Latin America at the 2025 Venice Biennale: Exploring Territory, Memory, and Ancestral Knowledge to Build the PresentSave this picture!Andamio Vivo - Perú. Image © Gonzalo Vera Tudela De MontreuilThe 19th edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale officially opened to the public on May 10, becoming a significant international platform for exploring the current state of global architecture and sparking conversations about the challenges the discipline faces today—both shared and specific to each territory. This year’s theme, "Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective," proposed by general curator and Italian architect Carlo Ratti, invites reflection on architecture’s interconnection with other fields—such as art, artificial intelligence, and technology—while also emphasizing the importance of territories, landscapes, and, above all, the people who collectively shape our built environment.In this context, the national participations of Latin American countries have enriched the international exhibition with contributions deeply rooted in their local cultures and identities. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay represented Central and South America in Venice. Across their proposals, several shared themes emerged—most notably, the idea that contemporary architecture must consciously reconnect with its territory and draw from its history in order to build more thoughtfully today. Along these lines, the installations explored the re-signification of local elements and ancestral knowledge, adapting them to contemporary challenges and contexts.Brazil and Mexico centered their exhibitions on an in-depth investigation of land recording and mapping, addressing the use of ancestral construction technologies in relation to agriculture and the natural landscape. Both explored how these traditional techniques can be adapted to contemporary contexts. Uruguay, recognizing that over half of its territory is composed of water, emphasized the importance of considering this resource as an integral part of the country’s history, culture, and development. Peru and Argentina, meanwhile, focused on the re-signification of unique local elements—the silobag, emblematic of the Argentine countryside, and totora, a plant traditionally used in various forms of construction in Peru. In both pavilions, these materials were prominently featured, evoking the cultural and symbolic significance they carry. Finally, Chile’s participation presented a reflective and thought-provoking working table that examined recent debates around artificial intelligence policies established in the country. Related Article Between Algorithms and Ancestral Knowledge: Expanding the Concept of Architectural Intelligence Siestario - Argentina Save this picture!Save this picture!Upon entering Siestario, the Argentine Pavilion located in the Arsenale of Venice, visitors are immersed in a space of soft light and evocative soundscapes. At the center, serving as the undisputed focal point, is a large pink inflatable bag that instinctively invites repose. This is a silobag—a storage element commonly used in the Argentine countryside for preserving grain, especially soy, and emblematic of the country’s export-driven economy. In this context, the silobag functions not only as a spatial gesture but also as a temporal one: an invitation to pause and reflect amid the pace of the Biennale.In this way, architects Marco Zampieron and Juan Manuel Pachué succeed in decontextualizing this characteristic element—deeply rooted in national identity—by re-signifying its function and placing it within a space of critique and questioning. The result is effective: visitors are drawn to the installation, climb onto it, rest, and surrender to the experience, surrounded by images and sounds that induce a dreamlike drowsiness.(re) invenção - BrazilSave this picture!Save this picture!Brazil’s exhibition, curated by Luciana Saboia, Eder Alencar, and Matheus Seco—members of Plano Coletivo—is divided into two rooms, presenting research on the knowledge drawn from the lands of the Amazon. The installation establishes a dialogue between ancestral wisdom and contemporary urban infrastructure through exhibition elements that also serve as the structural system of the display.In the first room, lined with biodegradable wooden panels, maps and documents are spread across the floor, evoking the direct relationship that Indigenous peoples of the Amazon have with their land. In the second, a curated selection of architectural and urban infrastructure projects illustrates how these traditional forms of knowledge—deeply connected to Brazilian territory—are transformed into collective knowledge, capable of adapting to contemporary projects while preserving this cultural heritage.This balance between local culture, territory, and contemporary challenges is expressed almost literally through a minimalist and precise installation, composed of vertical panels and a suspended table made of reforested wood, both connected by tensioned steel cables. The balance is achieved through stone counterweights and a central metal tube that distributes the forces, turning the table into a structural element that redefines the spatial experience of the room.Reflective Intelligences - ChileSave this picture!Save this picture!The Chilean Pavilion presents a powerful proposal: upon entering the room, a central table—the main exhibition element—reflects a series of videos, essays, and images on its water surface. These works focus on archival research exploring the country’s growing role in the development of artificial intelligence, data center buildings, and the impact this has on the territory and, above all, its inhabitants.Serena Dambrosio, Nicolás Díaz Bejarano, and Linda Schilling Cuellar, the architects behind the pavilion, conceive the table not only as a physical support but also as a reference to the political tool of the "roundtable" used by the Chilean government to introduce policies and regulations around AI. In this case, the use of the water’s reflection invites visitors to reflect on what this technological development truly entails, questioning the exclusion of communities and environmental factors in these decision-making spaces. In this way, the table within the pavilion becomes a fertile ground for fostering collective dialogue among all key stakeholders: architects, researchers, communities, and policymakers.Chinampa Veneta - MéxicoSave this picture!Save this picture!The experience of entering the Mexican Pavilion, located in the Arsenale at the Biennale, is completely immersive. Visitors are welcomed by a recreation of a chinampa—an ancient cultivation system that involves creating platforms of earth over water to form small agricultural islands—which immediately captures attention through its lush vegetation, the scent of damp soil, and the sounds of water. The rest of the room, where vegetables, flowers, and medicinal herbs planted in the central chinampa are also expected to grow, is arranged to mimic the canals of Xochimilco, drawing a parallel with Venice itself, famously built over water.With this installation, the curatorial team—comprising Estudio Ignacio Urquiza and Ana Paula de Alba, Estudio María Marín de Buen, ILWT, Locus, Lucio Usobiaga Hegewisch & Nathalia Muguet, and Pedro&Juana—proposes revisiting these traditional chinampa agricultural systems to reflect on their adaptation in the present as a sustainable response, thanks to their self-irrigation system, within the context of droughts and global climate crisis. It also stands as evidence of a collective system bridging the natural and the built environment, as well as sustained care over time.Living Scaffolding - PerúSave this picture!Save this picture!The Peruvian Pavilion, with Alex Hudtwalcker as chief curator and Sebastián Cillóniz, José Ignacio Beteta, and Gianfranco Morales as associate curators, is presented at the Biennale’s Arsenale with Living Scaffolding, a proposal centered around a monumental structure built from totora reed wood. This installation brings to Venice the ancestral knowledge of the Uros and Aymara peoples of Lake Titicaca, who for centuries have used totora to construct floating habitable islands, homes, boats, and other essential elements for life on the lake.Over time, the refinement of this ancient technique incorporated other essential components—such as ropes and logs—that contribute to the stability and buoyancy of the structures. All this knowledge is materialized in an installation that can be fully experienced: visitors enter and walk through the scaffolding, exploring its construction system from within.Living Scaffolding highlights the technical precision and enduring relevance of this tradition, which in the contemporary context takes on a new meaning connected to collectivity, material memory, and the possibility of reactivating ancestral techniques as a response to today’s challenges. 53,86% Uruguay Land of Water - Uruguay Save this picture!Save this picture!Curated by architects Ken Sei Fong and Katia Sei Fong, alongside visual artist Luis Sei Fong, the Uruguayan Pavilion explores the country’s relationship with its maritime territory, which accounts for just over half of its total surface area. Located in its own building within the Biennale’s Giardini, the pavilion features a poetic and musical installation: a wavy ceiling from which amethyst stones hang, dripping water that strikes metal containers on the floor. This sensory and sonic experience invites visitors to contemplate water as a thread that weaves together the country’s memory, identity, and development.The installation presents a critique of the global water management model, emphasizing that, as a finite and increasingly scarce resource, it is essential to establish policies and regulations for its preservation. In this context, architecture plays a key role: it can not only offer innovative solutions but also promote conscious planning around water in cities and territories, acting as a bridge between the way we inhabit and the way we collectively manage this vital resource.Save this picture!Latin America’s participation in the 2025 Venice Biennale reveals that architecture is not only a design discipline but also a powerful critical and cultural tool. Each pavilion, rooted in its specific territorial context and local cultural identity, enacts a form of resistance by exploring ancestral knowledge, natural resources, and contemporary technologies as collective ways of knowing—learning from the past to build better today. In a global context marked by environmental crises, inequalities, and technological transformations, these architectural and deeply reflective endeavors construct new and reimagined narratives, where the local is no longer intrinsic to a fixed context but rather knowledge that expands, connects, and adapts to shared new realities.Save this picture! Image gallerySee allShow less About this authorPaula PintosAuthor••• Cite: Pintos, Paula. "Latin America at the 2025 Venice Biennale: Exploring Territory, Memory, and Ancestral Knowledge to Build the Present" [Latinoamérica en la Bienal de Venecia 2025: territorio, memoria y saberes ancestrales para construir el presente] 23 May 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1030213/latin-america-at-the-2025-venice-biennale-exploring-territory-memory-and-ancestral-knowledge-to-build-the-present&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save世界上最受欢迎的建筑网站现已推出你的母语版本!想浏览ArchDaily中国吗?是否 You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream

Scene at UKREiiF 2025 outside the Canary bar UKREiiF is getting bigger by the year, with more than 16,000 professionals attending the 2025 construction conference in Leeds this week during three days of sunny weather, networking, panel discussions and robust amounts of booze. It has grown so big over the past few years that it seems almost to have outgrown the city of Leeds itself. A running joke among attendees was the varying quality of accommodation people had managed to secure. All of the budget hotels in the city were fully booked months in advance of the conference, with many - including at least one member of Parliament - reduced to kipping in bed and breakfasts of a questionable nature. Many were forced to stay in nearby towns including York, Wakefield and Bradford and catch the train to the conference each morning. But these snags served as ice breakers for more important conversations at an event which has come at a key pivot point for the industry. With the government on the brink of launching its 10-year industrial strategy and its new towns programme, opportunity was in the air. Networking events between government departments and potential suppliers of all sectors were well attended, although many discussion panels focused on the question of how all of this work would be paid for. And hanging over the conference like a storm cloud were the mounting issues at the Building Safety Regulator which are continuing to cause expensive delays to high rise schemes across the country. While many attendees eyed a huge amount of potential work to fill up pipelines, it was clear the industry is still facing some systemic challenges which could threaten a much-needed recovery following a long period of turmoil. How will the issues at the Building Safety Regulator be fixed? You did not even have to go inside an event titled “Gateways and Growing Pains: Tackling the Building Safety Act” to see how much this issue is affecting construction at the moment. The packed out tent was overflowing into the space outside, with those inside stood like sardines to watch a panel discussion about what has been happening in the high rise residential sector over the past year.  Audience members shared their horror stories of schemes which have been waiting for the best part of a year to get gateway 2 approval from the regulator, which is needed to start construction. There was a palpable sense of anger in the crowd, one professional describing the hold-ups which had affected his scheme as a “disgrace”. Others highlighted the apparent inconsistency of the regulator’s work. One attendee told how two identical buildings had been submitted to the regulator in separate gateway 2 applications and assigned to two separate technical teams for approval. One application had received no follow up questions, while the other had been extensively interrogated. “The industry should hold its head in shame with regard to what happened at Grenfell, but post that, it’s just complete disarray,” he said. More than 16,000 professionals attended the 2025 event While many are currently focusing on delays at pre-construction, others raised the looming gateway 3 approvals which are needed before occupation. Pareto Projects director Kuli Bajwa said: “Gateway 2 is an issue, but when we get to gateway 3, we’re committed to this project, money’s been spent, debt’s been taken out and week on week it’s costing money. It just keeps wracking up, so we need to resolve that with the regulator asap.” >> See also: Homes England boss calls on government to fix ‘unacceptably slow’ gateway 2 approvals Caddick Construction managing director for Yorkshire and the North East Steve Ford added: “I think where it will probably get interesting and quite heated I guess is at the point where some of these schemes get rejected at gateway 3, and the finger pointing starts as to why it’s not got through gateway 3.” Simon Latson, head of living for the UK and Ireland at JLL, offered a potential solution. “We will be dealing with the regulator all the way through the construction process, and you would like to think that there is a collaborative process where you get early engagement and you can say ‘I’m 12 weeks out from completion, I’m going to start sending you all of my completion documents, my fire alarm certificate’, and say ‘thanks very much that’s the last thing on my list’. That’s probably wishful thinking but that’s got to be a practical solution, as early engagement as possible.” How is the government going to pay for its infrastructure strategy? Ministers are expected to outline the government’s ten-year infrastructure strategy next month, outlining ambitions not only for transport but social infrastructure including schools and healthcare. At an event titled “A Decade of National Renewal: What Will This Mean for our Regions, Towns and Cities?”, a panel of experts including London deputy mayor Jules Pipe highlighted how much of this new infrastructure is needed to enable the government to achieve its housing targets. But how will it be funded? Tom Wagner, cofounder of investment firm Knighthead Capital, which operates largely in the West Midlands with assets including Birmingham City FC, gave a frank assessment of the government’s policies on attracting private sector investment. “There have been a lot of policies in the UK that have forced capital allocators to go elsewhere,” he said, calling for lower taxes and less restrictions on private finance in order to stop investors fleeing to more amenable destinations overseas.  “What we’ve found in the UK is, as we’re seeking to tax those who can most afford it, that’s fine, but unless they’re chained here, they’ll just go somewhere else. That creates a bad dynamic because those people are the capital providers, and right now what we need is capital infusion to foster growth.” The main square at the centre of the conference Pipe offered a counterpoint, suggesting low taxes were not the only reason which determines where wealthy people live and highlighted the appeal of cities which had been made livable by good infrastructure. “There are people living in some very expensive cities but they live there because of the cosmopolitan culture and the parks and the general vibe, and that’s what we have to get right. And the key thing that leads to that is good transport, making it livable.” Pipe also criticised the penny-pinching tendencies of past governments on infrastructure investment, including on major transports schemes like Crossrail 2 which were mothballed due to a lack of funds and a perceived lack of value added. “All these things were fought in the trenches with the Treasury about ‘oh well there’s no cost benefit to this’. And where is the major transport like that where after ten years people are saying ‘no one’s using it, that was a really bad idea, it’s never opened up any new businesses or new homes’? It’s absolute nonsense. But that seems to be how we judge it,” he said. One solution could be funding through business rates, an approach used on the Northern Line Extension to Battersea Power Station. But the benefits of this have been largely overlooked, Pipe said. “One scheme every ten or twenty years is not good enough. We need to do this more frequently”. What is the latest on the government’s new towns programme? Where are the new towns going to be built? It was a question which everybody was asking during the conference, with rumours circulating around potential sites in Cambridge of Plymouth. The government is set to reveal the first 12 locations of 10,000 homes each in July, an announcement which will inevitably unleash an onslaught of NIMBY outcries from affected communities. A large crowd gathered for an “exclusive update” on the programme from Michael Lyons, chair of the New Towns Taskforce appointed by the government to recommend suitable sites, with many in attendance hoping for a big reveal on the first sites. They were disappointed, but Lyons did provide some interesting insights into the taskforce’s work. Despite a “rather hairbrained” timescale given to the team, which was only established last September, Lyons said it was at a “very advanced stage” in its deliberations after spending the past few months touring the country speaking to developers, landowners and residents in search of potential sites. >> See also: Don’t scrimp on quality standards for new towns, taskforce chair tells housebuilders “We stand at a crucial moment in the history of home building in this country,” he said. The government’s commitment to so many large-scale developments could herald a return to ambitious spatial planning, he said, with communities strategically located close to the most practical locations for the supply of new infrastructure needed for people to move in. A line of tents at the docks site, including the London Pavilion “Infrastructure constraints, whether it’s water or power, sewage or transport, must no longer be allowed to hold back growth, and we’ve been shocked as we looked around the country at the extent to which plans ready to be advanced are held back by those infrastructure problems,” he said. The first sites will be in places where much of this infrastructure is already in place, he said, allowing work to start immediately.  An emphasis on “identity and legibility” is also part of the criteria for the initial locations, with the government’s design and construction partners to be required to put placemaking at the heart of their schemes. “ We need to be confident that these can be distinctive places, and that the title of new town, whether it’s an urban extension or whether it’s even a reshaping of an existing urban area or a genuine greenfield site, that it genuinely can be seen and will be seen by its residents as a distinct community.” How do you manage a working public-private partnership? Successful public partnerships between the public sector and private housebuilders will be essential for the government to achieve its target to build 1.5 million homes by the end of this parliament in 2029. At an event hosted by Muse, a panel discussed where past partnerships have gone wrong and what lessons have been learned. Mark Bradbury, Thurrock council’s chief officer for strategic growth partnerships and special projects, spoke of the series of events which led to L&Q pulling out of the 2,800-home Purfleet-on-Thames scheme in Essex and its replacement by housing association Swan. “I think it was partly the complex nature of the procurement process that led to market conditions being quite different at the end of the process to the start,” he said. “Some of the original partners pulled out halfway through because their business model changed. I think the early conversations at Purfleet on Thames around the masterplan devised by Will Alsop, the potential for L&Q to be one of the partners, the potential for a development manager, the potential for some overseas investment, ended up with L&Q deciding it wasn’t for their business model going forwards. The money from the far east never materialised, so we ended up with somebody who didn’t have the track record, and there was nobody who had working capital.  “By then it was clear that the former partnership wasn’t right, so trying to persuade someone to join a partnership which wasn’t working was really difficult. So you’ve got to be really clear at the outset that this is a partnership which is going to work, you know where the working capital is coming from, and everybody’s got a track record.” Muse development director for residential Duncan Cumberland outlined a three-part “accelerated procurement process” which the developer has been looking at in order to avoid some of the setbacks which can hit large public private partnerships on housing schemes. The first part is developing a masterplan vision which has the support of community stakeholders, the second is outlining a “realistic and honest” business plan which accommodates viability challenges, and the third is working closely with public sector officials on a strong business case. A good partnership is almost like being in a marriage, Avison Young’s London co-managing director Kat Hanna added. “It’s hard to just walk away. We’re in it now, so we need to make it work, and perhaps being in a partnership can often be more revealing in tough times.”

President Donald Trump holds his $5 million "gold card" visa on an Air Force One flight. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images 2025-05-23T10:36:14Z Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? President Donald Trump's $5 million "gold card" visa aimed at the rich could face limited demand. One analyst said even the wealthy may be reluctant to pay that much as a fee rather than an investment. The move appears to have boosted interest in the EB-5 visa program, Henley & Partners said. In February President Donald Trump announced a $5 million "gold card" visa scheme that would offer green card privileges and a "route to citizenship."He's suggested that as many as one million people might want to buy one, while Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said that 250,000 people were "waiting in line" and "willing to pay the $5 million" fee.This week Lutnick told Axios that a website where potential applicants could register their interest would go live within weeks and that further details would follow.Dominic Volek,"Their estimations are just simply way off," he told Business Insider. "As a general rule of thumb for wealthy people, they won't spend more than 10% of their liquid net worth on a single discretionary purchase" — whether that's a yacht, a watch, or the right to live in a country.Volek said that to comfortably afford $5 million, an individual would need at least $50 million in liquid net worth."Globally, there's probably only 100,000 to 150,000 people who have that kind of net worth, and the majority are already in the US. And so that leaves you with less than 100,000 people as a potential market," he said.Even if you're quite wealthy, the idea of handing over $5 million rather than investing it may be a tough sell. Many other countries with citizenship or residence-by-investment programs offer tangible returns, not pure capital outflows.New Zealand offers residency in exchange for a $2.95 million investment, while Singapore requires a $7.8 million investment.Tax trouble"Those were all investments," Volek said. "That's money I put into the stock market, into a business, into a bond, and I get a return." Another factor is taxation. Unlike many countries, the US taxes citizens — and even green card holders living abroad — on their worldwide income."It's not a good place to be from a tax perspective," Volek said. "If the tax treatment is not adjusted, then it will be a massive failure."Trump's plan has triggered a ripple effect by boosting interest for the more affordable EB-5 immigrant investor visa, which offers green cards for a $1.05 million investment."Probably 80% of the prospects we were speaking to immediately called and said, 'Let's start the process. Let's get our petition in,'" Volek said.According to a recent report from Henley & Partners and global wealth intelligence firm New World Wealth, EB-5 visa enquiries jumped 168% in the first quarter of this year compared to the last quarter of 2024.By April, enquiries about the EB-5 program had already reached nearly 50% of 2024's total, the firm said.Lutnick has suggested that the gold card visa could replace the EB-5 program.The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Researchers at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) have developed MiniFix, a fully 3D printed syringe-based biological fixation system engineered for spaceflight. Successfully deployed in five MAPHEUS sounding rocket missions, MiniFix represents a breakthrough in experimental payload design, combining rapid prototyping, modularity, and robust performance in microgravity environments, combining rapid prototyping with modular, lightweight, and reliable performance under the extreme conditions of microgravity research. A 3D printing milestone for space life science Unlike conventional biological fixation systems, MiniFix is entirely produced via Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM). Key components, including the syringe holders, baseplate, and housing, were fabricated using desktop 3D printers, notably a Prusa MK3+, with 0.4 mm nozzles and a 0.3 mm layer height. This approach enabled fast, low-cost iteration and customization of parts to suit different missions and experimental needs. The system has undergone structural revisions using three different filaments; PLA (Polylactic Acid), used in initial missions (MAPHEUS-09 and -12), PETG (Polyethylene Terephthalate Glycol), chosen for enhanced mechanical durability (MAPHEUS-14), and GreenTEC Pro, a compostable bioplastic with high thermal resistance, used in MAPHEUS-15. This made MiniFix the first biologically compostable experiment structure to fly aboard a rocket. Sectional, translucent view through the MiniFix fixation system. Image via Sebastian Feles / DLR. Modular design for rapid adaptation MiniFix features a dual-syringe configuration, where a fixative and a biological sample are housed in vertically stacked syringes. Syringe actuation is handled by NEMA11 stepper motors coupled with linear actuators, allowing precise fluid dispensing. The hardware is modular and sterilizable, enabling pre-assembled syringe units to be installed under sterile conditions. Its all-3D printed chassis ensures that custom features, like integrated lighting for plant experiments, can be introduced quickly without redesigning the core system. This makes MiniFix suitable for various biological models, from unicellular organisms to organoids. Variants of the SBBFS Configuration. Image via Sebastian Feles / DLR. Built-in thermal regulation via waste heat A standout innovation is MiniFix’s passive thermal management system, which uses the heat generated by its stepper motors to maintain stable internal temperatures. With no need for separate heating elements, this system simplifies design, reduces power draw, and lowers overall payload mass, critical factors for sounding rocket missions with strict weight and energy budgets. Test data from MAPHEUS-15 showed that MiniFix maintained an internal temperature of 21.98 °C ±0.12 °C, consuming just 4.6 Wh during operation, even under ambient conditions as low as 4 °C. Space-tested reliability The reliability of this 3D printed structure was put to the test across multiple missions. MiniFix successfully endured extreme conditions, including launch vibrations exceeding 20 g and temperature swings from hypergravity to microgravity and re-entry. Across four missions, its components have shown no degradation or material failure, with post-flight inspections confirming the integrity of all printed parts and mechanical systems. Future applications Beyond fixation, MiniFix could evolve into a general-purpose liquid handling system for space. Its syringe mechanism is already capable of performing programmable mixing and the platform could be adapted for reagent delivery, drug testing, or even microfluidics in space-based manufacturing. Additionally, it exemplifies how additive manufacturing can accelerate experimental development cycles while maintaining reliability in harsh environments. Its open-source microcontroller and modular design ethos further position it as a template for future experimental hardware in life sciences and beyond.3D printing gains traction in space hardware development Additive manufacturing is rapidly transforming the development of spaceflight hardware, from on‑orbit part fabrication to ground-based launch systems. Just this year, ESA’s Metal3D printer aboard the ISS produced the first metal 3D‑printed part in microgravity, now safely back on Earth for analysis. Meanwhile, Nikon and JAXA are collaborating to refine large-scale metal 3D printing for space components, advancing materials and process control to shorten lead times and reduce launch costs. Within this context, DLR’s MiniFix system exemplifies a new wave of highly adaptable, mission‑specific payloads, completely fabricated using desktop FDM printers and bioplastics, optimized for the rigors of sounding rocket flight and microgravity research. The full research paper, titled “Pioneering the Future of Experimental Space Hardware,” is available in Microgravity Science and Technology via Springer Nature. Subscribe to the 3D Printing Industry newsletter to keep up with the latest 3D printing news.You can also follow us onLinkedIn and subscribe to the 3D Printing Industry YouTube channel to access more exclusive content. At 3DPI, our mission is to deliver high-quality journalism, technical insight, and industry intelligence to professionals across the AM ecosystem.Help us shape the future of 3D printing industry news with our2025 reader survey. Featured image shows sectional, translucent view through the MiniFix fixation system. Image via Sebastian Feles / DLR.

As a member of the project, you’ll help take the studio and our game from great to even better—with a focus on inclusivity, mutual respect (for ourselves and our players), thoughtfulness, empathy, professionalism, and collaboration.You’ll help us by…Collaborate with level designers and the art director to discuss and understand game intentions and visionHave ownership of a particular part of the game (i.e. a large part of the environment)Participate in the ideation of locations/levels by performing research (collecting written descriptions and visual references)Craft compelling visual narratives that reinforce and enhance the game’s setting, story, and gameplay elementsAssess level scope with your immediate supervisor to establish an achievable production scheduleBuild the rough map of the level with the level designer to show the preliminary graphic intentions, gameplays and ensure they are approvedSet up placeholders and submit prop and material requests to internal or OS teams; follow up on the progress and quality of the work during its developmentCreate a variety of 3D models (architecture, foliage, props) from photo references and concept artBuild (set dress, edit, optimize) realistic detailed 3d environments from photo reference and conceptAssist in troubleshooting artistic and technical issuesYou’re awesome because you have…Solid portfolio demonstrating focus and passion for 3d environment & prop creationAt least 8 years of experience in creating Environment or Prop Art in AAA game development with at least one AAA title connected to your nameExcellent artistic and design skills, including a keen eye for composition, color theory, and visual storytellingProficiency in industry-standard 3D modeling and texturing software (e.g., Maya, 3ds Max, Blender, ZBrush, Substance Painter/Designer)Experience working in Modern Game Engines with an awareness of game budgets, limits, and memory constraintsAbility to consistently resolve issues from a visual, production, and technical perspectiveBasic ability to communicate visually utilizing traditional mediaEffective communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work well in a team environmentAbility to adapt to evolving project needs and work under tight deadlinesBonus points for…Experience in working in or developing procedural workflows via tools like Houdini or UPSExperience with photogrammetry or other scanning techniques & workflowsNot sure you meet all the qualifications? Let us decide! Research shows that women and members of other under-represented groups tend to not apply to jobs when they think they may not meet every qualification, when, in fact, they often do! At Activision, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment and strongly encourage you to apply.Our WorldAt Activision, we strive to create the most iconic brands in gaming and entertainment. We’re driven by our mission to deliver unrivaled gaming experiences for the world to enjoy, together. We are home to some of the most beloved entertainment franchises including Call of Duty®, Crash Bandicoot™, Tony Hawk’s™ Pro Skater™, and Guitar Hero®. As a leading worldwide developer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment and products, our “press start” is simple: delight hundreds of millions of players around the world with innovative, fun, thrilling, and engaging entertainment experiences.We’re not just looking back at our decades-long legacy; we’re forging ahead to keep advancing gameplay with some of the most popular titles and sophisticated technology in the world. We have bold ambitions to create the most inclusive company as we know our success comes from the passionate, creative, and diverse teams within our organization.We’re in the business of delivering fun and unforgettable entertainment for our player community to enjoy. And our future opportunities have never been greater — this could be your opportunity to level up.Ready to Activate Your Future?#elsewhere

Embracer intends to spin off Coffee Stain Group by the end of 2025, with remaining business rebranded as Fellowship Entertainment "It feels both exciting and, honestly, a little bit scary - but in a good way," said co-founder and Group CEO of Coffee Stain News by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on May 22, 2025 Embracer intends to spin off its Coffee Stain Group into a "standalone group of community-driven game developers and publishers" by the end of 2025. The company announced it would split into three individual companies - Asmodee, Coffee Stain and Friends, and Fellowship Entertainment (previously known as Middle Earth & Friends) - in April 2024. In this case, Coffee Stain Group - which will consist of "more than 250 passionate game developers and publishers, focused on community driven experiences" - will include Coffee Stain, Ghost Ship, and Tuxedo Labs as well as "certain studios" from Amplifier Game Invest, all based in Scandinavia. Anton Westbergh, CEO and co-founder of Coffee Stain, will become Group CEO. "The shares in Coffee Stain Group will be distributed to the shareholders of Embracer, and are intended to be listed on the Nasdaq First North Premier Growth Market in Stockholm. Fellowship Entertainment (current Embracer Group) will remain listed on Nasdaq Stockholm and have around 6000 employees across 30 countries, "stewarding" the commercial rights to J.R.R. Tolkien's works, as well as IPs like Kingdom Come Deliverance, Metro, Dead Island, Killing Floor, Darksiders, Remnant, and Tomb Raider. “We’re really proud of everything we’ve built as part of Embracer, and grateful for the support and trust we’ve received over the years. Now, as we take the step to become a separately listed company, it feels both exciting and, honestly, a little bit scary - but in a good way," said Anton Westbergh, co-founder and Group CEO of Coffee Stain. The games industry is more competitive than ever, but also more rewarding if you do things right, and we believe this move gives us the clarity and control to navigate the landscape better on our own terms. We can now focus even more on what we do best - supporting our developers, staying close to our communities, and building an even brighter future for Coffee Stain. Lars Wingefors, co-founder and Group CEO of Embracer, added: “Coffee Stain Group has incredible talent, IPs and communities. To date, it has been a true recipe for success. I am confident in Anton's strategy and leadership and see a clear long-term opportunity in attracting and enabling partnerships with like-minded independent game developers and talents." Earlier today, we reported THQ Nordic's studio Campfire Cabal has returned after being shuttered in 2023. Announcing the news, the developer disputed it had ever "shut down" despite closing as part of THQ Nordic's parent company Embracer's restructuring efforts.

President Donald Trump is hosting a black-tie dinner at his Virginia golf club on Thursday for the top buyers of his $TRUMP meme coin.

Amazon previously split the CEO and chair roles when Andy Jassy succeeded Jeff Bezos at the helm in 2021.

Designing human-centered AI products can be arduous.Keeping up with the overall pace of change isn’t easy. But here’s a bigger challenge:The wildly different paces of change attached to the key elements of AI product strategy, design, and development can make managing those elements — and even thinking about them — overwhelming.Yesterday’s design processes and frameworks offer priceless guidance that still holds. But in many spots, they just don’t fit today’s environment.For instance, designers used to map out and user-test precise, predictable end-to-end screen flows. But flows are no longer precisely predictable. AI generates dynamic dialogues and custom-tailored flows on the fly, rendering much of the old practice unhelpful and infeasible.It’s easy for product teams to feel adrift nowadays — we can hoist the sails, but we’re missing a map and a rudder. We need frameworks tailored to the traits that fundamentally set AI apart from traditional software, including:its capabilities for autonomy and collaboration,its probabilistic nature,its early need for quality data, andits predictable unpredictability. Humans tend to be perpetually surprised by its abilities — and its inabilities.AI pace layers: design for resilienceHere’s a framework to address these challenges.Building on Stewart Brand’s “Shearing Layers” framework, AI Pace Layers helps teams grow thriving AI products by framing them as layered systems with components that function and evolve at different timescales.It helps anticipate points of friction and create resilient and humane products.Each layer represents a specific domain of activity and responsibility, with a distinct pace of change.* Unlike the other layers, Services cuts across multiple layers rather than sitting between them, and its pace of change fluctuates erratically.Boundaries between layers call for special attention and care — friction at these points can produce destructive shearing and constructive turbulence.I’ll dive deeper into this framework with some practical examples showing how it works. But first, a brief review of the precursors that inspired this framework will help you put it to good use.The foundationsThis model builds on the insights of several influential design frameworks from the professions of building architecture and traditional software design.Shearing layers (Duffy and Brand)In his 1994 book How Buildings Learn, Stewart Brand expanded on architect Frank Duffy’s concept of shearing layers. The core insight: buildings consist of components that change at different rates.Shell, Services, Scenery, and Sets. (Frank Duffy, 1992).“…there isn’t any such thing as a building. A building properly conceived is several layers of longevity of built components.” — Frank DuffyShearing Layers of Change, from How Buildings Learn: What Happens after they’re built (Stewart Brand, 1994).Expanding on Duffy’s work, Brand identified six layers, from the slow-changing “Site” to the rapidly evolving “Stuff.”As the layers move at different speeds, friction forms where they meet. Buildings designed without mindful consideration of these different velocities tear themselves apart at these “shearing” points. Before long, they tend to be demolished and replaced.Buildings designed for resiliency allow for “slippage” between the moving layers — flexibility for the different rates of change to unfold with minimal conflict. Such buildings can thrive and remain useful for hundreds of years.Pace layers (Brand)In 1999, Brand drew insights from ecologists to expand this concept beyond buildings and encompass human society. In The Clock Of The Long Now: Time And Responsibility, he proposed “Pace Layers” — six levels ranging from rapid fashion to glacially-slow nature.Brand’s Pace Layers (1999) as sketched by Jono Hey.Brand again pointed out the boundaries, where the most intriguing and consequential changes emerge. Friction at the tension points can tear a building apart — or spur a civilization’s collapse–when we try to bind the layers too tightly together. But with mindful design and planning for slippage, activity along these boundary zones can also generate “constructive turbulence” that keeps systems balanced and resilient.The most successful systems survive and thrive through times of change through resiliency, by absorbing and incorporating shocks.“…a few scientists (such as R. V. O’Neill and C. S. Holling) have been probing the same issue in ecological systems: how do they manage change, how do they absorb and incorporate shocks? The answer appears to lie in the relationship between components in a system that have different change-rates and different scales of size. Instead of breaking under stress like something brittle, these systems yield as if they were soft. Some parts respond quickly to the shock, allowing slower parts to ignore the shock and maintain their steady duties of system continuity.” — Stewart BrandRoles and tendencies of the fast (upper) and slow (lower) layers. (Brand).Slower layers provide constraints and underpinnings for the faster layers, while faster layers induce adaptations in the slower layers that evolve the system.Elements of UX (Garrett)Jesse James Garrett’s classic The Elements of User Experience (2002) presents a five-layer model for digital design:Surface (visual design)Skeleton (interface design, navigation design, information design)Structure (interaction design, information architecture)Scope (functional specs, content requirements)Strategy (user needs, site objectives)Structure, Scope, and Strategy. Each layer answers a different set of questions, with the questions answered at each level setting constraints for the levels above. Lower layers set boundaries and underpinnings that help define the more concrete layers.Jesse James Garrett’s 5 layers from The Elements of User Experience Design (2002)This framework doesn’t focus on time, or on tension points resulting from conflicting velocities. But it provides a comprehensive structure for shaping different aspects of digital product design, from abstract strategy to concrete surface elements.AI Pace Layers: diving deeperBuilding on these foundations, the AI Pace Layers framework adapts these concepts specifically for AI systems design.Let’s explore each layer and understand how design expertise contributes across the framework.SessionsPace of change: Very fast (milliseconds to minutes)Focus: Performance of real-time interactions.This layer encompasses real-time dialogue, reasoning, and processing. These interplays happen between the user and AI, and between AI agents and other services and people, on behalf of the user. Sessions draw on lower-layer capabilities and components to deliver the “moments of truth” where product experiences succeed or fail. Feedback from the Sessions layer is crucial for improving and evolving the lower layers.Key contributors: Users and AI agents — usually with zero direct human involvement backstage.Example actions/decisions/artifacts: User/AI dialogue. Audio, video, text, images, and widgets are rendered on the fly (using building blocks provided by lower levels). Real-time adaptations to context.SkinPace of change: Moderately fast (days to months)Focus: Design patterns, guidelines, and assetsSkin encompasses visual, interaction, and content design.Key contributors: Designers, content strategists, front-end developers, and user researchers.Design’s role: This is where designers’ traditional expertise shines. They craft the interface elements, establish visual language, define interaction patterns, and create the design systems that represent the product’s capabilities to users.Example actions/decisions/artifacts: UI component libraries, brand guidelines, prompt templates, tone of voice guidelines, navigation systems, visual design systems, patterns (UI, interaction, and conversation), content style guides.ServicesPace of change: Wildly variable (slow to moderately fast)Focus: AI computation capabilities, data systems orchestration, and operational intelligenceThe Services layer provides probabilistic AI capabilities that sometimes feel like superpowers — and like superpowers, they can be difficult to manage. It encompasses foundation models, algorithms, data pipelines, evaluation frameworks, business logic, and computing resources.Services is an outlier that behaves differently from the other layers:• It’s more prone to “shocks” and surprises that can ripple across the rest of the system.• It varies wildly in pace of change. (But its components rarely change faster than Skin, or slower than Skeleton.)• It cuts across multiple layers rather than sitting between two of them. That produces more cross-layer boundaries, more tension points, more risks of destructive friction, and more opportunities for constructive turbulence.Key contributors: Data scientists, engineers, service designers, ethicists, product teamsDesign’s role: Designers partner with technical teams on evaluation frameworks, helping define what “good” looks like from a human experience perspective. They contribute to guardrails, monitoring systems, and multi-agent collaboration patterns, ensuring technical capabilities translate to meaningful human experiences. Service design expertise helps orchestrate complex, multi-touchpoint AI capabilities.Example actions/decisions/artifacts: Foundation model selection, changes, and fine-tuning. Evals, monitoring systems, guardrails, performance metrics. Business rules, workflow orchestration. Multiagent collaboration and use of external tools (APIs, A2A, MCP, etc.) Continual appraisal and adoption of new tools, protocols, and capabilities.SkeletonPace of change: Moderately slow (months) Focus: Fundamental structure and organizationThis layer establishes the foundational architecture — the core interaction models, information architecture and organizing principles.Key contributors: Information architects, information designers, user researchers, system architects, engineersDesign’s role: Designers with information architecture expertise are important in this layer. They design taxonomies, knowledge graphs, and classification systems that make complex AI capabilities comprehensible and usable. UX researchers help ensure these structures fit the audience’s mental models, contexts, and expectations.Example actions/decisions/artifacts: Taxonomies, knowledge graphs, data models, system architecture, classification systems.ScopePace of change: Slow (months to years)Focus: Product requirementsThis layer defines core functional, content, and data requirements, accounting for the probabilistic nature of AI and defining acceptable levels of performance and variance.Key contributors: Product managers, design strategists, design researchers, business stakeholders, data scientists, trust & safety specialistsDesign’s role: Design researchers and strategists contribute to requirements through generative and exploratory research. They help define error taxonomies and acceptable failure modes from a user perspective, informing metrics that capture technical performance and human experience quality. Design strategists balance technical possibilities with human needs and ethical considerations.Example actions/decisions/artifacts: Product requirements documents specifying reliability thresholds, data requirements (volume, diversity, quality standards), error taxonomies and acceptable failure modes, performance metrics frameworks, responsible AI requirements, risk assessment, core user stories and journeys, documentation of expected model variance and handling approaches.StrategyPace of change: Very slow (years)Focus: Long-term vision and business goalsThis foundation layer defines audience needs, core problems to solve, and business goals. In AI products, data strategy is central.Key contributors: Executive leadership, design leaders, product leadership, business strategists, ethics boardsDesign’s role: Design leaders define problem spaces, identify opportunities, and plan roadmaps. They deliver a balance of business needs with human values in strategy development. Designers with expertise in responsible AI help establish ethical frameworks and guiding principles that shape all other layers.Example actions/decisions/artifacts: Problem space and opportunity assessments, market positioning documents, long-term product roadmaps, comprehensive data strategy planning, user research findings on core needs, ethical frameworks and guiding principles, business model documentation, competitive/cooperative AI ecosystem mapping.Practical examples: tension points between layersTension point example 1: Bookmuse’s timeline troubles(Friction between Sessions and Skin)Bookmuse is a promising new AI tool for novelists. Samantha, a writer, tries it out while hashing out the underpinnings of her latest time-travel historical fiction thriller. The Bookmuse team planned for plenty of Samantha’s needs. At first, she considers Bookmuse a handy assistant. It supplements chats with tailored interactive visualizations that efficiently track character personalities, histories, relationships, and dramatic arcs.But Samantha is writing a story about time travelers interfering with World War I events, so she’s constantly juggling dates and timelines. Bookmuse falls short. It’s a tiny startup, and Luke, the harried cofounder who serves as a combination designer/researcher/product manager, hasn’t carved out any date-specific timeline tools or date calculators. He forgot to provide even a basic date picker in the design system.Problem: Bookmuse does its best to help Samantha with her story timeline (Sessions layer). But it lacks effective tools for the job (Skin layer). Its date and time interactions feel confusing, clumsy, and out of step with the rest of its tone, look, and feel. Whenever Samantha consults the timeline, it breaks her out of her creative flow.Constructive turbulence opportunities:a) Present feedback mechanisms that ensure this sort of “missing piece” event results in the product team learning about the type of interaction pothole that appeared — without revealing details or content that compromise Samantha’ privacy and her work. (For instance, a session tagging system can flag all interaction dead-ends during date choice interactions.)b) Improve timeline/date UI and interaction patterns. Table stakes: Standard industry-best-practice date picker components that suit Bookmuse’s style, tone, and voice. Game changers: Widgets, visualizations, and patterns tailored to the special time-tracking/exploration challenges that fiction writers often wrestle with.c) Update the core usability heuristics and universal interaction design patterns baked into the evaluation frameworks (in the Services layer), as part of regular eval reviews and updates. Result: When the team learns about a friction moment like this, they can prevent a host of future similar issues before they emerge.These improvements will make Bookmuse more resilient and useful.Tension point example 2: MedicalMind’s diagnostic dilemma(Friction between Services and Skeleton)Thousands of healthcare providers use MedicalMind, an AI-powered clinical decision support tool. Dr. Rina Patel, an internal medicine physician at a busy community hospital, relies on it to stay current with rapidly evolving medical research while managing her patient load.Thanks to a groundbreaking update, a MedicalMind AI model (Services layer) is familiar with new medical research data and can recognize newly discovered connections between previously unrelated symptoms across different medical specialties. For example, it identified patterns linking certain dermatological symptoms to early indicators of cardiovascular issues — connections not yet widely recognized in standard medical taxonomies.But MedicalMind’s information architecture (Skeleton layer) was tailored to traditional medical classification systems, so it’s organized by body system, conditions by specialty, and treatments by mechanism of action. The MedicalMind team constructed this structure based on how doctors were traditionally trained to approach medical knowledge.Problem: When Dr. Patel enters a patient’s constellation of symptoms (Sessions layer), MedicalMind’s AI can recognize potentially valuable cross-specialty patterns (Services layer). But these insights can’t be optimally organized and presented because the underlying information architecture (Skeleton layer) doesn’t easily accommodate the new findings and relationships. The AI either forces the insights into ill-fitting categories or presents them as disconnected “additional notes” that tend to be overlooked. That reduces their clinical utility and Dr. Patel’s trust in the system.Constructive turbulence opportunities:a) Create an “emerging patterns” framework within the information architecture (Skeleton layer) that can accommodate new AI-identified patterns in ways that augment, rather than disrupt, the familiar classification systems that doctors rely on.b) Design flexible visualization components and interaction patterns and styles (in the Skin layer) specifically for exploring, discussing, and documenting cross-category relationships. Let doctors toggle between traditional taxonomies and newer, AI-generated knowledge maps depending on their needs and comfort level.c) Implement a clinician feedback loop where specialists can validate and discuss new AI-surfaced relationships, gradually promoting validated patterns into the main classification system.These improvements will make MedicalMind more adaptive to emerging medical knowledge while maintaining the structural integrity that healthcare professionals rely on for critical decisions. This provides more efficient assistants for clinicians and better health for patients.Tension point example 3: ScienceSeeker’s hypothesis bottleneck(Friction between Skin and Services)ScienceSeeker is an AI research assistant used by scientists worldwide. Dr. Elena Rodriguez, a molecular biologist, uses it to investigate protein interactions for targeted cancer drug delivery.The AI engine (Services layer) recently gained the ability to generate sophisticated hypothesis trees with multiple competing explanations, track confidence levels for each branch, and identify which experiments would most efficiently disambiguate between theories. It can reason across scientific domains, connecting molecular biology with physics, chemistry, and computational modeling.But the interface (Skin layer) remains locked in a traditional chatbot paradigm — a single-threaded exchange with responses appearing sequentially in a scrolling window.Problem: The AI engine and the problem space are natively multithreaded and multimodal, but the UI is limited to single-threaded conversation. When Dr. Rodriguez inputs her experimental results (Sessions layer), the AI generates a rich, multidimensional analysis (Services layer), but must flatten this complex reasoning into linear text (Skin layer). Critical relationships between hypotheses become buried in paragraphs, probability comparisons are difficult, and the holistic picture of how variables influence multiple hypotheses is lost. Dr. Rodriguez resorts to taking screenshots and manually drawing diagrams to reconstruct the reasoning that the AI possesses but cannot visually express.Constructive turbulence opportunities:a) Develop an expandable, interactive, infinite-canvas “hypothesis tree” visualization (Skin) that helps the AI dynamically represent multiple competing explanations and their relationships. Scientists can interact with this to explore different branches spatially rather than sequentially.b) Create a dual-pane interface that maintains the chat for simple queries but provides the infinite canvas for complex reasoning, transitioning seamlessly based on response complexity.c) Implement collaborative, interactive node-based diagrams for multi-contributor experiment planning, where potential experiments appear as nodes showing how they would affect confidence in different hypothesis branches.This would transform ScienceSeeker’s limited text assistant into a scientific reasoning partner. It would help researchers visualize and interact with complex possibilities in ways that better fit how they tackle multidimensional problems.Navigating the future with AI Pace LayersAI Pace Layers offers product teams a new framework for seeing and shaping the bewildering structures and dynamics that power AI products.By recognizing the evolving layers and heeding and designing for their boundaries, AI design teams can:Transform tension points into constructive innovationAnticipate friction before it damages the product experienceGrow resilient and humane AI systems that absorb and integrate rapid technological change without losing sight of human needs.The framework’s value isn’t in rigid categorization, but in recognizing how components interact across timescales. For AI product teams, this awareness enables more thoughtful design choices that prevent destructive shearing that can tear apart an AI system.This framework is a work in progress, evolving alongside the AI landscape it describes.I’d love to hear from you, especially if you’ve built successful AI products and have insights on how this model could better reflect your experience. Please drop me a line or add a comment. Let’s develop more effective approaches to creating AI systems that enhance human potential while respecting human agency.Part of the Mindful AI Design series. Also see:The effort paradox in AI design: Why making things too easy can backfireBlack Mirror: “Override”. Dystopian storytelling for humane AI designStay updatedSubscribe to be notified when new articles in the series are published. Join our community of designers, product managers, founders and ethicists as we shape the future of mindful AI design.AI Pace Layers: a framework for resilient product design was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.