural problems. Tenants had to leave on short notice and were temporarily relocated; the building was eventually demolished in 2019. By that time, Atelier Big City had been mandated to design a contemporary building that would replace Le Riga and provide a “place of one’s own” to close to 150 tenants, formerly homeless or at risk of becoming so.    Le Christin – Site Plan and Ground Floor Plan The entire operation sparked controversy, particularly as Le Christin started to rise, showing no sign of nostalgia. The architects’ daring approach was difficult to fathom—particularly for those who believe social housing should keep a low profile.  The program, originally meant for a clientele of single men, gradually evolved to include women. In order to reflect societal trends, the architects were asked to design 24 slightly larger units located in the building’s east wing, separated from the rest of the units by secured doors. Thus, Le Christin is able to accommodate homeless couples or close friends, as well as students and immigrants in need. A tenants-only courtyard is inserted in the south façade. In order to provide the maximum number of units requested by SHDM, each of the 90 studios was reduced to 230 square feet—an adjustment from Atelier Big City’s initial, slightly more generous plans. In a clever move, an L-shaped kitchen hugs the corner of each unit, pushing out against the exterior wall. As a result, the window openings recede from the façade, creating a sense of intimacy for the tenants, who enjoy contact with the exterior through large windows protected by quiet Juliet balconies. Far from damaging the initial design, the added constraint of tightened units allowed the architects to modulate the building’s façades, creating an even stronger statement. On the unit levels, corridors include large openings along the south façade. Each floor is colour-coded to enliven the space; overhead, perforated metal plates conceal the mechanical systems. An extra floor was gained thanks to the decision to expose the various plumbing, electrical, and ventilation systems. Well-lit meeting rooms and common areas are found near Le Christin’s front entrance, along with offices for personnel, who are present on the premises 24 hours a day. Apart from a small terrace above the entrance, the main exterior space is a yard which literally cuts into the building’s back façade. This has a huge impact on the interiors at all levels: corridors are generously lit with sunlight, a concept market developers would be well advised to imitate. The adjacent exit stairs are also notable, with their careful detailing and the presence of glazed openings.  The fire stairs, which open onto the exterior yard at ground level, feature glazing that allows for ample natural light. Le Christin has achieved the lofty goal articulated by SHDM’s former director, architect Nancy Schoiry: “With this project, we wanted to innovate and demonstrate that it was possible to provide quality housing for those at risk of homelessness.” The low-slung Studios du PAS aligns with neighbourhood two-storey buildings. Studios du PAS In sharp contrast with Le Christin’s surroundings, the impression one gets approaching Studios du PAS, 14 kilometres east of downtown Montreal, is that of a small town. In this mostly low-scale neighbourhood, L. McComber architects adopted a respectful, subdued approach—blending in, rather than standing out.  The project uses a pared-down palette of terracotta tile, wood, and galvanized steel. The footbridge links the upper level to shared exterior spaces. The financing for this small building, planned for individuals aged 55 or older experiencing or at risk of homelessness, was tied to a highly demanding schedule. The project had to be designed, built, and occupied within 18 months: an “almost impossible” challenge, according to principal architect Laurent McComber. From the very start, prefabrication was favoured over more traditional construction methods. And even though substantial work had to be done on-site—including the installation of the roof, electrical and mechanical systems, as well as exterior and interior finishes—the partially prefabricated components did contribute to keeping costs under control and meeting the 18-month design-to-delivery deadline. Les Studios du PAS The building was divided into 20 identical modules, each fourteen feet wide—the maximum width allowable on the road. Half the modules were installed at ground level. One of these, positioned nearest the street entrance, serves as a community room directly connected to a small office for the use of a social worker, allowing staff to follow up regularly with tenants. Flooded with natural light, the double-height lobby provides a friendly and inclusive welcome. The ground level studios were designed so they could be adapted to accommodate accessibility needs. Some of the ground floor units were adapted to meet the needs of those with a physical disability; the other units were designed to be easily adaptable if needed. All studio apartments, slightly under 300 square feet, include a full bathroom, a minimal kitchen, and sizeable storage space hidden behind cabinet doors. Most of the apartments include a small exterior alcove, which provides an intimate outdoor space while creating a subtle rhythm along the front façade. Inside the studio units, storage cupboards for clothes and belongings were added as an extension of the kitchen wall. Conscious of the tradition of brick residential buildings in Montreal, yet wanting to explore alternate materials, the architects selected an earth-toned terracotta tile from Germany. The 299mm x 1500mm tiles are clipped to the façade, allowing for faster installation and easier maintenance. All units enjoy triple-glazed windows and particularly well insulated walls. A high-performance heat pump was installed to lower energy demand—and costs—for heating and cooling needs. Wood siding was used to soften the upper-level balconies, which provide protected outdoor spaces for residents.   Pride and Dignity Le Christin and Les Studios du PAS have little in common—except, of course, their program. Architecturally speaking, each represents an interesting solution to the problem at hand. While Le Christin is a high-spirited, flamboyant statement, Studios du PAS is to be praised for its respectful attitude, and for the architects’ relentless search for interesting alternatives to traditional construction norms. Atelier Big City is one of few firms in Canada that has the guts—and the talent—to play with bold colours. Decades of experimentation (not just with public buildings, but also within their own homes), led up to Le Christin, which is perhaps their strongest building to date. Their judicious choices of colour, brick type, and materials transmit a message of pride and dignity. Both projects demonstrate enormous respect and generosity to their residents: they provide architecture that treats them not as an underclass, but as regular people, who need the stability of dignified housing to start rebuilding their lives. Odile Hénault is a contributing editor to Canadian Architect.   Le Christin CLIENT Société d’habitation et de développement de Montréal (SHDM) | ARCHITECT TEAM Anne Cormier, Randy Cohen, Howard Davies, Fannie Yockell, Gabriel Tessier, Sébastien St-Laurent, Lisa Vo | STRUCTURAL DPHV | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL BPA | CIVIL Genexco | LIGHTING CS Design | AREA 4,115 m2 | Construction BUDGET $18.9 M | COMPLETION November 2023   Les Studios du PAS  CLIENT PAS de la rue | ARCHITECT TEAM L. McComber—Laurent McComber, Olivier Lord, Jérôme Lemieux, Josianne Ouellet-Daudelin, Laurent McComber. Inform—David Grenier, Élisabeth Provost, Amélie Tremblay, David Grenier | PROJECT MANAGEMENT Groupe CDH | STRUCTURAL Douglas Consultants | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL Martin Roy & associés | CIVIL Gravitaire | CONTRACTOR Gestion Étoc | AREA 1,035 m2 | BUDGET $3.4 M | COMPLETION September 2022 As appeared in the June 2025 issue of Canadian Architect magazine The post A Place to Call Home: Le Christin and Les Studios du PAS, Montreal, Quebec appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Artificial intelligence is a deep and convoluted world. The scientists who work in this field often rely on jargon and lingo to explain what they’re working on. As a result, we frequently have to use those technical terms in our coverage of the artificial intelligence industry. That’s why we thought it would be helpful to put together a glossary with definitions of some of the most important words and phrases that we use in our articles. We will regularly update this glossary to add new entries as researchers continually uncover novel methods to push the frontier of artificial intelligence while identifying emerging safety risks. AGI Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is a nebulous term. But it generally refers to AI that’s more capable than the average human at many, if not most, tasks. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently described AGI as the “equivalent of a median human that you could hire as a co-worker.” Meanwhile, OpenAI’s charter defines AGI as “highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work.” Google DeepMind’s understanding differs slightly from these two definitions; the lab views AGI as “AI that’s at least as capable as humans at most cognitive tasks.” Confused? Not to worry — so are experts at the forefront of AI research. AI agent An AI agent refers to a tool that uses AI technologies to perform a series of tasks on your behalf — beyond what a more basic AI chatbot could do — such as filing expenses, booking tickets or a table at a restaurant, or even writing and maintaining code. However, as we’ve explained before, there are lots of moving pieces in this emergent space, so “AI agent” might mean different things to different people. Infrastructure is also still being built out to deliver on its envisaged capabilities. But the basic concept implies an autonomous system that may draw on multiple AI systems to carry out multistep tasks. Chain of thought Given a simple question, a human brain can answer without even thinking too much about it — things like “which animal is taller, a giraffe or a cat?” But in many cases, you often need a pen and paper to come up with the right answer because there are intermediary steps. For instance, if a farmer has chickens and cows, and together they have 40 heads and 120 legs, you might need to write down a simple equation to come up with the answer (20 chickens and 20 cows). In an AI context, chain-of-thought reasoning for large language models means breaking down a problem into smaller, intermediate steps to improve the quality of the end result. It usually takes longer to get an answer, but the answer is more likely to be correct, especially in a logic or coding context. Reasoning models are developed from traditional large language models and optimized for chain-of-thought thinking thanks to reinforcement learning. (See: Large language model) Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW Deep learning A subset of self-improving machine learning in which AI algorithms are designed with a multi-layered, artificial neural network (ANN) structure. This allows them to make more complex correlations compared to simpler machine learning-based systems, such as linear models or decision trees. The structure of deep learning algorithms draws inspiration from the interconnected pathways of neurons in the human brain. Deep learning AI models are able to identify important characteristics in data themselves, rather than requiring human engineers to define these features. The structure also supports algorithms that can learn from errors and, through a process of repetition and adjustment, improve their own outputs. However, deep learning systems require a lot of data points to yield good results (millions or more). They also typically take longer to train compared to simpler machine learning algorithms — so development costs tend to be higher. (See: Neural network) Diffusion Diffusion is the tech at the heart of many art-, music-, and text-generating AI models. Inspired by physics, diffusion systems slowly “destroy” the structure of data — e.g. photos, songs, and so on — by adding noise until there’s nothing left. In physics, diffusion is spontaneous and irreversible — sugar diffused in coffee can’t be restored to cube form. But diffusion systems in AI aim to learn a sort of “reverse diffusion” process to restore the destroyed data, gaining the ability to recover the data from noise. Distillation Distillation is a technique used to extract knowledge from a large AI model with a ‘teacher-student’ model. Developers send requests to a teacher model and record the outputs. Answers are sometimes compared with a dataset to see how accurate they are. These outputs are then used to train the student model, which is trained to approximate the teacher’s behavior. Distillation can be used to create a smaller, more efficient model based on a larger model with a minimal distillation loss. This is likely how OpenAI developed GPT-4 Turbo, a faster version of GPT-4. While all AI companies use distillation internally, it may have also been used by some AI companies to catch up with frontier models. Distillation from a competitor usually violates the terms of service of AI API and chat assistants. Fine-tuning This refers to the further training of an AI model to optimize performance for a more specific task or area than was previously a focal point of its training — typically by feeding in new, specialized (i.e., task-oriented) data.  Many AI startups are taking large language models as a starting point to build a commercial product but are vying to amp up utility for a target sector or task by supplementing earlier training cycles with fine-tuning based on their own domain-specific knowledge and expertise. (See: Large language model [LLM]) GAN A GAN, or Generative Adversarial Network, is a type of machine learning framework that underpins some important developments in generative AI when it comes to producing realistic data – including (but not only) deepfake tools. GANs involve the use of a pair of neural networks, one of which draws on its training data to generate an output that is passed to the other model to evaluate. This second, discriminator model thus plays the role of a classifier on the generator’s output – enabling it to improve over time.  The GAN structure is set up as a competition (hence “adversarial”) – with the two models essentially programmed to try to outdo each other: the generator is trying to get its output past the discriminator, while the discriminator is working to spot artificially generated data. This structured contest can optimize AI outputs to be more realistic without the need for additional human intervention. Though GANs work best for narrower applications (such as producing realistic photos or videos), rather than general purpose AI. Hallucination Hallucination is the AI industry’s preferred term for AI models making stuff up – literally generating information that is incorrect. Obviously, it’s a huge problem for AI quality.  Hallucinations produce GenAI outputs that can be misleading and could even lead to real-life risks — with potentially dangerous consequences (think of a health query that returns harmful medical advice). This is why most GenAI tools’ small print now warns users to verify AI-generated answers, even though such disclaimers are usually far less prominent than the information the tools dispense at the touch of a button. The problem of AIs fabricating information is thought to arise as a consequence of gaps in training data. For general purpose GenAI especially — also sometimes known as foundation models — this looks difficult to resolve. There is simply not enough data in existence to train AI models to comprehensively resolve all the questions we could possibly ask. TL;DR: we haven’t invented God (yet).  Hallucinations are contributing to a push towards increasingly specialized and/or vertical AI models — i.e. domain-specific AIs that require narrower expertise – as a way to reduce the likelihood of knowledge gaps and shrink disinformation risks. Inference Inference is the process of running an AI model. It’s setting a model loose to make predictions or draw conclusions from previously-seen data. To be clear, inference can’t happen without training; a model must learn patterns in a set of data before it can effectively extrapolate from this training data. Many types of hardware can perform inference, ranging from smartphone processors to beefy GPUs to custom-designed AI accelerators. But not all of them can run models equally well. Very large models would take ages to make predictions on, say, a laptop versus a cloud server with high-end AI chips. [See: Training] Large language model (LLM) Large language models, or LLMs, are the AI models used by popular AI assistants, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Google’s Gemini, Meta’s AI Llama, Microsoft Copilot, or Mistral’s Le Chat. When you chat with an AI assistant, you interact with a large language model that processes your request directly or with the help of different available tools, such as web browsing or code interpreters. AI assistants and LLMs can have different names. For instance, GPT is OpenAI’s large language model and ChatGPT is the AI assistant product. LLMs are deep neural networks made of billions of numerical parameters (or weights, see below) that learn the relationships between words and phrases and create a representation of language, a sort of multidimensional map of words. These models are created from encoding the patterns they find in billions of books, articles, and transcripts. When you prompt an LLM, the model generates the most likely pattern that fits the prompt. It then evaluates the most probable next word after the last one based on what was said before. Repeat, repeat, and repeat. (See: Neural network) Neural network A neural network refers to the multi-layered algorithmic structure that underpins deep learning — and, more broadly, the whole boom in generative AI tools following the emergence of large language models.  Although the idea of taking inspiration from the densely interconnected pathways of the human brain as a design structure for data processing algorithms dates all the way back to the 1940s, it was the much more recent rise of graphical processing hardware (GPUs) — via the video game industry — that really unlocked the power of this theory. These chips proved well suited to training algorithms with many more layers than was possible in earlier epochs — enabling neural network-based AI systems to achieve far better performance across many domains, including voice recognition, autonomous navigation, and drug discovery. (See: Large language model [LLM]) Training Developing machine learning AIs involves a process known as training. In simple terms, this refers to data being fed in in order that the model can learn from patterns and generate useful outputs. Things can get a bit philosophical at this point in the AI stack — since, pre-training, the mathematical structure that’s used as the starting point for developing a learning system is just a bunch of layers and random numbers. It’s only through training that the AI model really takes shape. Essentially, it’s the process of the system responding to characteristics in the data that enables it to adapt outputs towards a sought-for goal — whether that’s identifying images of cats or producing a haiku on demand. It’s important to note that not all AI requires training. Rules-based AIs that are programmed to follow manually predefined instructions — for example, such as linear chatbots — don’t need to undergo training. However, such AI systems are likely to be more constrained than (well-trained) self-learning systems. Still, training can be expensive because it requires lots of inputs — and, typically, the volumes of inputs required for such models have been trending upwards. Hybrid approaches can sometimes be used to shortcut model development and help manage costs. Such as doing data-driven fine-tuning of a rules-based AI — meaning development requires less data, compute, energy, and algorithmic complexity than if the developer had started building from scratch. [See: Inference] Transfer learning A technique where a previously trained AI model is used as the starting point for developing a new model for a different but typically related task – allowing knowledge gained in previous training cycles to be reapplied.  Transfer learning can drive efficiency savings by shortcutting model development. It can also be useful when data for the task that the model is being developed for is somewhat limited. But it’s important to note that the approach has limitations. Models that rely on transfer learning to gain generalized capabilities will likely require training on additional data in order to perform well in their domain of focus (See: Fine tuning) Weights Weights are core to AI training, as they determine how much importance (or weight) is given to different features (or input variables) in the data used for training the system — thereby shaping the AI model’s output.  Put another way, weights are numerical parameters that define what’s most salient in a dataset for the given training task. They achieve their function by applying multiplication to inputs. Model training typically begins with weights that are randomly assigned, but as the process unfolds, the weights adjust as the model seeks to arrive at an output that more closely matches the target. For example, an AI model for predicting housing prices that’s trained on historical real estate data for a target location could include weights for features such as the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, whether a property is detached or semi-detached, whether it has parking, a garage, and so on.  Ultimately, the weights the model attaches to each of these inputs reflect how much they influence the value of a property, based on the given dataset. Topics

Laurie Baker never advocated an imitation of his architecture. He instead intended that his design principles would generate a truly Indian architecture. ‘Be honest and truthful in design, material usage, construction, costs, and about your own mistakes,’ he wrote as one of 20 guiding principles, which he duly respected in his projects. His last major commission started as the Navayatra community living centre, and became the Laurie Baker Centre for Habitat Studies (LBC), a place where his design ethos and philosophy live on.  The project started in 1994, when Baker was 77 years old. Keith Saldanha, an economist based in Canada, decided to relocate to the southern Indian state of Kerala and build a community centre dedicated to fostering creative abilities for children with special education needs. Having purchased a three‑and‑a‑half‑acre site in Vilappilsala, outside the city of Thiruvananthapuram, Saldanha named his project Navayatra, or ‘a new journey’, and reached out to Baker. He had heard of the British‑born Indian architect, whose full original name was Lawrence Wilfred Baker, because his work in the region had been gaining traction. Baker was rigorous in applying his own design principles (Laurie Baker Centre) The small yet densely populated state of Kerala, created in 1956, had become known as a ‘model of development’ in the ’70s. An extended period of political stability under the able stewardship of successive communist governments led to significant improvement of human development parameters, including health, education and housing, despite low economic growth. Baker’s cost‑effective design philosophy and work resonated with the holistic welfare ideology of then chief minister Chelat Achutha Menon, who commissioned him to design several welfare projects, despite his ‘unconventional’ building methods. After he retired in 1985, Achutha Menon founded the Centre of Science and Technology for Rural Development (COSTFORD), a non‑profit, with Baker as its chief architect. His innovative approach to sustainable and cost‑effective architecture emphasised the use of local resources, labour and harmony with the natural environment. ‘Always study your site: its soil, topography, water, climate and neighbours (noisy temples, smelly factories, etc)’ was another of Baker’s principles. In his sketch for Navayatra’s masterplan, Baker meticulously noted the natural features; his proposal made the most of the complex topography, preserving the prominent granite rock formations as well as the scattered coconut and mango trees. The abandoned quarry pit was turned into a rainwater harvesting tank, which catered to the water requirement of the new centre all through the year. Functional spaces were housed on the high rock outcrops so that the natural drainage would not be disturbed and to curtail foundation costs.  Construction began in 1996, with a meandering pedestrian path connecting the different buildings. Each one is unique, but they are held together by the consistent use of exposed brick and the verdant landscape. The canteen hugs the rocky edges of the large granite quarry pit, with steps descending from its kitchen to the water body. The circular array of bedrooms in the guest house preserves the existing trees, while the undulating roof of the dormitory mimics the adjacent rock formations. The curved, perforated brick walls, while appearing irregular, are meticulously designed to respond to the site’s visual context and prevailing breezes. Baker’s rejection of rigid geometries made his spaces fluid, dynamic and adaptable. Each space appears to flow seamlessly into the next, a quality particularly exemplified in the dormitory.  Read Laurie Baker’s Reputations essay Discarded materials such as cut bricks, glass bottles, stone chips, timber pieces and broken tiles, all sourced within a 5km radius of Vilappilsala, were repurposed throughout the site, and local labour was employed. Baker had an in‑depth understanding of brick, timber and stone, which he deployed in myriad ways. He himself facilitated training, in collaboration with his engineer and constant companion PB Sajan. ‘Laurie Baker firmly refused ostentation and decoration for its own sake,’ recalls Sajan, ‘yet his buildings were never dull. There would always be an element of surprise, either in the use of an ordinary material or the geometrical interpretation of space. He believed in the intrinsic beauty of all things, living and non‑living.’     The spaces designed by Baker must be appreciated in light of his design philosophy. The 20 principles of architecture that he advocated in his writing and talks are an amalgamation of his Quaker beliefs and the Gandhian ideal of commitment to social justice and non‑violence; he believed architecture should be a non‑violent insert into the land and local ecology. This new aesthetic was refreshingly non‑invasive, even if it alienated some contemporary modernists. Baker’s innovative adaptation of local craft techniques was both playful and resourceful. His designs, frugal and pragmatic, were driven by a desire to be cost‑effective – rather than the expression of purely stylistic choices.  The programmatic needs of Navayatra evolved and translated into the construction of new structures, including accommodation for invited artists and a residential space for the client. There was no electrical connection on the site; all activities took place in the daytime. The extensive use of perforated walls helped to keep the spaces cool and well ventilated. The dormitory, on the higher western edge of the site, is the last structure Baker designed for Navayatra. It was the primary learning and living quarters for the tutors who conducted classes. Its semi‑open terrace, nestled in the undulating roof, proved an ideal learning and interactive space. Its completion in 2002 marked Baker’s last site visit to Navayatra.  PB Sajan continued work on the site, designing, for example, the two small structures along the pathway at the entrance, for which Baker gave his approval. Both were experiments to test concrete roof slabs using bamboo reinforcement instead of steel rods. The centre continued to function as a vibrant community space for a couple of years, but once Saldanha moved out, due to deteriorating health, managing Navayatra became difficult. At the same time, COSTFORD, still under the guidance of Laurie Baker, required a dedicated space. The architect welcomed Saldanha’s offer to sell Navayatra, with a view to turning it into an independent centre for learning that would focus on innovation and research in alternative building technologies, but financial constraints, as well as Baker’s failing health, delayed the process. Two years after Baker’s death in 2007, Kerala’s finance minister sanctioned 8 million rupees (£70,000) to purchase the land. The Laurie Baker Centre for Habitat Studies was inaugurated in October 2009; Sajan has since been the director of both COSTFORD and the LBC. The centre encourages the appropriate use of natural resources, disseminates non‑conventional and eco‑friendly design strategies, and provides hands‑on training in innovative construction methods. ‘The thrust is not to propagate a “Laurie Baker architecture” but to understand the sound principles behind his life’s work,’ explains KP Kannan, chairman of LBC and COSTFORD, ‘and apply them to questions of housing and inclusive development.’  Due to the steep spike in construction over the decade, Kerala faces an acute shortage of sand (because of uncontrolled sand mining), granite (quarrying of hills is rampant) as well as bricks (as suitable clay is becoming scarce). The LBC’s research on, and advocacy of, alternative and low‑energy construction materials has led them to turn to mud and bamboo, while continuing to explore the use and potential of recycled materials. Sajan and the COSTFORD team designed additional buildings for the LBC, including an office annexe and a four‑storey library used for research. They also added spaces for workshops and for treating bamboo to Baker’s original masterplan, and the entire centre has been availed of electrical and plumbing connections for a better work environment.  Built primarily with mud and bamboo, the new office annexe and library serve the functional purpose of the centre, but stand out from Laurie Baker’s original designs and fail to blend into his original masterplan, even though they do follow nearly all his design principles. Baker liked to advise to ‘use common sense and have fun designing’, but the playfulness feels absent, as these two new buildings are primarily concerned with showcasing construction techniques. As a result, they compromise on spatial quality. While all of Baker’s structures were strategically positioned in relation to one another, the library seems isolated; it is conspicuous instead of blending in with the older brick buildings and the landscape. The play of light and darkness, the fluidity of spaces and the meticulous attention to detail, which are the salient hallmarks of Laurie Baker’s designs, are also missing in these new additions. The temporary sheds used for training sessions and workshops could have been envisioned as thatched pavilions instead of pitched blue tarpaulins.  What makes LBC’s success, however, is the strength of its educational programmes: the sharing of knowledge about alternative building technologies with architecture students, and the willingness to build on existing research and their own archive, which is made accessible to all visitors. Students, professionals and construction workers all come here to learn about dry rubble stone masonry, building with mud, bamboo treating and joinery, brick arches and walls, including Baker’s much loved rat trap bond, as well as the preparation of lime plasters. The centre is interested in further researching water management and establishing a permanent material lab and research space for scholars and professionals. In his lecture ‘Truth in Architecture’ at Thiruvananthapuram’s College of Engineering in 1982, Baker critiqued the resource‑intensive architecture that was starting to mushroom in the city. The indiscriminate use of concrete, excessive ornamentation and overconsumption of resources were popularly understood as a marker of status. Baker foresaw the impending crisis that such excesses would trigger. What he anticipated has only accelerated. In the face of the climate emergency, Kerala confronts significant challenges, including diminishing natural resources and rising construction costs coupled with sluggish economic growth. Ahead of its time, Baker’s practice advocated a pragmatic and reasonable use of resources – ‘don’t rob national resources and do not use them extravagantly and unnecessarily,’ he wrote in his list of principles. To this day, Baker’s philosophy represents a vital rallying call to interrogate contemporary notions of modernity.  This article was featured in the May 2025 Circularity issue. Purchase your copy here

Interviews Andor – Season 2: Mohen Leo (Production VFX Supervisor), TJ Falls (Production VFX Producer) and Scott Pritchard (ILM VFX Supervisor) By Vincent Frei - 22/05/2025 In 2023, Mohen Leo (Production VFX Supervisor), TJ Falls (Production VFX Producer), and Scott Pritchard (ILM VFX Supervisor) offered an in-depth look at the visual effects of Andor’s first season. Now, the trio returns to share insights into their work on the second—and final—season of this critically acclaimed series. Tony Gilroy is known for his detailed approach to storytelling. Can you talk about how your collaboration with him evolved throughout the production of Andor? How does he influence the VFX decisions and the overall tone of the series? Mohen Leo (ML): Our history with Tony, from Rogue One through the first season of Andor, had built a strong foundation of mutual trust. For Season 2, he involved VFX from the earliest story discussions, sharing outlines and inviting our ideas for key sequences. His priority is always to keep the show feeling grounded, ensuring that visual effects serve the story’s core and never become extraneous spectacle that might distract from the narrative. TJ Falls (TJ): Tony is a master storyteller. As Mohen mentioned, we have a great history with Tony from Rogue One and through Season 1 of Andor. We had a great rapport with Tony, and he had implicit trust in us. We began prepping Season 2 while we were in post for Season 1. We were having ongoing conversations with Tony and Production Designer Luke Hull as we were completing work for S1 and planning out how we would progress into Season 2. We wanted to keep the show grounded and gritty while amping up the action and urgency. Tony had a lot of story to cover in 12 episodes. The time jumps between the story arcs were something we discussed early on, and the need to be able to not only justify the time jumps but also to provide the audience with a visual bridge to tell the stories that happened off-screen. Tony would look to us to guide and use our institutional knowledge of Star Wars to help keep him honest within the universe. He, similarly, challenged us to maintain our focus and ensure that the visual tone of the series serviced the story. Tony Gilroy and Genevieve O’Reilly on the set of Lucasfilm’s ANDOR Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo by Des Willie. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved. As you’ve returned for Season 2, have there been any significant changes or new challenges compared to the first season? How has the production evolved in terms of VFX and storytelling? (ML): The return of nearly all key creatives from Season 1, both internally and at our VFX vendors, was a massive advantage. This continuity built immediate trust and an efficient shorthand. It made everyone comfortable to be more ambitious, allowing us to significantly expand the scope and complexity of the visual effects for Season 2. (TJ): We had all new directors this season. The rest of the core creative and production teams stayed consistent from Season 1. We worked to keep the creative process as seamless from Season 1 as we could while working with the new directors and adapting to their process while incorporating their individual skills and ideas that they brought to the table. This season we were able to work on location much more than on Season 1. That provided us with a great opportunity to build out the connective tissue between real world constraints and the virtual world we were creating. In the case with Senate Plaza in Coruscant we also had to stay consistent with what has previously been established, so that was a fun challenge. How did you go about dividing the workload between the various VFX studios? (ML): I can give an answer, but probably better if TJ does. (TJ): We were very specific about how we divided the work on this series. We started, as we usually do, with a detailed breakdown of work for the 12 episodes. Mohen and I then discussed a logical split based on type of work, specific elements, and areas of commonality for particular environments. While cost is always a consideration, we focused our vendor casting around the creative strengths of the studios we were partnering with on the project. ILM is in the DNA of Star Wars, so we knew we’d want to be working with them on some of the most complex work. We chose ILM for the opening TIE Avenger hangar sequence and subsequent escape. We utilized ILM for work in every episode, including the CG KX/K2 work, but their main focus was on Coruscant, and they had substantial work in the ninth episode for the big Senate escape sequence. Hybride‘s chief focus was on Palmo Plaza and the Ghorman environments. They dealt with everything Ghorman on the ground from the street extensions and the truck crash, through the Ghorman massacre, sharing shots with ILM with the KX work. For Scanline VFX, we identified three primary areas of focus: the work on Mina Rau, Chandrila, and Yavin. The TIE Fighter sequence in Season 2 is a standout moment. Can you walk us through the VFX process for that particular sequence? What were some of the technical challenges you faced, and how did you work to make it as intense and realistic as possible? (TJ): This is a sequence I’m particularly proud of as VFX played a central role in the sequence coming together from start to finish. We were intimately involved from the initial conversations of the idea for the sequence. Mohen created digital storyboards and we pitched ideas for the sequence to Tony Gilroy. Once we had a sense of the creative brief, we started working with Luke Hull (Production Designer) and the art department on the physical hangar set and brought it into previz for virtual scouting. With Jen Kitching (our Previz Supervisor from The Third Floor) we had a virtual camera set up that allowed us to virtually use the camera and lenses we would have on our shoot. We blocked out shots with Ariel Kleiman (Director) and Christophe Nuyens (the DoP). This went back through previz and techviz so we could meticulously chart out our plan for the shoot. Keeping with our ethos of grounding everything in reality, we wanted to use as much of the practical set as possible. We needed to be sure our handoffs between physical and virtual were seamless – Luke Murphy, our SFX Supervisor, worked closely with us in planning elements and practical effects to be used on the day. Over the course of the shoot, we also had the challenge of the flashing red alarm that goes off once the TIE Avenger crashes into the ceiling. We established the look of the red alarm with Christophe and the lighting team, and then needed to work out the timing. For that, we collaborated with editor John Gilroy to ensure we knew precisely when each alarm beat would flash. Once we had all the pieces, we turned the sequence over to Scott Pritchard and ILM to execute the work. Scott Pritchard (SP): This sequence was split between our London and Vancouver studios, with London taking everything inside the hangar, and Vancouver handling the exterior shots after Cassian blasts through the hangar door. We started from a strong foundation thanks to two factors: the amazing hangar set and TIE Avenger prop; and having full sequence previs. The hangar set was built about 2/3 of its overall length (as much as could be built on the soundstage), which our environments team extended, adding the hangar doors at the end and also a view to the exterior environment. Extending the hangar was most of the work in the sequence up until the TIE starts moving, where we switched to our CG TIE. As with Season 1, we used a blend of physical SFX work for the pyro effects, augmenting with CG sparks. As TJ mentioned, the hangar’s red warning lighting was a challenge as it had to pulse in a regular tempo throughout the edit. Only the close-up shots of Cassian in the cockpit had practical red lighting, so complex lighting and comp work were required to achieve a consistent look throughout the sequence. ILM London’s compositing supervisor, Claudio Bassi, pitched the idea that as the TIE hit various sections of the ceiling, it would knock out the ceiling lights, progressively darkening the hangar. It was a great motif that helped heighten the tension as we get towards the moment where Cassian faces the range trooper. Once we cut to outside the hangar, ILM Vancouver took the reins. The exterior weather conditions were briefed to us as ‘polar night’ – it’s never entirely dark, instead there’s a consistent low-level ambient light. This was a challenge as we had to consider the overall tonal range of each shot and make sure there was enough contrast to guide the viewer’s eye to where it needed to be, not just on individual shots but looking at eye-trace as one shot cut to another. A key moment is when Cassian fires rockets into an ice arch, leading to its collapse. The ice could very easily look like rock, so we needed to see the light from the rocket’s explosions scattered inside the ice. It required detailed work in both lighting and comp to get to the right look. Again, as the ice arch starts to collapse and the two chase TIE Advanced ships get taken out, it needed careful balancing work to make sure viewers could read the situation and the action in each shot. The world-building in Andor is impressive, especially with iconic locations like Coruscant and Yavin. How did you approach creating these environments and ensuring they felt as authentic as possible to the Star Wars universe? (ML): Our approach to world-building in Andor relied on a close collaboration between the VFX team and Luke Hull, the production designer, along with his art department. This partnership was established in Season 1 and continued for Season 2. Having worked on many Star Wars projects over the decades, VFX was often able to provide inspiration and references for art department designs. For example, for locations like Yavin and Coruscant, VFX provided the art department with existing 3D assets: the Yavin temple model from Rogue One and the Coruscant city layout around the Senate from the Prequel films. The Coruscant model, in particular, involved some ‘digital archaeology.’ The data was stored on tapes from around 2001 and consisted of NURBS models in an older Softimage file format. To make them usable, we had to acquire old Softimage 2010 and XSI licenses, install them on a Windows 7 PC, and then convert the data to the FBX format that current software can read. Supplying these original layouts to the art department enabled them to create their new designs and integrate our real-world shooting locations while maintaining consistency with the worlds seen in previous Star Wars productions. Given that Andor is set approximately twenty years after the Prequels, we also had the opportunity to update and adjust layouts and designs to reflect that time difference and realize the specific creative vision Luke Hull and Tony Gilroy had for the show. StageCraft technology is a huge part of the production. How did you use it to bring these complex environments, like Coruscant and Yavin, to life? What are the main benefits and limitations of using StageCraft for these settings? (SP): Our use of StageCraft for Season 2 was similar to that on Season 1. We used it to create the exterior views through the windows of the Safehouse on Coruscant. As with our work for the Chandrillan Embassy in Season 1, we created four different times of day/weather conditions. One key difference was that the foreground buildings were much closer to the Safehouse, so we devised three projection points (one for each room of the Safehouse), which would ensure that the perspective of the exterior was correct for each room. On set we retained a large amount of flexibility with our content. We had our own video feed from the unit cameras, and we were able to selectively isolate and grade sections of the city based on their view through the camera. Working in context like this meant that we could make any final tweaks while each shot was being set up and rehearsed. While we were shooting a scene set at night, the lighting team rigged a series of lights running above the windows that, when triggered, would flash in sequence, casting a moving light along the floor and walls of the set, as if from a moving car above. I thought we could use the LED wall to do something similar from below, catching highlights on the metal pipework that ran across the ceiling. During a break in shooting, I hatched a plan with colour operator Melissa Goddard, brain bar supervisor Ben Brown, and we came up with a moving rectangular section on the LED wall which matched the practical lights for speed, intensity and colour temperature. We set up two buttons on our iPad to trigger the ‘light’ to move in either direction. We demoed the idea to the DP after lunch, who loved it, and so when it came to shoot, he could either call from a car above from the practical lights, or a car below from the LEDs. (ML): Just to clarify – the Coruscant Safehouse set was the only application of Stagecraft LED screens in Season 2. All other Coruscant scenes relied on urban location photography or stage sets with traditional blue screen extensions. The various Yavin locations were achieved primarily with large backlot sets at Longcross Studios. A huge set of the airfield, temple entrance and partial temple interior was extended by Scanline VFX, led by Sue Rowe, in post, creating the iconic temple exterior from A New Hope. VFX also added flying and parked spaceships, and augmented the surrounding forest to feel more tropical. Andor blends CG with actual real-world locations. Can you share how you balanced these two elements, especially when creating large-scale environments or specific landscapes that felt grounded in reality? (SP): A great example of this is the environment around the Senate. The plates for this were shot in the City of Arts & Sciences in Valencia. Blending the distinctive Calatrava architecture with well-known Star Wars buildings like the Senate was an amazing challenge, it wasn’t immediately clear how the two could sit alongside each other. Our Vancouver team, led by Tania Richard, did an incredible job taking motifs and details from the Valencia buildings and incorporating them into the Senate building on both large and small scales, but still contiguous with the overall Senate design. The production team was ingenious in how they used each of the Valencia buildings to represent many locations around the Senate and the surrounding areas. For example, the Science Museum was used for the walkway where Cassian shoots Kloris (Mon’s driver), the main entrance to the Senate, and the interior of the Senate Atrium (where Ghorman Senator Oran is arrested). It was a major challenge ensuring that all those locations were represented across the larger environment, so viewers understood the geography of the scene, but also blended with the design language of their immediate surroundings. Everything in the Senate Plaza had a purpose. When laying out the overall layout of the Plaza, we considered aspects such as how far Senators would realistically walk from their transports to the Senate entrance. When extending the Plaza beyond the extents of the City of Arts & Sciences, we used Calatrava architecture from elsewhere. The bridge just in front of the Senatorial Office Building is based on a Calatrava-designed bridge in my home city of Dublin. As we reach the furthest extents of the Senate Plaza, we begin blending in more traditional Coruscant architecture so as to soften the transition to the far background. Coruscant is such a pivotal location in Star Wars. How did you approach creating such a vast, densely populated urban environment? What were the key visual cues that made it feel alive and realistic? (ML): Our approach to Coruscant in Season 2 built upon what we established in the first season: primarily, shooting in real-world city locations whenever feasible. The stunning Calatrava architecture at Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences, for instance, served as the foundation for the Senate exterior and other affluent districts. For the city’s grittier neighborhoods, we filmed in urban environments in London, like the Barbican and areas around Twickenham Stadium. Filming in these actual city locations provided a strong, realistic basis for the cinematography, lighting, and overall mood of each environment. This remained true even when VFX later modified large portions of the frame with Star Wars architecture. This methodology gave the director and DP confidence on set that their vision would carry through to the final shot. Our art department and VFX concept artists then created numerous paintovers based on plates and location photography, offering clear visual guides for transforming each real location into its Coruscant counterpart during post-production. For the broader cityscapes, we took direct inspiration from 3D street maps of cities such as Tokyo, New York, and Hong Kong. We would exaggerate the scale and replace existing buildings with our Coruscant designs while preserving the fundamental urban patterns. When it comes to creating environments like Yavin, which has a very natural, jungle-like aesthetic, how do you ensure the VFX stays true to the organic feel of the location while still maintaining the science-fiction elements of Star Wars? (ML): Nearly all of the Yavin jungle scenes were shot in a large wooded area that is part of Longcross Studios. The greens and art departments did an amazing job augmenting the natural forest with tropical plants and vines. The scenes featuring the two rebel factions in the clearing were captured almost entirely in-camera, with VFX primarily adding blaster fire, augmenting the crashed ship, and painting out equipment. Only the shots of the TIE Avenger landing and taking off, as well as the giant creature snatching the two rebels, featured significant CG elements. The key elements connecting these practical locations back to the Yavin established in A New Hope and Rogue One were the iconic temples. The establishing shots approaching the main temple in episode 7 utilized plate photography from South America, which had been shot for another Disney project but ultimately not used. Other aerial shots, such as the U-Wing flying above the jungle in episode 12, were fully computer-generated by ILM. K-2SO is a beloved character, and his return is highly anticipated. What can you tell us about the process of bringing him back to life with VFX in Season 2? What new challenges did this bring compared to his original appearance? (SP): We had already updated a regular KX droid for the scene on Niamos in Season 1, so much of the work to update the asset to the latest pipeline requirements had already been done. We now needed to switch over to the textures & shaders specific to K2, and give them the same updates. Unique to Series 2 was that there were a number of scenes involving both a practical and a digital K2 – when he gets crushed on Ghorman in episode 8, and then ‘rebooted’ on Yavin in episode 9. The practical props were a lot more beaten up than our hero asset, so we made bespoke variants to match the practical droid in each sequence. Additionally, for the reboot sequence on Yavin, we realised pretty quickly that the extreme movements meant that we were seeing into areas that previously had not required much detail – for instance, underneath his shoulder armour. We came up with a shoulder joint design that allowed for the required movement while also staying mechanically correct. When we next see him in Episode 10, a year has passed, and he is now the K-2SO as we know him from Rogue One. K-2SO has a unique design, particularly in his facial expressions and movement. How did you approach animating him for Season 2, and were there any specific changes or updates made to his character model or animation? (SP): Following Rogue One, Mohen made detailed records of the takeaways learned from creating K-2SO, and he kindly shared these notes with us early on in the show. They were incredibly helpful in tuning the fine details of the animation. Our animation team, led by Mathieu Vig, did a superb job of identifying the nuances of Alan’s performance and making sure they came across. There were plenty of pitfalls to avoid – for instance, the curve to his upper back meant that it was very easy for his neck to look hyperextended. We also had to be very careful with his eyes, as they’re sources of light, they could very easily look cartoonish if they moved around too much. Dialling in just the right amount of eye movement was crucial to a good performance. As the eyes also had several separate emissive and reflective components, they required delicate balancing in the comp on a per-shot basis. Luckily, we had great reference from Rogue One to be able to dial in the eyes to suit both the lighting of a shot but also its performance details. One Rogue One shot in particular, where he says ‘Your behavior, Jyn Erso, is continually unexpected’, was a particularly good reference for how we could balance the lights in his eyes to, in effect, enlarge his pupils, and give him a softer expression. K-2SO also represented my first opportunity to work with ILM’s new studio in Mumbai. Amongst other shots, they took on the ‘hallway fight’ sequence in Episode 12 where K2 dispatches Heert and his troopers, and they did a fantastic job from animation right through to final comp. K-2SO’s interactions with the live-action actors are key to his character. How did you work with the actors to ensure his presence felt as real and integrated as possible on screen, especially in terms of timing and reactions? (ML): Alan Tudyk truly defined K-2SO in Rogue One, so his return for Andor Season 2 was absolutely critical to us. He was on set for every one of K2’s shots, performing on stilts and in a performance capture suit. This approach was vital because it gave Alan complete ownership of the character’s physical performance and, crucially, allowed for spontaneous, genuine interactions with the other actors, particularly Diego Luna. Witnessing Alan and Diego reunite on camera was fantastic; that unique chemistry and humor we loved in Rogue One was instantly palpable. In post-production, our VFX animators then meticulously translated every nuance of Alan’s on-set performance to the digital K-2SO model. It’s a detailed process that still requires artistic expertise. For instance, K2’s facial structure is largely static, so direct translation of Alan’s facial expressions isn’t always possible. In these cases, our animators found creative solutions – translating a specific facial cue from Alan into a subtle head tilt or a particular eye movement for K2, always ensuring the final animation remained true to the intent and spirit of Alan’s original performance. Were there any memorable moments or scenes from the series that you found particularly rewarding or challenging to work on from a visual effects standpoint? (ML): The Plaza sequence in episode 8, which runs for about 23 minutes, stands out as particularly memorable – both for its challenges and its rewarding outcome. Just preparing for it was a daunting task. Its successful execution hinged on incredibly tight collaboration between numerous departments: stunts, creature effects, special effects, the camera department, our tireless greenscreens crew, and of course, VFX. The stunts team, under Marc Mailley, drove the choreography of all the action. Our On-Set VFX Supervisor, Marcus Dryden, was instrumental. He worked hand-in-glove with the director, DP, and assistant directors to ensure we meticulously captured all the necessary elements. This included everything from crowd replication plates and practical effects elements to the performances of stunt teams and creature actors, plus all the crucial on-set data. The shoot for this sequence alone took over three weeks. Hybride, under the leadership of Joseph Kasparian and Olivier Beaulieu, then completed the environments, added the blaster fire, and augmented the special effects in post-production, with ILM contributing the KX droids that wreak havoc in the plaza. (SP): I agree with Mohen here, for me the Ghorman Plaza episode is the most rewarding to have worked on. It required us to weave our work into that of so many other departments – stunts, sfx, costume – to name just a few. When we received the plates, to see the quality of the work that had gone into the photography alone was inspirational for me and the ILM crew. It’s gratifying to be part of a team where you know that everyone involved is on top of their game. And of course all that is underpinned by writing of that calibre from Tony Gilroy and his team – it just draws everything together. From a pure design viewpoint, I’m also very proud of the work that Tania Richard and her ILM Vancouver crew did for the Senate shots. As I mentioned before, it was a hugely challenging environment not just logistically, but also in bringing together two very distinctive architectural languages, and they made them work in tandem beautifully. Looking back on the project, what aspects of the visual effects are you most proud of? (TJ): I’m incredibly proud of this entire season. The seamless collaboration we had between Visual Effects and every other department made the work, while challenging, an absolute joy to execute. Almost all of the department heads returned from the first season, which provided a shorthand shortcut as we started the show with implicit trust and understanding of what we were looking to achieve. The work is beautiful, and the commitment of our crew and vendors has been unwavering. I’m most proud of the effort and care that each individual person contributed to the show and the fact that we went into the project with a common goal and were, as a team, able to showcase the vision that we, and Tony, had for the series. (ML): I’m really proud of the deep integration of the visual effects – not just visually, but fundamentally within the filmmaking process and storytelling. Tony invited VFX to be a key participant in shaping the story, from early story drafts through to the final color grade. Despite the scale and spectacle of many sequences, the VFX always feel purposeful, supporting the narrative and characters rather than distracting from them. This was significantly bolstered by the return of a large number of key creatives from Season 1, both within the production and at our VFX vendors. That shared experience and established understanding of Tony’s vision for Andor were invaluable in making the VFX an organic part of the show. (SP): I could not be prouder of the entire ILM team for everything they brought to their work on the show. Working across three sites, Andor was a truly global effort, and I particularly enjoyed how each site took complete ownership of their work. It was a privilege working with all of them and contributing to such an exceptional series. VFX progression frame Lucasfilm’s ANDOR Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Lucasfilm. ©2025 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved. How long have you worked on this show? (TJ): This show has been an unbelievable journey. Season 2 alone was nearly 3 years. We wrapped Season 2 in January of 2025. We started prepping Season 2 in February 2022, while we were still in post for Season 1. I officially started working on Season 1 early in 2019 while it was still being developed. So that’s 6 years of time working on Andor. Mohen and I both also worked on Rogue One, so if you factor in the movie, which was shooting in 2015, that’s nearly ten years of work within this part of the Star Wars universe. (ML): I started on the project during early development in the summer of 2019 and finished in December of 2024. (SP): I started on Season 1 in September 2020 and finished up on Season 2 in December 2024. What’s the VFX shots count? (TJ): We had a grand total of 4,124 shots over the course of our 12 episodes. Outside of Industrial Light & Magic, which oversaw the show, we also partnered with Hybride, Scanline, Soho VFX, and Midas VFX. What is your next project? (TJ): You’ll have to wait and see! (SP): Unfortunately, I can’t say just yet either! A big thanks for your time. WANT TO KNOW MORE?ILM: Dedicated page about Andor – Season 2 on ILM website. © Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2025

In the high desert east of Reno, Nevada, construction crews are flattening the golden foothills of the Virginia Range, laying the foundations of a data center city. Google, Tract, Switch, EdgeCore, Novva, Vantage, and PowerHouse are all operating, building, or expanding huge facilities within the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, a business park bigger than the city of Detroit.  This story is a part of MIT Technology Review’s series “Power Hungry: AI and our energy future,” on the energy demands and carbon costs of the artificial-intelligence revolution. Meanwhile, Microsoft acquired more than 225 acres of undeveloped property within the center and an even larger plot in nearby Silver Springs, Nevada. Apple is expanding its data center, located just across the Truckee River from the industrial park. OpenAI has said it’s considering building a data center in Nevada as well. The corporate race to amass computing resources to train and run artificial intelligence models and store information in the cloud has sparked a data center boom in the desert—just far enough away from Nevada’s communities to elude wide notice and, some fear, adequate scrutiny.  Switch, a data center company based in Las Vegas, says the full build-out of its campus at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center could exceed seven million square feet.EMILY NAJERA The full scale and potential environmental impacts of the developments aren’t known, because the footprint, energy needs, and water requirements are often closely guarded corporate secrets. Most of the companies didn’t respond to inquiries from MIT Technology Review, or declined to provide additional information about the projects.  But there’s “a whole lot of construction going on,” says Kris Thompson, who served as the longtime project manager for the industrial center before stepping down late last year. “The last number I heard was 13 million square feet under construction right now, which is massive.” Indeed, it’s the equivalent of almost five Empire State Buildings laid out flat. In addition, public filings from NV Energy, the state’s near-monopoly utility, reveal that a dozen data-center projects, mostly in this area, have requested nearly six gigawatts of electricity capacity within the next decade.  That would make the greater Reno area—the biggest little city in the world—one of the largest data-center markets around the globe. It would also require expanding the state’s power sector by about 40%, all for a single industry in an explosive growth stage that may, or may not, prove sustainable. The energy needs, in turn, suggest those projects could consume billions of gallons of water per year, according to an analysis conducted for this story.  Construction crews are busy building data centers throughout the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.EMILY NAJERA The build-out of a dense cluster of energy and water-hungry data centers in a small stretch of the nation’s driest state, where climate change is driving up temperatures faster than anywhere else in the country, has begun to raise alarms among water experts, environmental groups, and residents. That includes members of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, whose namesake water body lies within their reservation and marks the end point of the Truckee River, the region’s main source of water. Much of Nevada has suffered through severe drought conditions for years, farmers and communities are drawing down many of the state’s groundwater reservoirs faster than they can be refilled, and global warming is sucking more and more moisture out of the region’s streams, shrubs, and soils. “Telling entities that they can come in and stick more straws in the ground for data centers is raising a lot of questions about sound management,” says Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network, a nonprofit that works to protect water resources throughout Nevada and Utah.  “We just don’t want to be in a situation where the tail is wagging the dog,” he later added, “where this demand for data centers is driving water policy.” Luring data centers In the late 1850s, the mountains southeast of Reno began enticing prospectors from across the country, who hoped to strike silver or gold in the famed Comstock Lode. But Storey County had few residents or economic prospects by the late 1990s, around the time when Don Roger Norman, a media-shy real estate speculator, spotted a new opportunity in the sagebrush-covered hills.  He began buying up tens of thousands of acres of land for tens of millions of dollars and lining up development approvals to lure industrial projects to what became the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center. His partners included Lance Gilman, a cowboy-hat-wearing real estate broker, who later bought the nearby Mustang Ranch brothel and won a seat as a county commissioner. In 1999, the county passed an ordinance that preapproves companies to develop most types of commercial and industrial projects across the business park, cutting months to years off the development process. That helped cinch deals with a flock of tenants looking to build big projects fast, including Walmart, Tesla, and Redwood Materials. Now the promise of fast permits is helping to draw data centers by the gigawatt. On a clear, cool January afternoon, Brian Armon, a commercial real estate broker who leads the industrial practices group at NAI Alliance, takes me on a tour of the projects around the region, which mostly entails driving around the business center. Lance Gilman, a local real estate broker, helped to develop the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center and land some of its largest tenants.GREGG SEGAL After pulling off Interstate 80 onto USA Parkway, he points out the cranes, earthmovers, and riprap foundations, where a variety of data centers are under construction. Deeper into the industrial park, Armon pulls up near Switch’s long, low, arched-roof facility, which sits on a terrace above cement walls and security gates. The Las Vegas–based company says the first phase of its data center campus encompasses more than a million square feet, and that the full build-out will cover seven times that space.  Over the next hill, we turn around in Google’s parking lot. Cranes, tents, framing, and construction equipment extend behind the company’s existing data center, filling much of the 1,210-acre lot that the search engine giant acquired in 2017. Last August, during an event at the University of Nevada, Reno, the company announced it would spend $400 million to expand the data center campus along with another one in Las Vegas. Thompson says that the development company, Tahoe Reno Industrial LLC, has now sold off every parcel of developable land within the park (although several lots are available for resale following the failed gamble of one crypto tenant). When I ask Armon what’s attracting all the data centers here, he starts with the fast approvals but cites a list of other lures as well: The inexpensive land. NV Energy’s willingness to strike deals to supply relatively low-cost electricity. Cool nighttime and winter temperatures, as far as American deserts go, which reduce the energy and water needs. The proximity to tech hubs such as Silicon Valley, which cuts latency for applications in which milliseconds matter. And the lack of natural disasters that could shut down the facilities, at least for the most part. “We are high in seismic activity,” he says. “But everything else is good. We’re not going to have a tornado or flood or a devastating wildfire.”Then there’s the generous tax policies. In 2023, Novva, a Utah-based data center company, announced plans to build a 300,000-square-foot facility within the industrial business park. Nevada doesn’t charge corporate income tax, and it has also enacted deep tax cuts specifically for data centers that set up shop in the state. That includes abatements of up to 75% on property tax for a decade or two—and nearly as much of a bargain on the sales and use taxes applied to equipment purchased for the facilities. Data centers don’t require many permanent workers to run the operations, but the projects have created thousands of construction jobs. They’re also helping to diversify the region’s economy beyond casinos and generating tax windfalls for the state, counties, and cities, says Jeff Sutich, executive director of the Northern Nevada Development Authority. Indeed, just three data-center projects, developed by Apple, Google, and Vantage, will produce nearly half a billion dollars in tax revenue for Nevada, even with those generous abatements, according to the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development. The question is whether the benefits of data centers are worth the tradeoffs for Nevadans, given the public health costs, greenhouse-gas emissions, energy demands, and water strains. The rain shadow The Sierra Nevada’s granite peaks trace the eastern edge of California, forcing Pacific Ocean winds to rise and cool. That converts water vapor in the air into the rain and snow that fill the range’s tributaries, rivers, and lakes.  But the same meteorological phenomenon casts a rain shadow over much of neighboring Nevada, forming an arid expanse known as the Great Basin Desert. The state receives about 10 inches of precipitation a year, about a third of the national average. The Truckee River draws from the melting Sierra snowpack at the edge of Lake Tahoe, cascades down the range, and snakes through the flatlands of Reno and Sparks. It forks at the Derby Dam, a Reclamation Act project a few miles from the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, which diverts water to a farming region further east while allowing the rest to continue north toward Pyramid Lake.  Along the way, an engineered system of reservoirs, canals, and treatment plants divert, store, and release water from the river, supplying businesses, cities, towns, and native tribes across the region. But Nevada’s population and economy are expanding, creating more demands on these resources even as they become more constrained.  The Truckee River, which originates at Lake Tahoe and terminates at Pyramid Lake, is the major water source for cities, towns, and farms across northwestern Nevada.EMILY NAJERA Throughout much of the 2020s the state has suffered through one of the hottest and most widespread droughts on record, extending two decades of abnormally dry conditions across the American West. Some scientists fear it may constitute an emerging megadrought.  About 50% of Nevada currently faces moderate to exceptional drought conditions. In addition, more than half of the state’s hundreds of groundwater basins are already “over-appropriated,” meaning the water rights on paper exceed the levels believed to be underground.  It’s not clear if climate change will increase or decrease the state’s rainfall levels, on balance. But precipitation patterns are expected to become more erratic, whiplashing between short periods of intense rainfall and more-frequent, extended, or severe droughts.  In addition, more precipitation will fall as rain rather than snow, shortening the Sierra snow season by weeks to months over the coming decades.  “In the extreme case, at the end of the century, that’s pretty much all of winter,” says Sean McKenna, executive director of hydrologic sciences at the Desert Research Institute, a research division of the Nevada System of Higher Education. That loss will undermine an essential function of the Sierra snowpack: reliably delivering water to farmers and cities when it’s most needed in the spring and summer, across both Nevada and California.  These shifting conditions will require the region to develop better ways to store, preserve, and recycle the water it does get, McKenna says. Northern Nevada’s cities, towns, and agencies will also need to carefully evaluate and plan for the collective impacts of continuing growth and development on the interconnected water system, particularly when it comes to water-hungry projects like data centers, he adds.“We can’t consider each of these as a one-off, without considering that there may be tens or dozens of these in the next 15 years,” McKenna says. Thirsty data centers Data centers suck up water in two main ways. As giant rooms of server racks process information and consume energy, they generate heat that must be shunted away to prevent malfunctions and damage to the equipment. The processing units optimized for training and running AI models often draw more electricity and, in turn, produce more heat. To keep things cool, more and more data centers have turned to liquid cooling systems that don’t need as much electricity as fan cooling or air-conditioning. These often rely on water to absorb heat and transfer it to outdoor cooling towers, where much of the moisture evaporates. Microsoft’s US data centers, for instance, could have directly evaporated nearly 185,000 gallons of “clean freshwater” in the course of training OpenAI’s GPT-3 large language model, according to a 2023 preprint study led by researchers at the University of California, Riverside. (The research has since been peer-reviewed and is awaiting publication.) What’s less appreciated, however, is that the larger data-center drain on water generally occurs indirectly, at the power plants generating extra electricity for the turbocharged AI sector. These facilities, in turn, require more water to cool down equipment, among other purposes. You have to add up both uses “to reflect the true water cost of data centers,” says Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Riverside and coauthor of the study. Ren estimates that the 12 data-center projects listed in NV Energy’s report would directly consume between 860 million gallons and 5.7 billion gallons a year, based on the requested electricity capacity. (“Consumed” here means the water is evaporated, not merely withdrawn and returned to the engineered water system.) The indirect water drain associated with electricity generation for those operations could add up to 15.5 billion gallons, based on the average consumption of the regional grid. The exact water figures would depend on shifting climate conditions, the type of cooling systems each data center uses, and the mix of power sources that supply the facilities. Solar power, which provides roughly a quarter of Nevada’s power, requires relatively little water to operate, for instance. But natural-gas plants, which generate about 56%, withdraw 2,803 gallons per megawatt-hour on average, according to the Energy Information Administration.  Geothermal plants, which produce about 10% of the state’s electricity by cycling water through hot rocks, generally consume less water than fossil fuel plants do but often require more water than other renewables, according to some research.  But here too, the water usage varies depending on the type of geothermal plant in question. Google has lined up several deals to partially power its data centers through Fervo Energy, which has helped to commercialize an emerging approach that injects water under high pressure to fracture rock and form wells deep below the surface.  The company stresses that it doesn’t evaporate water for cooling and that it relies on brackish groundwater, not fresh water, to develop and run its plants. In a recent post, Fervo noted that its facilities consume significantly less water per megawatt-hour than coal, nuclear, or natural-gas plants do. Part of NV Energy’s proposed plan to meet growing electricity demands in Nevada includes developing several natural-gas peaking units, adding more than one gigawatt of solar power and installing another gigawatt of battery storage. It’s also forging ahead with a more than $4 billion transmission project.But the company didn’t respond to questions concerning how it will supply all of the gigawatts of additional electricity requested by data centers, if the construction of those power plants will increase consumer rates, or how much water those facilities are expected to consume. NV Energy operates a transmission line, substation, and power plant in or around the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.EMILY NAJERA “NV Energy teams work diligently on our long-term planning to make investments in our infrastructure to serve new customers and the continued growth in the state without putting existing customers at risk,” the company said in a statement. An added challenge is that data centers need to run around the clock. That will often compel utilities to develop new electricity-generating sources that can run nonstop as well, as natural-gas, geothermal, or nuclear plants do, says Emily Grubert, an associate professor of sustainable energy policy at the University of Notre Dame, who has studied the relative water consumption of electricity sources.  “You end up with the water-intensive resources looking more important,” she adds. Even if NV Energy and the companies developing data centers do strive to power them through sources with relatively low water needs, “we only have so much ability to add six gigawatts to Nevada’s grid,” Grubert explains. “What you do will never be system-neutral, because it’s such a big number.” Securing supplies On a mid-February morning, I meet TRI’s Thompson and Don Gilman, Lance Gilman’s son, at the Storey County offices, located within the industrial center.  “I’m just a country boy who sells dirt,” Gilman, also a real estate broker, says by way of introduction.  We climb into his large SUV and drive to a reservoir in the heart of the industrial park, filled nearly to the lip.  Thompson explains that much of the water comes from an on-site treatment facility that filters waste fluids from companies in the park. In addition, tens of millions of gallons of treated effluent will also likely flow into the tank this year from the Truckee Meadows Water Authority Reclamation Facility, near the border of Reno and Sparks. That’s thanks to a 16-mile pipeline that the developers, the water authority, several tenants, and various local cities and agencies partnered to build, through a project that began in 2021. “Our general improvement district is furnishing that water to tech companies here in the park as we speak,” Thompson says. “That helps preserve the precious groundwater, so that is an environmental feather in the cap for these data centers. They are focused on environmental excellence.” The reservoir within the industrial business park provides water to data centers and other tenants.EMILY NAJERA But data centers often need drinking-quality water—not wastewater merely treated to irrigation standards—for evaporative cooling, “to avoid pipe clogs and/or bacterial growth,” the UC Riverside study notes. For instance, Google says its data centers withdrew about 7.7 billion gallons of water in 2023, and nearly 6 billion of those gallons were potable.  Tenants in the industrial park can potentially obtain access to water from the ground and the Truckee River, as well. From early on, the master developers worked hard to secure permits to water sources, since they are nearly as precious as development entitlements to companies hoping to build projects in the desert. Initially, the development company controlled a private business, the TRI Water and Sewer Company, that provided those services to the business park’s tenants, according to public documents. The company set up wells, a water tank, distribution lines, and a sewer disposal system.  But in 2000, the board of county commissioners established a general improvement district, a legal mechanism for providing municipal services in certain parts of the state, to manage electricity and then water within the center. It, in turn, hired TRI Water and Sewer as the operating company. As of its 2020 service plan, the general improvement district held permits for nearly 5,300 acre-feet of groundwater, “which can be pumped from well fields within the service area and used for new growth as it occurs.” The document lists another 2,000 acre-feet per year available from the on-site treatment facility, 1,000 from the Truckee River, and 4,000 more from the effluent pipeline.  Those figures haven’t budged much since, according to Shari Whalen, general manager of the TRI General Improvement District. All told, they add up to more than 4 billion gallons of water per year for all the needs of the industrial park and the tenants there, data centers and otherwise. Whalen says that the amount and quality of water required for any given data center depends on its design, and that those matters are worked out on a case-by-case basis.  When asked if the general improvement district is confident that it has adequate water resources to supply the needs of all the data centers under development, as well as other tenants at the industrial center, she says: “They can’t just show up and build unless they have water resources designated for their projects. We wouldn’t approve a project if it didn’t have those water resources.” Water battles As the region’s water sources have grown more constrained, lining up supplies has become an increasingly high-stakes and controversial business. More than a century ago, the US federal government filed a lawsuit against an assortment of parties pulling water from the Truckee River. The suit would eventually establish that the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe’s legal rights to water for irrigation superseded other claims. But the tribe has been fighting to protect those rights and increase flows from the river ever since, arguing that increasing strains on the watershed from upstream cities and businesses threaten to draw away water reserved for reservation farming, decrease lake levels, and harm native fish. The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe considers the water body and its fish, including the endangered cui-ui and threatened Lahontan cutthroat trout, to be essential parts of its culture, identity, and way of life. The tribe was originally named Cui-ui Ticutta, which translates to cui-ui eaters. The lake continues to provide sustenance as well as business for the tribe and its members, a number of whom operate boat charters and fishing guide services. “It’s completely tied into us as a people,” says Steven Wadsworth, chairman of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. “That is what has sustained us all this time,” he adds. “It’s just who we are. It’s part of our spiritual well-being.” Steven Wadsworth, chairman of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, fears that data centers will divert water that would otherwise reach the tribe’s namesake lake.EMILY NAJERA In recent decades, the tribe has sued the Nevada State Engineer, Washoe County, the federal government, and others for overallocating water rights and endangering the lake’s fish. It also protested the TRI General Improvement District’s applications to draw thousands of additional acre‑feet of groundwater from a basin near the business park. In 2019, the State Engineer’s office rejected those requests, concluding that the basin was already fully appropriated.  More recently, the tribe took issue with the plan to build the pipeline and divert effluent that would have flown into the Truckee, securing an agreement that required the Truckee Meadows Water Authority and other parties to add back several thousand acre‑feet of water to the river.  Whalen says she’s sensitive to Wadsworth’s concerns. But she says that the pipeline promises to keep a growing amount of treated wastewater out of the river, where it could otherwise contribute to rising salt levels in the lake. “I think that the pipeline from [the Truckee Meadows Water Authority] to our system is good for water quality in the river,” she says. “I understand philosophically the concerns about data centers, but the general improvement district is dedicated to working with everyone on the river for regional water-resource planning—and the tribe is no exception.” Water efficiency  In an email, Thompson added that he has “great respect and admiration,” for the tribe and has visited the reservation several times in an effort to help bring industrial or commercial development there.He stressed that all of the business park’s groundwater was “validated by the State Water Engineer,” and that the rights to surface water and effluent were purchased “for fair market value.” During the earlier interview at the industrial center, he and Gilman had both expressed confidence that tenants in the park have adequate water supplies, and that the businesses won’t draw water away from other areas.  “We’re in our own aquifer, our own water basin here,” Thompson said. “You put a straw in the ground here, you’re not going to pull water from Fernley or from Reno or from Silver Springs.” Gilman also stressed that data-center companies have gotten more water efficient in recent years, echoing a point others made as well. “With the newer technology, it’s not much of a worry,” says Sutich, of the Northern Nevada Development Authority. “The technology has come a long way in the last 10 years, which is really giving these guys the opportunity to be good stewards of water usage.” An aerial view of the cooling tower fans at Google’s data center in the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.GOOGLE Indeed, Google’s existing Storey County facility is air-cooled, according to the company’s latest environmental report. The data center withdrew 1.9 million gallons in 2023 but only consumed 200,000 gallons. The rest cycles back into the water system. Google said all the data centers under construction on its campus will also “utilize air-cooling technology.” The company didn’t respond to a question about the scale of its planned expansion in the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, and referred a question about indirect water consumption to NV Energy. The search giant has stressed that it strives to be water efficient across all of its data centers, and decides whether to use air or liquid cooling based on local supply and projected demand, among other variables.Four years ago, the company set a goal of replenishing more water than it consumes by 2030. Locally, it also committed to provide half a million dollars to the National Forest Foundation to improve the Truckee River watershed and reduce wildfire risks.  Microsoft clearly suggested in earlier news reports that the Silver Springs land it purchased around the end of 2022 would be used for a data center. NAI Alliance’s market real estate report identifies that lot, as well as the parcel Microsoft purchased within the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, as data center sites. But the company now declines to specify what it intends to build in the region.  “While the land purchase is public knowledge, we have not disclosed specific details [of] our plans for the land or potential development timelines,” wrote Donna Whitehead, a Microsoft spokesperson, in an email.  Workers have begun grading land inside a fenced off lot within the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.EMILY NAJERA Microsoft has also scaled down its global data-center ambitions, backing away from several projects in recent months amid shifting economic conditions, according to various reports. Whatever it ultimately does or doesn’t build, the company stresses that it has made strides to reduce water consumption in its facilities. Late last year, the company announced that it’s using “chip-level cooling solutions” in data centers, which continually circulate water between the servers and chillers through a closed loop that the company claims doesn’t lose any water to evaporation. It says the design requires only a “nominal increase” in energy compared to its data centers that rely on evaporative water cooling. Others seem to be taking a similar approach. EdgeCore also said its 900,000-square-foot data center at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center will rely on an “air-cooled closed-loop chiller” that doesn’t require water evaporation for cooling.  But some of the companies seem to have taken steps to ensure access to significant amounts of water. Switch, for instance, took a lead role in developing the effluent pipeline. In addition, Tract, which develops campuses on which third-party data centers can build their own facilities, has said it lined up more than 1,100 acre-feet of water rights, the equivalent of nearly 360 million gallons a year.  Apple, Novva, Switch, Tract, and Vantage didn’t respond to inquiries from MIT Technology Review.  Coming conflicts  The suggestion that companies aren’t straining water supplies when they adopt air cooling is, in many cases, akin to saying they’re not responsible for the greenhouse gas produced through their power use simply because it occurs outside of their facilities. In fact, the additional water used at a power plant to meet the increased electricity needs of air cooling may exceed any gains at the data center, Ren, of UC Riverside, says. “That’s actually very likely, because it uses a lot more energy,” he adds. That means that some of the companies developing data centers in and around Storey County may simply hand off their water challenges to other parts of Nevada or neighboring states across the drying American West, depending on where and how the power is generated, Ren says.  Google has said its air-cooled facilities require about 10% more electricity, and its environmental report notes that the Storey County facility is one of its two least-energy-efficient data centers.  Pipes running along Google’s data center campus help the search company cool its servers.GOOGLE Some fear there’s also a growing mismatch between what Nevada’s water permits allow, what’s actually in the ground, and what nature will provide as climate conditions shift. Notably, the groundwater committed to all parties from the Tracy Segment basin—a long-fought-over resource that partially supplies the TRI General Improvement District—already exceeds the “perennial yield.” That refers to the maximum amount that can be drawn out every year without depleting the reservoir over the long term.“If pumping does ultimately exceed the available supply, that means there will be conflict among users,” Roerink, of the Great Basin Water Network, said in an email. “So I have to wonder: Who could be suing whom? Who could be buying out whom? How will the tribe’s rights be defended?” The Truckee Meadows Water Authority, the community-owned utility that manages the water system for Reno and Sparks, said it is planning carefully for the future and remains confident there will be “sufficient resources for decades to come,” at least within its territory east of the industrial center. Storey County, the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District, and the State Engineer’s office didn’t respond to questions or accept interview requests.  Open for business As data center proposals have begun shifting into Northern Nevada’s cities, more local residents and organizations have begun to take notice and express concerns. The regional division of the Sierra Club, for instance, recently sought to overturn the approval of Reno’s first data center, about 20 miles west of the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.  Olivia Tanager, director of the Sierra Club’s Toiyabe Chapter, says the environmental organization was shocked by the projected electricity demands from data centers highlighted in NV Energy’s filings. Nevada’s wild horses are a common sight along USA Parkway, the highway cutting through the industrial business park. EMILY NAJERA “We have increasing interest in understanding the impact that data centers will have to our climate goals, to our grid as a whole, and certainly to our water resources,” she says. “The demands are extraordinary, and we don’t have that amount of water to toy around with.” During a city hall hearing in January that stretched late into the evening, she and a line of residents raised concerns about the water, energy, climate, and employment impacts of AI data centers. At the end, though, the city council upheld the planning department’s approval of the project, on a 5-2 vote. “Welcome to Reno,” Kathleen Taylor, Reno’s vice mayor, said before casting her vote. “We’re open for business.” Where the river ends In late March, I walk alongside Chairman Wadsworth, of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, on the shores of Pyramid Lake, watching a row of fly-fishers in waders cast their lines into the cold waters.  The lake is the largest remnant of Lake Lahontan, an Ice Age inland sea that once stretched across western Nevada and would have submerged present-day Reno. But as the climate warmed, the lapping waters retreated, etching erosional terraces into the mountainsides and exposing tufa deposits around the lake, large formations of porous rock made of calcium-carbonate. That includes the pyramid-shaped island on the eastern shore that inspired the lake’s name. A lone angler stands along the shores of Pyramid Lake. In the decades after the US Reclamation Service completed the Derby Dam in 1905, Pyramid Lake declined another 80 feet and nearby Winnemucca Lake dried up entirely.“We know what happens when water use goes unchecked,” says Wadsworth, gesturing eastward toward the range across the lake, where Winnemucca once filled the next basin over. “Because all we have to do is look over there and see a dry, barren lake bed that used to be full.”In an earlier interview, Wadsworth acknowledged that the world needs data centers. But he argued they should be spread out across the country, not densely clustered in the middle of the Nevada desert. Given the fierce competition for resources up to now, he can’t imagine how there could be enough water to meet the demands of data centers, expanding cities, and other growing businesses without straining the limited local supplies that should, by his accounting, flow to Pyramid Lake. He fears these growing pressures will force the tribe to wage new legal battles to protect their rights and preserve the lake, extending what he refers to as “a century of water wars.” “We have seen the devastating effects of what happens when you mess with Mother Nature,” Wadsworth says. “Part of our spirit has left us. And that’s why we fight so hard to hold on to what’s left.”

Sharks don’t have bones. Instead, their skeletons are made from mineralized cartilage that helps them constantly move through water. To understand the internal “sharkitecture” that helps keep these animals strong and graceful, researchers are putting sharks under the microscope. A new study, published in ACS Nano, found some surprising results. After analyzing shark cartilage, there appear to be two different regions within it. And each appears to have vastly different structures. These structures have shown a resistance to destruction and could inspire strong, flexible materials for the future. Analyzing a Shark Skeleton An X-ray nanotomography reconstruction of the intermedial cartilage of a blacktip shark. The colors indicate the thickness of the struts, with red representing thicker areas and blue indicating thinner ones. (Image Credit: Florida Atlantic University)Sharks are powerful and efficient creatures. Thanks to their skeletal frame, made of mineralized cartilage, their spines can act like a spring, which stores and releases energy as they move their tails, according to a press release. Wanting to better understand how this cartilage helps keep sharks atop the ocean’s food chain, researchers from the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science and the College of Engineering and Computer Science at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), in collaboration with the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) in Germany, and NOAA Fisheries, have analyzed blacktip sharks (Carcharhinus limbatus) and mapped out their internal structure. The team used synchrotron X-ray nanotomography with detailed 3D imaging and in-situ mechanical testing to create the map. The results showed that on a nano level, the blacktip shark’s cartilage had two distinct regions, the corpus calcareum and the intermediale. Though both of these regions are made up of densely packed collagen and bioapatite, they have vastly different internal structures. Strong Microscopic Structures According to the study, in each region, the cartilage is porous and also has thick struts that help the skeleton with strain from multiple directions. This is a key adaptation as sharks are continuously moving and putting pressure on their spines.  Researchers also found microscopic needle-like bioapatite crystals, similar to those in human bones, that were lined up with strands of collagen. This is another factor that gives shark cartilage extra strength and flexibility. Along with that, the research team also noted helical fiber structures, also with collagen, which suggests the cartilage is designed to prevent any cracks from spreading, and help to distribute staring and force. “Nature builds remarkably strong materials by combining minerals with biological polymers, such as collagen – a process known as biomineralization. This strategy allows creatures like shrimp, crustaceans, and even humans to develop tough, resilient skeletons,” said Vivian Merk, senior study author and an assistant professor in the FAU Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, in a press release.“Sharks are a striking example. Their mineral-reinforced spines work like springs, flexing and storing energy as they swim. By learning how they build such tough yet adaptable skeletons, we hope to inspire the design of next-generation materials,” Merk added in the release. Shark Inspiration for MaterialsThe research team applied pressure to microscopic pieces of the shark’s vertebrae and found deformations, smaller than one micrometer. The team only noticed fractures in the vertebrae after a second round of pressure was applied. But even then, the fractures were only found within one mineralized plane, proving how strong the material was. “After hundreds of millions of years of evolution, we can now finally see how shark cartilage works at the nanoscale – and learn from them,” said Marianne Porter, study co-author and an associate professor in the FAU Department of Biological Sciences, in a press release. “We’re discovering how tiny mineral structures and collagen fibers come together to create a material that’s both strong and flexible, perfectly adapted for a shark’s powerful swimming. These insights could help us design better materials by following nature’s blueprint,” Porter added in the release.Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:A graduate of UW-Whitewater, Monica Cull wrote for several organizations, including one that focused on bees and the natural world, before coming to Discover Magazine. Her current work also appears on her travel blog and Common State Magazine. Her love of science came from watching PBS shows as a kid with her mom and spending too much time binging Doctor Who.

In the high desert east of Reno, Nevada, construction crews are flattening the golden foothills of the Virginia Range, laying the foundations of a data center city. Google, Tract, Switch, EdgeCore, Novva, Vantage, and PowerHouse are all operating, building, or expanding huge facilities within the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, a business park bigger than the city of Detroit.  This story is a part of MIT Technology Review’s series “Power Hungry: AI and our energy future,” on the energy demands and carbon costs of the artificial-intelligence revolution. Meanwhile, Microsoft acquired more than 225 acres of undeveloped property within the center and an even larger plot in nearby Silver Springs, Nevada. Apple is expanding its data center, located just across the Truckee River from the industrial park. OpenAI has said it’s considering building a data center in Nevada as well. The corporate race to amass computing resources to train and run artificial intelligence models and store information in the cloud has sparked a data center boom in the desert—just far enough away from Nevada’s communities to elude wide notice and, some fear, adequate scrutiny.  Switch, a data center company based in Las Vegas, says the full build-out of its campus at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center could exceed seven million square feet.EMILY NAJERA The full scale and potential environmental impacts of the developments aren’t known, because the footprint, energy needs, and water requirements are often closely guarded corporate secrets. Most of the companies didn’t respond to inquiries from MIT Technology Review, or declined to provide additional information about the projects.  But there’s “a whole lot of construction going on,” says Kris Thompson, who served as the longtime project manager for the industrial center before stepping down late last year. “The last number I heard was 13 million square feet under construction right now, which is massive.” Indeed, it’s the equivalent of almost five Empire State Buildings laid out flat. In addition, public filings from NV Energy, the state’s near-monopoly utility, reveal that a dozen data-center projects, mostly in this area, have requested nearly six gigawatts of electricity capacity within the next decade.  That would make the greater Reno area—the biggest little city in the world—one of the largest data-center markets around the globe. It would also require expanding the state’s power sector by about 40%, all for a single industry in an explosive growth stage that may, or may not, prove sustainable. The energy needs, in turn, suggest those projects could consume billions of gallons of water per year, according to an analysis conducted for this story.  Construction crews are busy building data centers throughout the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.EMILY NAJERA The build-out of a dense cluster of energy and water-hungry data centers in a small stretch of the nation’s driest state, where climate change is driving up temperatures faster than anywhere else in the country, has begun to raise alarms among water experts, environmental groups, and residents. That includes members of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, whose namesake water body lies within their reservation and marks the end point of the Truckee River, the region’s main source of water. Much of Nevada has suffered through severe drought conditions for years, farmers and communities are drawing down many of the state’s groundwater reservoirs faster than they can be refilled, and global warming is sucking more and more moisture out of the region’s streams, shrubs, and soils. “Telling entities that they can come in and stick more straws in the ground for data centers is raising a lot of questions about sound management,” says Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network, a nonprofit that works to protect water resources throughout Nevada and Utah.  “We just don’t want to be in a situation where the tail is wagging the dog,” he later added, “where this demand for data centers is driving water policy.” Luring data centers In the late 1850s, the mountains southeast of Reno began enticing prospectors from across the country, who hoped to strike silver or gold in the famed Comstock Lode. But Storey County had few residents or economic prospects by the late 1990s, around the time when Don Roger Norman, a media-shy real estate speculator, spotted a new opportunity in the sagebrush-covered hills.  He began buying up tens of thousands of acres of land for tens of millions of dollars and lining up development approvals to lure industrial projects to what became the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center. His partners included Lance Gilman, a cowboy-hat-wearing real estate broker, who later bought the nearby Mustang Ranch brothel and won a seat as a county commissioner. In 1999, the county passed an ordinance that preapproves companies to develop most types of commercial and industrial projects across the business park, cutting months to years off the development process. That helped cinch deals with a flock of tenants looking to build big projects fast, including Walmart, Tesla, and Redwood Materials. Now the promise of fast permits is helping to draw data centers by the gigawatt. On a clear, cool January afternoon, Brian Armon, a commercial real estate broker who leads the industrial practices group at NAI Alliance, takes me on a tour of the projects around the region, which mostly entails driving around the business center. Lance Gilman, a local real estate broker, helped to develop the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center and land some of its largest tenants.GREGG SEGAL After pulling off Interstate 80 onto USA Parkway, he points out the cranes, earthmovers, and riprap foundations, where a variety of data centers are under construction. Deeper into the industrial park, Armon pulls up near Switch’s long, low, arched-roof facility, which sits on a terrace above cement walls and security gates. The Las Vegas–based company says the first phase of its data center campus encompasses more than a million square feet, and that the full build-out will cover seven times that space.  Over the next hill, we turn around in Google’s parking lot. Cranes, tents, framing, and construction equipment extend behind the company’s existing data center, filling much of the 1,210-acre lot that the search engine giant acquired in 2017. Last August, during an event at the University of Nevada, Reno, the company announced it would spend $400 million to expand the data center campus along with another one in Las Vegas. Thompson says that the development company, Tahoe Reno Industrial LLC, has now sold off every parcel of developable land within the park (although several lots are available for resale following the failed gamble of one crypto tenant). When I ask Armon what’s attracting all the data centers here, he starts with the fast approvals but cites a list of other lures as well: The inexpensive land. NV Energy’s willingness to strike deals to supply relatively low-cost electricity. Cool nighttime and winter temperatures, as far as American deserts go, which reduce the energy and water needs. The proximity to tech hubs such as Silicon Valley, which cuts latency for applications in which milliseconds matter. And the lack of natural disasters that could shut down the facilities, at least for the most part. “We are high in seismic activity,” he says. “But everything else is good. We’re not going to have a tornado or flood or a devastating wildfire.” Then there’s the generous tax policies.In 2023, Novva, a Utah-based data center company, announced plans to build a 300,000-square-foot facility within the industrial business park. Nevada doesn’t charge corporate income tax, and it has also enacted deep tax cuts specifically for data centers that set up shop in the state. That includes abatements of up to 75% on property tax for a decade or two—and nearly as much of a bargain on the sales and use taxes applied to equipment purchased for the facilities. Data centers don’t require many permanent workers to run the operations, but the projects have created thousands of construction jobs. They’re also helping to diversify the region’s economy beyond casinos and generating tax windfalls for the state, counties, and cities, says Jeff Sutich, executive director of the Northern Nevada Development Authority. Indeed, just three data-center projects, developed by Apple, Google, and Vantage, will produce nearly half a billion dollars in tax revenue for Nevada, even with those generous abatements, according to the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development. The question is whether the benefits of data centers are worth the tradeoffs for Nevadans, given the public health costs, greenhouse-gas emissions, energy demands, and water strains. The rain shadow The Sierra Nevada’s granite peaks trace the eastern edge of California, forcing Pacific Ocean winds to rise and cool. That converts water vapor in the air into the rain and snow that fill the range’s tributaries, rivers, and lakes.  But the same meteorological phenomenon casts a rain shadow over much of neighboring Nevada, forming an arid expanse known as the Great Basin Desert. The state receives about 10 inches of precipitation a year, about a third of the national average. The Truckee River draws from the melting Sierra snowpack at the edge of Lake Tahoe, cascades down the range, and snakes through the flatlands of Reno and Sparks. It forks at the Derby Dam, a Reclamation Act project a few miles from the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, which diverts water to a farming region further east while allowing the rest to continue north toward Pyramid Lake.  Along the way, an engineered system of reservoirs, canals, and treatment plants divert, store, and release water from the river, supplying businesses, cities, towns, and native tribes across the region. But Nevada’s population and economy are expanding, creating more demands on these resources even as they become more constrained.  The Truckee River, which originates at Lake Tahoe and terminates at Pyramid Lake, is the major water source for cities, towns, and farms across northwestern Nevada.EMILY NAJERA Throughout much of the 2020s the state has suffered through one of the hottest and most widespread droughts on record, extending two decades of abnormally dry conditions across the American West. Some scientists fear it may constitute an emerging megadrought.  About 50% of Nevada currently faces moderate to exceptional drought conditions. In addition, more than half of the state’s hundreds of groundwater basins are already “over-appropriated,” meaning the water rights on paper exceed the levels believed to be underground.  It’s not clear if climate change will increase or decrease the state’s rainfall levels, on balance. But precipitation patterns are expected to become more erratic, whiplashing between short periods of intense rainfall and more-frequent, extended, or severe droughts.  In addition, more precipitation will fall as rain rather than snow, shortening the Sierra snow season by weeks to months over the coming decades.  “In the extreme case, at the end of the century, that’s pretty much all of winter,” says Sean McKenna, executive director of hydrologic sciences at the Desert Research Institute, a research division of the Nevada System of Higher Education. That loss will undermine an essential function of the Sierra snowpack: reliably delivering water to farmers and cities when it’s most needed in the spring and summer, across both Nevada and California.  These shifting conditions will require the region to develop better ways to store, preserve, and recycle the water it does get, McKenna says. Northern Nevada’s cities, towns, and agencies will also need to carefully evaluate and plan for the collective impacts of continuing growth and development on the interconnected water system, particularly when it comes to water-hungry projects like data centers, he adds. “We can’t consider each of these as a one-off, without considering that there may be tens or dozens of these in the next 15 years,” McKenna says.Thirsty data centers Data centers suck up water in two main ways. As giant rooms of server racks process information and consume energy, they generate heat that must be shunted away to prevent malfunctions and damage to the equipment. The processing units optimized for training and running AI models often draw more electricity and, in turn, produce more heat. To keep things cool, more and more data centers have turned to liquid cooling systems that don’t need as much electricity as fan cooling or air-conditioning. These often rely on water to absorb heat and transfer it to outdoor cooling towers, where much of the moisture evaporates. Microsoft’s US data centers, for instance, could have directly evaporated nearly 185,000 gallons of “clean freshwater” in the course of training OpenAI’s GPT-3 large language model, according to a 2023 preprint study led by researchers at the University of California, Riverside. (The research has since been peer-reviewed and is awaiting publication.) What’s less appreciated, however, is that the larger data-center drain on water generally occurs indirectly, at the power plants generating extra electricity for the turbocharged AI sector. These facilities, in turn, require more water to cool down equipment, among other purposes. You have to add up both uses “to reflect the true water cost of data centers,” says Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Riverside and coauthor of the study. Ren estimates that the 12 data-center projects listed in NV Energy’s report would directly consume between 860 million gallons and 5.7 billion gallons a year, based on the requested electricity capacity. (“Consumed” here means the water is evaporated, not merely withdrawn and returned to the engineered water system.) The indirect water drain associated with electricity generation for those operations could add up to 15.5 billion gallons, based on the average consumption of the regional grid. The exact water figures would depend on shifting climate conditions, the type of cooling systems each data center uses, and the mix of power sources that supply the facilities. Solar power, which provides roughly a quarter of Nevada’s power, requires relatively little water to operate, for instance. But natural-gas plants, which generate about 56%, withdraw 2,803 gallons per megawatt-hour on average, according to the Energy Information Administration.  Geothermal plants, which produce about 10% of the state’s electricity by cycling water through hot rocks, generally consume less water than fossil fuel plants do but often require more water than other renewables, according to some research.  But here too, the water usage varies depending on the type of geothermal plant in question. Google has lined up several deals to partially power its data centers through Fervo Energy, which has helped to commercialize an emerging approach that injects water under high pressure to fracture rock and form wells deep below the surface.  The company stresses that it doesn’t evaporate water for cooling and that it relies on brackish groundwater, not fresh water, to develop and run its plants. In a recent post, Fervo noted that its facilities consume significantly less water per megawatt-hour than coal, nuclear, or natural-gas plants do. Part of NV Energy’s proposed plan to meet growing electricity demands in Nevada includes developing several natural-gas peaking units, adding more than one gigawatt of solar power and installing another gigawatt of battery storage. It's also forging ahead with a more than $4 billion transmission project. But the company didn’t respond to questions concerning how it will supply all of the gigawatts of additional electricity requested by data centers, if the construction of those power plants will increase consumer rates, or how much water those facilities are expected to consume. NV Energy operates a transmission line, substation, and power plant in or around the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.EMILY NAJERA “NV Energy teams work diligently on our long-term planning to make investments in our infrastructure to serve new customers and the continued growth in the state without putting existing customers at risk,” the company said in a statement. An added challenge is that data centers need to run around the clock. That will often compel utilities to develop new electricity-generating sources that can run nonstop as well, as natural-gas, geothermal, or nuclear plants do, says Emily Grubert, an associate professor of sustainable energy policy at the University of Notre Dame, who has studied the relative water consumption of electricity sources.  “You end up with the water-intensive resources looking more important,” she adds. Even if NV Energy and the companies developing data centers do strive to power them through sources with relatively low water needs, “we only have so much ability to add six gigawatts to Nevada’s grid,” Grubert explains. “What you do will never be system-neutral, because it’s such a big number.” Securing supplies On a mid-February morning, I meet TRI’s Thompson and Don Gilman, Lance Gilman’s son, at the Storey County offices, located within the industrial center.  “I’m just a country boy who sells dirt,” Gilman, also a real estate broker, says by way of introduction.  We climb into his large SUV and drive to a reservoir in the heart of the industrial park, filled nearly to the lip.  Thompson explains that much of the water comes from an on-site treatment facility that filters waste fluids from companies in the park. In addition, tens of millions of gallons of treated effluent will also likely flow into the tank this year from the Truckee Meadows Water Authority Reclamation Facility, near the border of Reno and Sparks. That’s thanks to a 16-mile pipeline that the developers, the water authority, several tenants, and various local cities and agencies partnered to build, through a project that began in 2021. “Our general improvement district is furnishing that water to tech companies here in the park as we speak,” Thompson says. “That helps preserve the precious groundwater, so that is an environmental feather in the cap for these data centers. They are focused on environmental excellence.” The reservoir within the industrial business park provides water to data centers and other tenants.EMILY NAJERA But data centers often need drinking-quality water—not wastewater merely treated to irrigation standards—for evaporative cooling, “to avoid pipe clogs and/or bacterial growth,” the UC Riverside study notes. For instance, Google says its data centers withdrew about 7.7 billion gallons of water in 2023, and nearly 6 billion of those gallons were potable.  Tenants in the industrial park can potentially obtain access to water from the ground and the Truckee River, as well. From early on, the master developers worked hard to secure permits to water sources, since they are nearly as precious as development entitlements to companies hoping to build projects in the desert. Initially, the development company controlled a private business, the TRI Water and Sewer Company, that provided those services to the business park’s tenants, according to public documents. The company set up wells, a water tank, distribution lines, and a sewer disposal system.  But in 2000, the board of county commissioners established a general improvement district, a legal mechanism for providing municipal services in certain parts of the state, to manage electricity and then water within the center. It, in turn, hired TRI Water and Sewer as the operating company. As of its 2020 service plan, the general improvement district held permits for nearly 5,300 acre-feet of groundwater, “which can be pumped from well fields within the service area and used for new growth as it occurs.” The document lists another 2,000 acre-feet per year available from the on-site treatment facility, 1,000 from the Truckee River, and 4,000 more from the effluent pipeline.  Those figures haven’t budged much since, according to Shari Whalen, general manager of the TRI General Improvement District. All told, they add up to more than 4 billion gallons of water per year for all the needs of the industrial park and the tenants there, data centers and otherwise. Whalen says that the amount and quality of water required for any given data center depends on its design, and that those matters are worked out on a case-by-case basis.  When asked if the general improvement district is confident that it has adequate water resources to supply the needs of all the data centers under development, as well as other tenants at the industrial center, she says: “They can’t just show up and build unless they have water resources designated for their projects. We wouldn’t approve a project if it didn’t have those water resources.” Water As the region’s water sources have grown more constrained, lining up supplies has become an increasingly high-stakes and controversial business. More than a century ago, the US federal government filed a lawsuit against an assortment of parties pulling water from the Truckee River. The suit would eventually establish that the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe’s legal rights to water for irrigation superseded other claims. But the tribe has been fighting to protect those rights and increase flows from the river ever since, arguing that increasing strains on the watershed from upstream cities and businesses threaten to draw away water reserved for reservation farming, decrease lake levels, and harm native fish. The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe considers the water body and its fish, including the endangered cui-ui and threatened Lahontan cutthroat trout, to be essential parts of its culture, identity, and way of life. The tribe was originally named Cui-ui Ticutta, which translates to cui-ui eaters. The lake continues to provide sustenance as well as business for the tribe and its members, a number of whom operate boat charters and fishing guide services. “It’s completely tied into us as a people,” says Steven Wadsworth, chairman of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. “That is what has sustained us all this time,” he adds. “It’s just who we are. It’s part of our spiritual well-being.” Steven Wadsworth, chairman of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, fears that data centers will divert water that would otherwise reach the tribe’s namesake lake.EMILY NAJERA In recent decades, the tribe has sued the Nevada State Engineer, Washoe County, the federal government, and others for overallocating water rights and endangering the lake’s fish. It also protested the TRI General Improvement District’s applications to draw thousands of additional acre‑feet of groundwater from a basin near the business park. In 2019, the State Engineer’s office rejected those requests, concluding that the basin was already fully appropriated.  More recently, the tribe took issue with the plan to build the pipeline and divert effluent that would have flown into the Truckee, securing an agreement that required the Truckee Meadows Water Authority and other parties to add back several thousand acre‑feet of water to the river.  Whalen says she’s sensitive to Wadsworth’s concerns. But she says that the pipeline promises to keep a growing amount of treated wastewater out of the river, where it could otherwise contribute to rising salt levels in the lake. “I think that the pipeline from [the Truckee Meadows Water Authority] to our system is good for water quality in the river,” she says. “I understand philosophically the concerns about data centers, but the general improvement district is dedicated to working with everyone on the river for regional water-resource planning—and the tribe is no exception.” Water efficiency  In an email, Thompson added that he has “great respect and admiration,” for the tribe and has visited the reservation several times in an effort to help bring industrial or commercial development there. He stressed that all of the business park’s groundwater was “validated by the State Water Engineer,” and that the rights to surface water and effluent were purchased “for fair market value.”During the earlier interview at the industrial center, he and Gilman had both expressed confidence that tenants in the park have adequate water supplies, and that the businesses won’t draw water away from other areas.  “We’re in our own aquifer, our own water basin here,” Thompson said. “You put a straw in the ground here, you’re not going to pull water from Fernley or from Reno or from Silver Springs.” Gilman also stressed that data-center companies have gotten more water efficient in recent years, echoing a point others made as well. “With the newer technology, it’s not much of a worry,” says Sutich, of the Northern Nevada Development Authority. “The technology has come a long way in the last 10 years, which is really giving these guys the opportunity to be good stewards of water usage.” An aerial view of the cooling tower fans at Google’s data center in the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.GOOGLE Indeed, Google’s existing Storey County facility is air-cooled, according to the company’s latest environmental report. The data center withdrew 1.9 million gallons in 2023 but only consumed 200,000 gallons. The rest cycles back into the water system. Google said all the data centers under construction on its campus will also “utilize air-cooling technology.” The company didn’t respond to a question about the scale of its planned expansion in the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, and referred a question about indirect water consumption to NV Energy. The search giant has stressed that it strives to be water efficient across all of its data centers, and decides whether to use air or liquid cooling based on local supply and projected demand, among other variables. Four years ago, the company set a goal of replenishing more water than it consumes by 2030. Locally, it also committed to provide half a million dollars to the National Forest Foundation to improve the Truckee River watershed and reduce wildfire risks.  Microsoft clearly suggested in earlier news reports that the Silver Springs land it purchased around the end of 2022 would be used for a data center. NAI Alliance’s market real estate report identifies that lot, as well as the parcel Microsoft purchased within the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, as data center sites. But the company now declines to specify what it intends to build in the region.  “While the land purchase is public knowledge, we have not disclosed specific details [of] our plans for the land or potential development timelines,” wrote Donna Whitehead, a Microsoft spokesperson, in an email.  Workers have begun grading land inside a fenced off lot within the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.EMILY NAJERA Microsoft has also scaled down its global data-center ambitions, backing away from several projects in recent months amid shifting economic conditions, according to various reports. Whatever it ultimately does or doesn’t build, the company stresses that it has made strides to reduce water consumption in its facilities. Late last year, the company announced that it’s using “chip-level cooling solutions” in data centers, which continually circulate water between the servers and chillers through a closed loop that the company claims doesn’t lose any water to evaporation. It says the design requires only a “nominal increase” in energy compared to its data centers that rely on evaporative water cooling. Others seem to be taking a similar approach. EdgeCore also said its 900,000-square-foot data center at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center will rely on an “air-cooled closed-loop chiller” that doesn’t require water evaporation for cooling.  But some of the companies seem to have taken steps to ensure access to significant amounts of water. Switch, for instance, took a lead role in developing the effluent pipeline. In addition, Tract, which develops campuses on which third-party data centers can build their own facilities, has said it lined up more than 1,100 acre-feet of water rights, the equivalent of nearly 360 million gallons a year.  Apple, Novva, Switch, Tract, and Vantage didn’t respond to inquiries from MIT Technology Review.  Coming conflicts  The suggestion that companies aren’t straining water supplies when they adopt air cooling is, in many cases, akin to saying they’re not responsible for the greenhouse gas produced through their power use simply because it occurs outside of their facilities. In fact, the additional water used at a power plant to meet the increased electricity needs of air cooling may exceed any gains at the data center, Ren, of UC Riverside, says. “That’s actually very likely, because it uses a lot more energy,” he adds. That means that some of the companies developing data centers in and around Storey County may simply hand off their water challenges to other parts of Nevada or neighboring states across the drying American West, depending on where and how the power is generated, Ren says.  Google has said its air-cooled facilities require about 10% more electricity, and its environmental report notes that the Storey County facility is one of its two least-energy-efficient data centers.  Pipes running along Google’s data center campus help the search company cool its servers.GOOGLE Some fear there’s also a growing mismatch between what Nevada’s water permits allow, what’s actually in the ground, and what nature will provide as climate conditions shift. Notably, the groundwater committed to all parties from the Tracy Segment basin—a long-fought-over resource that partially supplies the TRI General Improvement District—already exceeds the “perennial yield.” That refers to the maximum amount that can be drawn out every year without depleting the reservoir over the long term. “If pumping does ultimately exceed the available supply, that means there will be conflict among users,” Roerink, of the Great Basin Water Network, said in an email. “So I have to wonder: Who could be suing whom? Who could be buying out whom? How will the tribe’s rights be defended?”The Truckee Meadows Water Authority, the community-owned utility that manages the water system for Reno and Sparks, said it is planning carefully for the future and remains confident there will be “sufficient resources for decades to come,” at least within its territory east of the industrial center. Storey County, the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District, and the State Engineer’s office didn’t respond to questions or accept interview requests.  Open for business As data center proposals have begun shifting into Northern Nevada’s cities, more local residents and organizations have begun to take notice and express concerns. The regional division of the Sierra Club, for instance, recently sought to overturn the approval of Reno’s first data center, about 20 miles west of the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.  Olivia Tanager, director of the Sierra Club’s Toiyabe Chapter, says the environmental organization was shocked by the projected electricity demands from data centers highlighted in NV Energy’s filings. Nevada’s wild horses are a common sight along USA Parkway, the highway cutting through the industrial business park. EMILY NAJERA “We have increasing interest in understanding the impact that data centers will have to our climate goals, to our grid as a whole, and certainly to our water resources,” she says. “The demands are extraordinary, and we don’t have that amount of water to toy around with.” During a city hall hearing in January that stretched late into the evening, she and a line of residents raised concerns about the water, energy, climate, and employment impacts of AI data centers. At the end, though, the city council upheld the planning department’s approval of the project, on a 5-2 vote. “Welcome to Reno,” Kathleen Taylor, Reno’s vice mayor, said before casting her vote. “We’re open for business.” Where the river ends In late March, I walk alongside Chairman Wadsworth, of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, on the shores of Pyramid Lake, watching a row of fly-fishers in waders cast their lines into the cold waters.  The lake is the largest remnant of Lake Lahontan, an Ice Age inland sea that once stretched across western Nevada and would have submerged present-day Reno. But as the climate warmed, the lapping waters retreated, etching erosional terraces into the mountainsides and exposing tufa deposits around the lake, large formations of porous rock made of calcium-carbonate. That includes the pyramid-shaped island on the eastern shore that inspired the lake’s name. A lone angler stands along the shores of Pyramid Lake. In the decades after the US Reclamation Service completed the Derby Dam in 1905, Pyramid Lake declined another 80 feet and nearby Winnemucca Lake dried up entirely. “We know what happens when water use goes unchecked,” says Wadsworth, gesturing eastward toward the range across the lake, where Winnemucca once filled the next basin over. “Because all we have to do is look over there and see a dry, barren lake bed that used to be full.”In an earlier interview, Wadsworth acknowledged that the world needs data centers. But he argued they should be spread out across the country, not densely clustered in the middle of the Nevada desert.Given the fierce competition for resources up to now, he can’t imagine how there could be enough water to meet the demands of data centers, expanding cities, and other growing businesses without straining the limited local supplies that should, by his accounting, flow to Pyramid Lake. He fears these growing pressures will force the tribe to wage new legal battles to protect their rights and preserve the lake, extending what he refers to as “a century of water wars.” “We have seen the devastating effects of what happens when you mess with Mother Nature,” Wadsworth says. “Part of our spirit has left us. And that’s why we fight so hard to hold on to what’s left.”

In the high desert east of Reno, Nevada, construction crews are flattening the golden foothills of the Virginia Range, laying the foundations of a data center city. Google, Tract, Switch, EdgeCore, Novva, Vantage, and PowerHouse are all operating, building, or expanding huge facilities within the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, a business park bigger than the city of Detroit.  This story is a part of MIT Technology Review’s series “Power Hungry: AI and our energy future,” on the energy demands and carbon costs of the artificial-intelligence revolution. Meanwhile, Microsoft acquired more than 225 acres of undeveloped property within the center and an even larger plot in nearby Silver Springs, Nevada. Apple is expanding its data center, located just across the Truckee River from the industrial park. OpenAI has said it’s considering building a data center in Nevada as well. The corporate race to amass computing resources to train and run artificial intelligence models and store information in the cloud has sparked a data center boom in the desert—just far enough away from Nevada’s communities to elude wide notice and, some fear, adequate scrutiny.  Switch, a data center company based in Las Vegas, says the full build-out of its campus at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center could exceed seven million square feet.EMILY NAJERA The full scale and potential environmental impacts of the developments aren’t known, because the footprint, energy needs, and water requirements are often closely guarded corporate secrets. Most of the companies didn’t respond to inquiries from MIT Technology Review, or declined to provide additional information about the projects.  But there’s “a whole lot of construction going on,” says Kris Thompson, who served as the longtime project manager for the industrial center before stepping down late last year. “The last number I heard was 13 million square feet under construction right now, which is massive.” Indeed, it’s the equivalent of almost five Empire State Buildings laid out flat. In addition, public filings from NV Energy, the state’s near-monopoly utility, reveal that a dozen data-center projects, mostly in this area, have requested nearly six gigawatts of electricity capacity within the next decade.  That would make the greater Reno area—the biggest little city in the world—one of the largest data-center markets around the globe. It would also require expanding the state’s power sector by about 40%, all for a single industry in an explosive growth stage that may, or may not, prove sustainable. The energy needs, in turn, suggest those projects could consume billions of gallons of water per year, according to an analysis conducted for this story.  Construction crews are busy building data centers throughout the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.EMILY NAJERA The build-out of a dense cluster of energy and water-hungry data centers in a small stretch of the nation’s driest state, where climate change is driving up temperatures faster than anywhere else in the country, has begun to raise alarms among water experts, environmental groups, and residents. That includes members of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, whose namesake water body lies within their reservation and marks the end point of the Truckee River, the region’s main source of water. Much of Nevada has suffered through severe drought conditions for years, farmers and communities are drawing down many of the state’s groundwater reservoirs faster than they can be refilled, and global warming is sucking more and more moisture out of the region’s streams, shrubs, and soils. “Telling entities that they can come in and stick more straws in the ground for data centers is raising a lot of questions about sound management,” says Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network, a nonprofit that works to protect water resources throughout Nevada and Utah.  “We just don’t want to be in a situation where the tail is wagging the dog,” he later added, “where this demand for data centers is driving water policy.” Luring data centers In the late 1850s, the mountains southeast of Reno began enticing prospectors from across the country, who hoped to strike silver or gold in the famed Comstock Lode. But Storey County had few residents or economic prospects by the late 1990s, around the time when Don Roger Norman, a media-shy real estate speculator, spotted a new opportunity in the sagebrush-covered hills.  He began buying up tens of thousands of acres of land for tens of millions of dollars and lining up development approvals to lure industrial projects to what became the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center. His partners included Lance Gilman, a cowboy-hat-wearing real estate broker, who later bought the nearby Mustang Ranch brothel and won a seat as a county commissioner. In 1999, the county passed an ordinance that preapproves companies to develop most types of commercial and industrial projects across the business park, cutting months to years off the development process. That helped cinch deals with a flock of tenants looking to build big projects fast, including Walmart, Tesla, and Redwood Materials. Now the promise of fast permits is helping to draw data centers by the gigawatt. On a clear, cool January afternoon, Brian Armon, a commercial real estate broker who leads the industrial practices group at NAI Alliance, takes me on a tour of the projects around the region, which mostly entails driving around the business center. Lance Gilman, a local real estate broker, helped to develop the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center and land some of its largest tenants.GREGG SEGAL After pulling off Interstate 80 onto USA Parkway, he points out the cranes, earthmovers, and riprap foundations, where a variety of data centers are under construction. Deeper into the industrial park, Armon pulls up near Switch’s long, low, arched-roof facility, which sits on a terrace above cement walls and security gates. The Las Vegas–based company says the first phase of its data center campus encompasses more than a million square feet, and that the full build-out will cover seven times that space.  Over the next hill, we turn around in Google’s parking lot. Cranes, tents, framing, and construction equipment extend behind the company’s existing data center, filling much of the 1,210-acre lot that the search engine giant acquired in 2017. Last August, during an event at the University of Nevada, Reno, the company announced it would spend $400 million to expand the data center campus along with another one in Las Vegas. Thompson says that the development company, Tahoe Reno Industrial LLC, has now sold off every parcel of developable land within the park (although several lots are available for resale following the failed gamble of one crypto tenant). When I ask Armon what’s attracting all the data centers here, he starts with the fast approvals but cites a list of other lures as well: The inexpensive land. NV Energy’s willingness to strike deals to supply relatively low-cost electricity. Cool nighttime and winter temperatures, as far as American deserts go, which reduce the energy and water needs. The proximity to tech hubs such as Silicon Valley, which cuts latency for applications in which milliseconds matter. And the lack of natural disasters that could shut down the facilities, at least for the most part. “We are high in seismic activity,” he says. “But everything else is good. We’re not going to have a tornado or flood or a devastating wildfire.” Then there’s the generous tax policies.In 2023, Novva, a Utah-based data center company, announced plans to build a 300,000-square-foot facility within the industrial business park. Nevada doesn’t charge corporate income tax, and it has also enacted deep tax cuts specifically for data centers that set up shop in the state. That includes abatements of up to 75% on property tax for a decade or two—and nearly as much of a bargain on the sales and use taxes applied to equipment purchased for the facilities. Data centers don’t require many permanent workers to run the operations, but the projects have created thousands of construction jobs. They’re also helping to diversify the region’s economy beyond casinos and generating tax windfalls for the state, counties, and cities, says Jeff Sutich, executive director of the Northern Nevada Development Authority. Indeed, just three data-center projects, developed by Apple, Google, and Vantage, will produce nearly half a billion dollars in tax revenue for Nevada, even with those generous abatements, according to the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development. The question is whether the benefits of data centers are worth the tradeoffs for Nevadans, given the public health costs, greenhouse-gas emissions, energy demands, and water strains. The rain shadow The Sierra Nevada’s granite peaks trace the eastern edge of California, forcing Pacific Ocean winds to rise and cool. That converts water vapor in the air into the rain and snow that fill the range’s tributaries, rivers, and lakes.  But the same meteorological phenomenon casts a rain shadow over much of neighboring Nevada, forming an arid expanse known as the Great Basin Desert. The state receives about 10 inches of precipitation a year, about a third of the national average. The Truckee River draws from the melting Sierra snowpack at the edge of Lake Tahoe, cascades down the range, and snakes through the flatlands of Reno and Sparks. It forks at the Derby Dam, a Reclamation Act project a few miles from the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, which diverts water to a farming region further east while allowing the rest to continue north toward Pyramid Lake.  Along the way, an engineered system of reservoirs, canals, and treatment plants divert, store, and release water from the river, supplying businesses, cities, towns, and native tribes across the region. But Nevada’s population and economy are expanding, creating more demands on these resources even as they become more constrained.  The Truckee River, which originates at Lake Tahoe and terminates at Pyramid Lake, is the major water source for cities, towns, and farms across northwestern Nevada.EMILY NAJERA Throughout much of the 2020s the state has suffered through one of the hottest and most widespread droughts on record, extending two decades of abnormally dry conditions across the American West. Some scientists fear it may constitute an emerging megadrought.  About 50% of Nevada currently faces moderate to exceptional drought conditions. In addition, more than half of the state’s hundreds of groundwater basins are already “over-appropriated,” meaning the water rights on paper exceed the levels believed to be underground.  It’s not clear if climate change will increase or decrease the state’s rainfall levels, on balance. But precipitation patterns are expected to become more erratic, whiplashing between short periods of intense rainfall and more-frequent, extended, or severe droughts.  In addition, more precipitation will fall as rain rather than snow, shortening the Sierra snow season by weeks to months over the coming decades.  “In the extreme case, at the end of the century, that’s pretty much all of winter,” says Sean McKenna, executive director of hydrologic sciences at the Desert Research Institute, a research division of the Nevada System of Higher Education. That loss will undermine an essential function of the Sierra snowpack: reliably delivering water to farmers and cities when it’s most needed in the spring and summer, across both Nevada and California.  These shifting conditions will require the region to develop better ways to store, preserve, and recycle the water it does get, McKenna says. Northern Nevada’s cities, towns, and agencies will also need to carefully evaluate and plan for the collective impacts of continuing growth and development on the interconnected water system, particularly when it comes to water-hungry projects like data centers, he adds. “We can’t consider each of these as a one-off, without considering that there may be tens or dozens of these in the next 15 years,” McKenna says.Thirsty data centers Data centers suck up water in two main ways. As giant rooms of server racks process information and consume energy, they generate heat that must be shunted away to prevent malfunctions and damage to the equipment. The processing units optimized for training and running AI models often draw more electricity and, in turn, produce more heat. To keep things cool, more and more data centers have turned to liquid cooling systems that don’t need as much electricity as fan cooling or air-conditioning. These often rely on water to absorb heat and transfer it to outdoor cooling towers, where much of the moisture evaporates. Microsoft’s US data centers, for instance, could have directly evaporated nearly 185,000 gallons of “clean freshwater” in the course of training OpenAI’s GPT-3 large language model, according to a 2023 preprint study led by researchers at the University of California, Riverside. (The research has since been peer-reviewed and is awaiting publication.) What’s less appreciated, however, is that the larger data-center drain on water generally occurs indirectly, at the power plants generating extra electricity for the turbocharged AI sector. These facilities, in turn, require more water to cool down equipment, among other purposes. You have to add up both uses “to reflect the true water cost of data centers,” says Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Riverside and coauthor of the study. Ren estimates that the 12 data-center projects listed in NV Energy’s report would directly consume between 860 million gallons and 5.7 billion gallons a year, based on the requested electricity capacity. (“Consumed” here means the water is evaporated, not merely withdrawn and returned to the engineered water system.) The indirect water drain associated with electricity generation for those operations could add up to 15.5 billion gallons, based on the average consumption of the regional grid. The exact water figures would depend on shifting climate conditions, the type of cooling systems each data center uses, and the mix of power sources that supply the facilities. Solar power, which provides roughly a quarter of Nevada’s power, requires relatively little water to operate, for instance. But natural-gas plants, which generate about 56%, withdraw 2,803 gallons per megawatt-hour on average, according to the Energy Information Administration.  Geothermal plants, which produce about 10% of the state’s electricity by cycling water through hot rocks, generally consume less water than fossil fuel plants do but often require more water than other renewables, according to some research.  But here too, the water usage varies depending on the type of geothermal plant in question. Google has lined up several deals to partially power its data centers through Fervo Energy, which has helped to commercialize an emerging approach that injects water under high pressure to fracture rock and form wells deep below the surface.  The company stresses that it doesn’t evaporate water for cooling and that it relies on brackish groundwater, not fresh water, to develop and run its plants. In a recent post, Fervo noted that its facilities consume significantly less water per megawatt-hour than coal, nuclear, or natural-gas plants do. Part of NV Energy’s proposed plan to meet growing electricity demands in Nevada includes developing several natural-gas peaking units, adding more than one gigawatt of solar power and installing another gigawatt of battery storage. It's also forging ahead with a more than $4 billion transmission project. But the company didn’t respond to questions concerning how it will supply all of the gigawatts of additional electricity requested by data centers, if the construction of those power plants will increase consumer rates, or how much water those facilities are expected to consume. NV Energy operates a transmission line, substation, and power plant in or around the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.EMILY NAJERA “NV Energy teams work diligently on our long-term planning to make investments in our infrastructure to serve new customers and the continued growth in the state without putting existing customers at risk,” the company said in a statement. An added challenge is that data centers need to run around the clock. That will often compel utilities to develop new electricity-generating sources that can run nonstop as well, as natural-gas, geothermal, or nuclear plants do, says Emily Grubert, an associate professor of sustainable energy policy at the University of Notre Dame, who has studied the relative water consumption of electricity sources.  “You end up with the water-intensive resources looking more important,” she adds. Even if NV Energy and the companies developing data centers do strive to power them through sources with relatively low water needs, “we only have so much ability to add six gigawatts to Nevada’s grid,” Grubert explains. “What you do will never be system-neutral, because it’s such a big number.” Securing supplies On a mid-February morning, I meet TRI’s Thompson and Don Gilman, Lance Gilman’s son, at the Storey County offices, located within the industrial center.  “I’m just a country boy who sells dirt,” Gilman, also a real estate broker, says by way of introduction.  We climb into his large SUV and drive to a reservoir in the heart of the industrial park, filled nearly to the lip.  Thompson explains that much of the water comes from an on-site treatment facility that filters waste fluids from companies in the park. In addition, tens of millions of gallons of treated effluent will also likely flow into the tank this year from the Truckee Meadows Water Authority Reclamation Facility, near the border of Reno and Sparks. That’s thanks to a 16-mile pipeline that the developers, the water authority, several tenants, and various local cities and agencies partnered to build, through a project that began in 2021. “Our general improvement district is furnishing that water to tech companies here in the park as we speak,” Thompson says. “That helps preserve the precious groundwater, so that is an environmental feather in the cap for these data centers. They are focused on environmental excellence.” The reservoir within the industrial business park provides water to data centers and other tenants.EMILY NAJERA But data centers often need drinking-quality water—not wastewater merely treated to irrigation standards—for evaporative cooling, “to avoid pipe clogs and/or bacterial growth,” the UC Riverside study notes. For instance, Google says its data centers withdrew about 7.7 billion gallons of water in 2023, and nearly 6 billion of those gallons were potable.  Tenants in the industrial park can potentially obtain access to water from the ground and the Truckee River, as well. From early on, the master developers worked hard to secure permits to water sources, since they are nearly as precious as development entitlements to companies hoping to build projects in the desert. Initially, the development company controlled a private business, the TRI Water and Sewer Company, that provided those services to the business park’s tenants, according to public documents. The company set up wells, a water tank, distribution lines, and a sewer disposal system.  But in 2000, the board of county commissioners established a general improvement district, a legal mechanism for providing municipal services in certain parts of the state, to manage electricity and then water within the center. It, in turn, hired TRI Water and Sewer as the operating company. As of its 2020 service plan, the general improvement district held permits for nearly 5,300 acre-feet of groundwater, “which can be pumped from well fields within the service area and used for new growth as it occurs.” The document lists another 2,000 acre-feet per year available from the on-site treatment facility, 1,000 from the Truckee River, and 4,000 more from the effluent pipeline.  Those figures haven’t budged much since, according to Shari Whalen, general manager of the TRI General Improvement District. All told, they add up to more than 4 billion gallons of water per year for all the needs of the industrial park and the tenants there, data centers and otherwise. Whalen says that the amount and quality of water required for any given data center depends on its design, and that those matters are worked out on a case-by-case basis.  When asked if the general improvement district is confident that it has adequate water resources to supply the needs of all the data centers under development, as well as other tenants at the industrial center, she says: “They can’t just show up and build unless they have water resources designated for their projects. We wouldn’t approve a project if it didn’t have those water resources.” Water As the region’s water sources have grown more constrained, lining up supplies has become an increasingly high-stakes and controversial business. More than a century ago, the US federal government filed a lawsuit against an assortment of parties pulling water from the Truckee River. The suit would eventually establish that the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe’s legal rights to water for irrigation superseded other claims. But the tribe has been fighting to protect those rights and increase flows from the river ever since, arguing that increasing strains on the watershed from upstream cities and businesses threaten to draw away water reserved for reservation farming, decrease lake levels, and harm native fish. The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe considers the water body and its fish, including the endangered cui-ui and threatened Lahontan cutthroat trout, to be essential parts of its culture, identity, and way of life. The tribe was originally named Cui-ui Ticutta, which translates to cui-ui eaters. The lake continues to provide sustenance as well as business for the tribe and its members, a number of whom operate boat charters and fishing guide services. “It’s completely tied into us as a people,” says Steven Wadsworth, chairman of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. “That is what has sustained us all this time,” he adds. “It’s just who we are. It’s part of our spiritual well-being.” Steven Wadsworth, chairman of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, fears that data centers will divert water that would otherwise reach the tribe’s namesake lake.EMILY NAJERA In recent decades, the tribe has sued the Nevada State Engineer, Washoe County, the federal government, and others for overallocating water rights and endangering the lake’s fish. It also protested the TRI General Improvement District’s applications to draw thousands of additional acre‑feet of groundwater from a basin near the business park. In 2019, the State Engineer’s office rejected those requests, concluding that the basin was already fully appropriated.  More recently, the tribe took issue with the plan to build the pipeline and divert effluent that would have flown into the Truckee, securing an agreement that required the Truckee Meadows Water Authority and other parties to add back several thousand acre‑feet of water to the river.  Whalen says she’s sensitive to Wadsworth’s concerns. But she says that the pipeline promises to keep a growing amount of treated wastewater out of the river, where it could otherwise contribute to rising salt levels in the lake. “I think that the pipeline from [the Truckee Meadows Water Authority] to our system is good for water quality in the river,” she says. “I understand philosophically the concerns about data centers, but the general improvement district is dedicated to working with everyone on the river for regional water-resource planning—and the tribe is no exception.” Water efficiency  In an email, Thompson added that he has “great respect and admiration,” for the tribe and has visited the reservation several times in an effort to help bring industrial or commercial development there. He stressed that all of the business park’s groundwater was “validated by the State Water Engineer,” and that the rights to surface water and effluent were purchased “for fair market value.”During the earlier interview at the industrial center, he and Gilman had both expressed confidence that tenants in the park have adequate water supplies, and that the businesses won’t draw water away from other areas.  “We’re in our own aquifer, our own water basin here,” Thompson said. “You put a straw in the ground here, you’re not going to pull water from Fernley or from Reno or from Silver Springs.” Gilman also stressed that data-center companies have gotten more water efficient in recent years, echoing a point others made as well. “With the newer technology, it’s not much of a worry,” says Sutich, of the Northern Nevada Development Authority. “The technology has come a long way in the last 10 years, which is really giving these guys the opportunity to be good stewards of water usage.” An aerial view of the cooling tower fans at Google’s data center in the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.GOOGLE Indeed, Google’s existing Storey County facility is air-cooled, according to the company’s latest environmental report. The data center withdrew 1.9 million gallons in 2023 but only consumed 200,000 gallons. The rest cycles back into the water system. Google said all the data centers under construction on its campus will also “utilize air-cooling technology.” The company didn’t respond to a question about the scale of its planned expansion in the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, and referred a question about indirect water consumption to NV Energy. The search giant has stressed that it strives to be water efficient across all of its data centers, and decides whether to use air or liquid cooling based on local supply and projected demand, among other variables. Four years ago, the company set a goal of replenishing more water than it consumes by 2030. Locally, it also committed to provide half a million dollars to the National Forest Foundation to improve the Truckee River watershed and reduce wildfire risks.  Microsoft clearly suggested in earlier news reports that the Silver Springs land it purchased around the end of 2022 would be used for a data center. NAI Alliance’s market real estate report identifies that lot, as well as the parcel Microsoft purchased within the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, as data center sites. But the company now declines to specify what it intends to build in the region.  “While the land purchase is public knowledge, we have not disclosed specific details [of] our plans for the land or potential development timelines,” wrote Donna Whitehead, a Microsoft spokesperson, in an email.  Workers have begun grading land inside a fenced off lot within the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.EMILY NAJERA Microsoft has also scaled down its global data-center ambitions, backing away from several projects in recent months amid shifting economic conditions, according to various reports. Whatever it ultimately does or doesn’t build, the company stresses that it has made strides to reduce water consumption in its facilities. Late last year, the company announced that it’s using “chip-level cooling solutions” in data centers, which continually circulate water between the servers and chillers through a closed loop that the company claims doesn’t lose any water to evaporation. It says the design requires only a “nominal increase” in energy compared to its data centers that rely on evaporative water cooling. Others seem to be taking a similar approach. EdgeCore also said its 900,000-square-foot data center at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center will rely on an “air-cooled closed-loop chiller” that doesn’t require water evaporation for cooling.  But some of the companies seem to have taken steps to ensure access to significant amounts of water. Switch, for instance, took a lead role in developing the effluent pipeline. In addition, Tract, which develops campuses on which third-party data centers can build their own facilities, has said it lined up more than 1,100 acre-feet of water rights, the equivalent of nearly 360 million gallons a year.  Apple, Novva, Switch, Tract, and Vantage didn’t respond to inquiries from MIT Technology Review.  Coming conflicts  The suggestion that companies aren’t straining water supplies when they adopt air cooling is, in many cases, akin to saying they’re not responsible for the greenhouse gas produced through their power use simply because it occurs outside of their facilities. In fact, the additional water used at a power plant to meet the increased electricity needs of air cooling may exceed any gains at the data center, Ren, of UC Riverside, says. “That’s actually very likely, because it uses a lot more energy,” he adds. That means that some of the companies developing data centers in and around Storey County may simply hand off their water challenges to other parts of Nevada or neighboring states across the drying American West, depending on where and how the power is generated, Ren says.  Google has said its air-cooled facilities require about 10% more electricity, and its environmental report notes that the Storey County facility is one of its two least-energy-efficient data centers.  Pipes running along Google’s data center campus help the search company cool its servers.GOOGLE Some fear there’s also a growing mismatch between what Nevada’s water permits allow, what’s actually in the ground, and what nature will provide as climate conditions shift. Notably, the groundwater committed to all parties from the Tracy Segment basin—a long-fought-over resource that partially supplies the TRI General Improvement District—already exceeds the “perennial yield.” That refers to the maximum amount that can be drawn out every year without depleting the reservoir over the long term. “If pumping does ultimately exceed the available supply, that means there will be conflict among users,” Roerink, of the Great Basin Water Network, said in an email. “So I have to wonder: Who could be suing whom? Who could be buying out whom? How will the tribe’s rights be defended?”The Truckee Meadows Water Authority, the community-owned utility that manages the water system for Reno and Sparks, said it is planning carefully for the future and remains confident there will be “sufficient resources for decades to come,” at least within its territory east of the industrial center. Storey County, the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District, and the State Engineer’s office didn’t respond to questions or accept interview requests.  Open for business As data center proposals have begun shifting into Northern Nevada’s cities, more local residents and organizations have begun to take notice and express concerns. The regional division of the Sierra Club, for instance, recently sought to overturn the approval of Reno’s first data center, about 20 miles west of the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.  Olivia Tanager, director of the Sierra Club’s Toiyabe Chapter, says the environmental organization was shocked by the projected electricity demands from data centers highlighted in NV Energy’s filings. Nevada’s wild horses are a common sight along USA Parkway, the highway cutting through the industrial business park. EMILY NAJERA “We have increasing interest in understanding the impact that data centers will have to our climate goals, to our grid as a whole, and certainly to our water resources,” she says. “The demands are extraordinary, and we don’t have that amount of water to toy around with.” During a city hall hearing in January that stretched late into the evening, she and a line of residents raised concerns about the water, energy, climate, and employment impacts of AI data centers. At the end, though, the city council upheld the planning department’s approval of the project, on a 5-2 vote. “Welcome to Reno,” Kathleen Taylor, Reno’s vice mayor, said before casting her vote. “We’re open for business.” Where the river ends In late March, I walk alongside Chairman Wadsworth, of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, on the shores of Pyramid Lake, watching a row of fly-fishers in waders cast their lines into the cold waters.  The lake is the largest remnant of Lake Lahontan, an Ice Age inland sea that once stretched across western Nevada and would have submerged present-day Reno. But as the climate warmed, the lapping waters retreated, etching erosional terraces into the mountainsides and exposing tufa deposits around the lake, large formations of porous rock made of calcium-carbonate. That includes the pyramid-shaped island on the eastern shore that inspired the lake’s name. A lone angler stands along the shores of Pyramid Lake. In the decades after the US Reclamation Service completed the Derby Dam in 1905, Pyramid Lake declined another 80 feet and nearby Winnemucca Lake dried up entirely. “We know what happens when water use goes unchecked,” says Wadsworth, gesturing eastward toward the range across the lake, where Winnemucca once filled the next basin over. “Because all we have to do is look over there and see a dry, barren lake bed that used to be full.”In an earlier interview, Wadsworth acknowledged that the world needs data centers. But he argued they should be spread out across the country, not densely clustered in the middle of the Nevada desert.Given the fierce competition for resources up to now, he can’t imagine how there could be enough water to meet the demands of data centers, expanding cities, and other growing businesses without straining the limited local supplies that should, by his accounting, flow to Pyramid Lake. He fears these growing pressures will force the tribe to wage new legal battles to protect their rights and preserve the lake, extending what he refers to as “a century of water wars.” “We have seen the devastating effects of what happens when you mess with Mother Nature,” Wadsworth says. “Part of our spirit has left us. And that’s why we fight so hard to hold on to what’s left.”

Designs include a freestanding classroom, new planting and integrated sculptures intended to link art, nature and learning Source: Tom Stuart-Smith StudioThe proposed new Clore Garden Tate Britain has unveiled proposals for a new public garden and education facility at its Millbank site, developed by Feilden Fowles and landscape architect Tom Stuart-Smith Studio. The Clore Garden project seeks to transform the approach to the Grade II* listed gallery into a planted landscape incorporating accessible pathways, public art and a new garden classroom. According to Tate, the project aims to enhance biodiversity and increase opportunities for community engagement, while offering a new civic green space in central London. The landscape design features a network of pathways set within densely planted zones and intends to create varied conditions for seasonal planting, wildlife habitats and informal gathering. The garden will include new seating areas, a café terrace, a wildlife pond and spaces for programmed outdoor activities. Sculptures from Tate’s collection are expected to be integrated into the landscape. Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain, said: “We are enormously excited to share a first look at designs for Tate Britain’s new garden, a significant green space uniting art and nature and encouraging biodiversity. “These sumptuous, innovative designs demonstrate the role museums can play in our cities, places where contemplation and relaxation can go hand in hand with joy and creativity. We hope the garden will offer new ways to engage with Tate’s Collection, for both visitors and local residents alike.” The proposed new Clore GardenSource: Tom Stuart-Smith Studio The proposed new Clore GardenSource: Tom Stuart-Smith Studio The proposed new Clore GardenSource: Tom Stuart-Smith Studio The proposed new gardenSource: Tom Stuart-Smith Studio 1/4 show caption Tom Stuart-Smith said: “It’s a wonderful opportunity to create a haven for people, plants and sculpture right in the heart of London and to transform the setting of the gallery into a beautiful garden that is really engaging, biodiverse and sustainable.” Planting selections are being developed with input from the Royal Horticultural Society. The project will include a single-storey classroom structure to be designed by Feilden Fowles. No images have so far been released of the building. Feilden Fowles and Tom Stuart-Smith Studio were selected to lead the project in early 2024 following an open design competition.

Designs include a freestanding classroom, new planting and integrated sculptures intended to link art, nature and learning Source: Tom Stuart-Smith StudioThe proposed new Clore Garden Tate Britain has unveiled proposals for a new public garden and education facility at its Millbank site, developed by Feilden Fowles and landscape architect Tom Stuart-Smith Studio. The Clore Garden project seeks to transform the approach to the Grade II* listed gallery into a planted landscape incorporating accessible pathways, public art and a new garden classroom. According to Tate, the project aims to enhance biodiversity and increase opportunities for community engagement, while offering a new civic green space in central London. The landscape design features a network of pathways set within densely planted zones and intends to create varied conditions for seasonal planting, wildlife habitats and informal gathering. The garden will include new seating areas, a café terrace, a wildlife pond and spaces for programmed outdoor activities. Sculptures from Tate’s collection are expected to be integrated into the landscape. Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain, said: “We are enormously excited to share a first look at designs for Tate Britain’s new garden, a significant green space uniting art and nature and encouraging biodiversity. “These sumptuous, innovative designs demonstrate the role museums can play in our cities, places where contemplation and relaxation can go hand in hand with joy and creativity. We hope the garden will offer new ways to engage with Tate’s Collection, for both visitors and local residents alike.” The proposed new Clore GardenSource: Tom Stuart-Smith Studio The proposed new Clore GardenSource: Tom Stuart-Smith Studio The proposed new Clore GardenSource: Tom Stuart-Smith Studio The proposed new gardenSource: Tom Stuart-Smith Studio 1/4 show caption Tom Stuart-Smith said: “It’s a wonderful opportunity to create a haven for people, plants and sculpture right in the heart of London and to transform the setting of the gallery into a beautiful garden that is really engaging, biodiverse and sustainable.” Planting selections are being developed with input from the Royal Horticultural Society to include a range of species suited to creating a garden for year-round public use and to support local biodiversity. The project will include a single-storey classroom structure to be designed by Feilden Fowles. No images have so far been released of the building. Feilden Fowles and Tom Stuart-Smith Studio were selected to lead the project in early 2024 following an open design competition. A planning application is expected in the summer, with construction scheduled to begin in the autumn and completion anticipated by 2026.