The Canopy Pavilion by the Canal / AESEU Architectural Technology and Art studioSave this picture!© Timeraw StudioCommunity Center•Tai Xing Shi, China Architects: AESEU Architectural Technology and Art studio Area Area of this architecture project Area:  2400 m² Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2024 Photographs Photographs:Timeraw Studio More SpecsLess Specs Save this picture! Urban Regeneration by the Canal - Taixing, situated in the south-central region of Jiangsu Province, stands as the convergence of Huai and Wu cultures. Established in the first year of Shengyuan during the Southern Tang Dynasty, it is a millennium-old city with a rich history. Historically, Taixing County was characterized by an intricate network of waterways, thriving alongside and in harmony with the water, and its fortified walls were constructed in the shape of a turtle's shell. Encircling the city were two moats, both inside and outside the walls, with several winding watercourses resembling snakes in between, forming a pattern reminiscent of the Black Tortoise and White Snake, commonly known as the " City laid out in the shape of a turtle and snake." In recent times, with the city's growth, a new urban layout gradually emerged to the north and east of the old city, intersected by the Rutai Canal and Qiangxi River. Notably, the Rutai Canal, linking the Yangtze River in the west and the Yellow Sea in the east, has served as a pivotal regional waterway spanning Rugao and Taixing since ancient times.Save this picture!In 2023, Taixing City embarked on the "Double Water Nourishing City" supporting facilities project, utilizing the Rutai Canal and Qiangxi River as the foundation. The project involves renovating the disorganized factories, wharves, and shacks along the rivers to create a riverside scenic zone for leisure activities. This scenic zone encompasses numerous cultural squares, parks, and small ancillary garden buildings. The question arises: how can these unused buildings be put to good use? On the one hand, they can enhance services for citizens' riverside leisure activities; on the other hand, the operational revenue generated can alleviate the maintenance costs of public green spaces. This represents the trend towards operational management of urban assets against the backdrop of urban renewal. Consequently, Taixing City has decided to revamp and repurpose six idle ancillary buildings scattered along the parks by the two rivers, endowing them with commercial attributes to leverage their footfall-drawing potential and infuse more vitality into the riverside scenic zone.Save this picture!The value of architectural assets and waterside living - In the northwest direction of the north gate of the old county town, there lies a junction formed by the Rutai Canal and other waterways. Following partial rerouting of the canal in modern times, the construction of urban highway bridges in the vicinity and the development of high-rise residential areas have enclosed this area, transforming it into a relatively spacious waterfront spot within the community. The site features a children's playground beloved by residents, making it a must-visit destination for citizens taking strolls and engaging in fitness activities along the Rutai Canal.Save this picture!The site originally housed two independent two-story buildings with concrete frame structures. One building features a V-shaped floor plan, while the other boasts a zigzag floor plan. Together, these two buildings, along with the river channel, enclose an approximately triangular plot of land. To address the elevation differences within the site, stairs and flower beds have been incorporated into the current design.Save this picture!At the onset of designing this project, the owner's requirement was to impart operational capabilities to these idle urban assets. Often, this is mistakenly interpreted in isolation as necessitating a "tailor-made" design based solely on operational demands. The business needs appear to be prioritized in the design brief, with a tendency to conflate building renovation and interior refurbishment, which represents an all-too-common shortcut in urban renewal. Building renewal constitutes a vital component of urban revitalization: it aids in realigning the site's traffic and spatial connections with the city through renovation and reconstruction, and employs functional integration to reintegrate the building into the city's fabric. Additionally, renovation extends the lifecycle of buildings and enhances their adaptability to a broader range of business types. Furthermore, it delves deeper into the site's unique attributes and leverages them to boost the building's appeal.Save this picture!To capture the cultural and geographical essence of a site, one must revert to the perspective of the city. In this water-laden town, water serves not merely as a geographical feature but also as a cultural emblem deeply ingrained in the fabric of daily life. The teahouses lining the canal bustle with activity, offering a pot of tea, a plate of steamed silken tofu, a basket of steamed pork buns, and a bowl of fish noodle soup. Old tea enthusiasts wander over to the riverside teahouses with their enamel mugs, where the aroma of steaming Xuanbao small wontons blends with the sesame fragrance of Huangqiao sesame cakes, wafting towards the river's heart. They sip on "Langli tea" brewed with canal water while watching barges glide by, leaving ripples in their wake. These are taste memories nurtured by the canal.The clanging of washing sticks at the riverbank, the tapping of chess pieces under the eaves of riverside houses; children leaning over railings to count passing sandboats, morning joggers' silhouettes mirrored in the shimmering waves, elderly couples taking a stroll and pausing at the flood embankment, pointing to the newly erected buildings across the river and reminiscing about the ferry pier of yesteryears. These scenes and people collectively paint a unique and vibrant picture of life along the waterfront in Taixing.Hence, the primary objective of renovating this site is to honor and perpetuate this vibrant atmosphere, providing a comfortable and inviting environment for people to linger and gather. By fostering conditions conducive to meeting the diverse needs of citizens, the potential value of the architecture can be fully realized.Save this picture!Revitalization strategy - With these considerations in mind, let's revisit the original site and buildings. Serving as administrative offices, each building boasts a modest area and features just one staircase inside. The elaborate decoration of the building facades actually obstructs the indoor view of the canal. The outdoor area between the two buildings, segmented by varying heights, struggles to serve as an effective venue for events. These are the aspects of the buildings that necessitate renovation and upgrading.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!More crucially, the site requires a powerful spatial configuration to redefine and distinguish this area, establishing it as a significant destination along the riverside scenic corridor. We define this spatial configuration as a prominent, large-scale open area, aimed at strengthening the connectivity between the site and the public spaces of adjacent blocks. By analyzing the types of traditional public spaces along the canal, we discovered that the awning form exhibits strong applicability. Both the boat awning and the market awning on the shore exhibit a form that is both sheltered and open. This convenient and easily maintainable semi-outdoor public space can effectively adapt to the complex surrounding environment, while encouraging the emergence of temporary and diverse public activities. It is a common spatial outcome nurtured by canal culture. Furthermore, utilizing the roofs of existing buildings to create more platforms that offer both accessibility and river views is undoubtedly a morphological projection of the site's characteristics onto the architectural form, and also facilitates the creation of favorable conditions for shaping outdoor commercial spaces.Save this picture!The final design employs a large canopy to complement the originally fragmented site. This canopy extends over the triangular site and portions of the V-shaped building's rooftop, creating a flat and expansive area between the two structures, akin to a waterfront urban stage. The height difference of the site is seamlessly integrated into the surrounding stepped seating areas. The V-shaped building's rooftop achieves a more direct connection to the ground through the addition of stairs and setback terraces. Likewise, the newly added columnar staircase adjacent to the building on the northern side of the site becomes a dynamic element in the space, directing individuals to the rooftop platform of the L-shaped building. Besides providing a vast shaded area for activities, the canopy alleviates the oppressive feeling imparted by the surrounding dense high-rise residential buildings. As people move under the canopy, their gaze is directed towards the canal and the ships navigating through it, restoring the appropriate scale of waterside life. The concave shape in the middle of the canopy collects rainwater from the rooftop and directs it to a reserved oval drain below through a cantilevered stainless steel spout, creating a "dragon spitting water" landscape.Save this picture!Technical measures - After assessing the concrete frame structure of the existing building, structural reinforcement was carried out on the foundation, beams, slabs, and columns. Transparent peripheral protective structures, such as glass curtain walls, were reintroduced. The horizontally extended white aluminum panels suggest a layered, accessible roof that steps back progressively. For the large canopy spanning approximately 1,000 square meters, a combination of curved grid glued bamboo-steel structure and membrane structure was selected through technical comparison. The basic configuration of the roof consists of several full-length square steel beams and V-shaped columns. The grid units composed of engineered bamboo members facilitate the creation of a gradual curved surface.Save this picture!Save this picture!The curved mesh glued bamboo-steel structure imbues this enclosed space with structural expression and illumination, emphasizing the openness and airiness of the structure to foster a relaxed and joyful atmosphere. This stands in contrast to the confined interior of buildings, suggesting the equitable use of public spaces and leveraging technical expression to promote community interaction and sharing.Save this picture!Community space - Benefiting from the maturity of the commercial and residential districts surrounding the project, as well as its strategic location adjacent to water, we defined the building as Taixing Teahouse—a venue that embodies the local morning tea culture of Taixing during the initial project planning stage. This decision was made after a comprehensive assessment of various factors, including project scale, surrounding traffic conditions, and potential impacts on nearby residents. Leveraging the separation of two buildings, we designated separate areas for the morning tea hall and private dining rooms. In the morning tea area, the middle section of the V-shaped layout serves as an open kitchen, showcasing the production of morning tea as an intangible cultural heritage.Upon completion, this revitalized venue has garnered immense popularity among Taixing residents. The riverside morning tea hall is often fully booked, while private dining rooms offering a panoramic view of the canal have become a favorite gathering spot for families and friends. The small plaza underneath the canopy is utilized by residents at various times of the day and has also hosted numerous cultural events in Taixing. Additionally, the semi-outdoor terrace on the second floor and the rooftop terrace on the third floor under the canopy have transformed into outdoor spaces for leisure bars. Evidently, the transformed space has transcended its original singular function, and its aesthetic appeal has been acknowledged through daily use by residents. It has emerged as a neighborhood hub in the contemporary waterfront living environment, seamlessly integrating culture, nature, and even spiritual and emotional sustenance.Save this picture!Conclusion - In the process of renewing urban idle buildings and neglected spaces leftover from the incremental development era, the approach of merely pursuing commercial value by forcibly integrating untimely commercial format often proves unsustainable. The crucial solution lies in reverting to the essence of the site, by examining the relationship between the architecture and the urban fabric, deeply exploring the site's potential, and reestablishing its public character. Only when the space genuinely transforms into a delightful venue for public interaction and fosters an organic connection with the city can commercial vitality naturally emerge. This incremental renewal strategy, which prioritizes public use over commercial gain, not only respects the natural evolution of urban spaces but also achieves a harmonious coexistence between public and commercial values. It stands to become a pivotal approach in urban renewal.Save this picture! Project gallerySee allShow less Project locationAddress:Tai Xing Shi, ChinaLocation to be used only as a reference. It could indicate city/country but not exact address.About this office MaterialsMaterials and TagsPublished on May 16, 2025Cite: "The Canopy Pavilion by the Canal / AESEU Architectural Technology and Art studio" 16 May 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1030080/the-canopy-pavilion-by-the-canal-aeseu-architectural-technology-and-art-studio&gt ISSN 0719-8884

"Artificial intelligence, if we're being frank, is a con: a bill of goods you are being sold to line someone's pockets."That is the heart of the argument that linguist Emily Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna make in their new book The AI Con. It's a useful guide for anyone whose life has intersected with technologies sold as artificial intelligence and anyone who's questioned their real usefulness, which is most of us. Bender is a professor at the University of Washington who was named one of Time magazine's most influential people in artificial intelligence, and Hanna is the director of research at the nonprofit Distributed AI Research Institute and a former member of the ethical AI team at Google.The explosion of ChatGPT in late 2022 kicked off a new hype cycle in AI. Hype, as the authors define it, is the "aggrandizement" of technology that you are convinced you need to buy or invest in "lest you miss out on entertainment or pleasure, monetary reward, return on investment, or market share." But it's not the first time, nor likely the last, that scholars, government leaders and regular people have been intrigued and worried by the idea of machine learning and AI.Bender and Hanna trace the roots of machine learning back to the 1950s, to when mathematician John McCarthy coined the term artificial intelligence. It was in an era when the United States was looking to fund projects that would help the country gain any kind of edge on the Soviets militarily, ideologically and technologically. "It didn't spring whole cloth out of Zeus's head or anything. This has a longer history," Hanna said in an interview with CNET. "It's certainly not the first hype cycle with, quote, unquote, AI."Today's hype cycle is propelled by the billions of dollars of venture capital investment into startups like OpenAI and the tech giants like Meta, Google and Microsoft pouring billions of dollars into AI research and development. The result is clear, with all the newest phones, laptops and software updates drenched in AI-washing. And there are no signs that AI research and development will slow down, thanks in part to a growing motivation to beat China in AI development. Not the first hype cycle indeed.Of course, generative AI in 2025 is much more advanced than the Eliza psychotherapy chatbot that first enraptured scientists in the 1970s. Today's business leaders and workers are inundated with hype, with a heavy dose of FOMO and seemingly complex but often misused jargon. Listening to tech leaders and AI enthusiasts, it might seem like AI will take your job to save your company money. But the authors argue that neither is wholly likely, which is one reason why it's important to recognize and break through the hype.So how do we recognize AI hype? These are a few telltale signs, according to Bender and Hanna, that we share below. The authors outline more questions to ask and strategies for AI hype busting in their book, which is out now in the US.Watch out for language that humanizes AIAnthropomorphizing, or the process of giving an inanimate object human-like characteristics or qualities, is a big part of building AI hype. An example of this kind of language can be found when AI companies say their chatbots can now "see" and "think."These can be useful comparisons when trying to describe the ability of new object-identifying AI programs or deep-reasoning AI models, but they can also be misleading. AI chatbots aren't capable of seeing of thinking because they don't have brains. Even the idea of neural nets, Hanna noted in our interview and in the book, is based on human understanding of neurons from the 1950s, not actually how neurons work, but it can fool us into believing there's a brain behind the machine.That belief is something we're predisposed to because of how we as humans process language. We're conditioned to imagine that there is a mind behind the text we see, even when we know it's generated by AI, Bender said. "We interpret language by developing a model in our minds of who the speaker was," Bender added.In these models, we use our knowledge of the person speaking to create meaning, not just using the meaning of the words they say. "So when we encounter synthetic text extruded from something like ChatGPT, we're going to do the same thing," Bender said. "And it is very hard to remind ourselves that the mind isn't there. It's just a construct that we have produced."The authors argue that part of why AI companies try to convince us their products are human-like is that this sets the foreground for them to convince us that AI can replace humans, whether it's at work or as creators. It's compelling for us to believe that AI could be the silver bullet fix to complicated problems in critical industries like health care and government services.But more often than not, the authors argue, AI isn't bring used to fix anything. AI is sold with the goal of efficiency, but AI services end up replacing qualified workers with black box machines that need copious amounts of babysitting from underpaid contract or gig workers. As Hanna put it in our interview, "AI is not going to take your job, but it will make your job shittier."Be dubious of the phrase 'super intelligence'If a human can't do something, you should be wary of claims that an AI can do it. "Superhuman intelligence, or super intelligence, is a very dangerous turn of phrase, insofar as it thinks that some technology is going to make humans superfluous," Hanna said. In "certain domains, like pattern matching at scale, computers are quite good at that. But if there's an idea that there's going to be a superhuman poem, or a superhuman notion of research or doing science, that is clear hype." Bender added, "And we don't talk about airplanes as superhuman flyers or rulers as superhuman measurers, it seems to be only in this AI space that that comes up."The idea of AI "super intelligence" comes up often when people talk about artificial general intelligence. Many CEOs struggle to define what exactly AGI is, but it's essentially AI's most advanced form, potentially capable of making decisions and handling complex tasks. There's still no evidence we're anywhere near a future enabled by AGI, but it's a popular buzzword.Many of these future-looking statements from AI leaders borrow tropes from science fiction. Both boosters and doomers — how Bender and Hanna describe AI enthusiasts and those worried about the potential for harm — rely on sci-fi scenarios. The boosters imagine an AI-powered futuristic society. The doomers bemoan a future where AI robots take over the world and wipe out humanity.The connecting thread, according to the authors, is an unshakable belief that AI is smarter than humans and inevitable. "One of the things that we see a lot in the discourse is this idea that the future is fixed, and it's just a question of how fast we get there," Bender said. "And then there's this claim that this particular technology is a step on that path, and it's all marketing. It is helpful to be able to see behind it."Part of why AI is so popular is that an autonomous functional AI assistant would mean AI companies are fulfilling their promises of world-changing innovation to their investors. Planning for that future — whether it's a utopia or dystopia — keeps investors looking forward as the companies burn through billions of dollars and admit they'll miss their carbon emission goals. For better or worse, life is not science fiction. Whenever you see someone claiming their AI product is straight out of a movie, it's a good sign to approach with skepticism. Ask what goes in and how outputs are evaluatedOne of the easiest ways to see through AI marketing fluff is to look and see whether the company is disclosing how it operates. Many AI companies won't tell you what content is used to train their models. But they usually disclose what the company does with your data and sometimes brag about how their models stack up against competitors. That's where you should start looking, typically in their privacy policies.One of the top complaints and concerns from creators is how AI models are trained. There are many lawsuits over alleged copyright infringement, and there are a lot of concerns over bias in AI chatbots and their capacity for harm. "If you wanted to create a system that is designed to move things forward rather than reproduce the oppressions of the past, you would have to start by curating your data," Bender said. Instead, AI companies are grabbing "everything that wasn't nailed down on the internet," Hanna said.If you're hearing about an AI product for the first time, one thing in particular to look out for is any kind of statistic that highlights its effectiveness. Like many other researchers, Bender and Hanna have called out that a finding with no citation is a red flag. "Anytime someone is selling you something but not giving you access to how it was evaluated, you are on thin ice," Bender said.It can be frustrating and disappointing when AI companies don't disclose certain information about how their AI products work and how they were developed. But recognizing those holes in their sales pitch can help deflate hype, even though it would be better to have the information. For more, check out our full ChatGPT glossary and how to turn off Apple Intelligence.