You never know who you might meet on a plane. Four years ago, ELLE Decor A-List designer James Huniford, known as Ford, began chatting with the gentleman across the aisle. Both have children, and both spend time in the Hamptons, so they had a lot to talk about. The man mentioned he was hoping to buy land in the Hamptons for a vacation house. Huniford encouraged him and handed over his business card. But after landing, the designer gave no further thought to the encounter, so he was surprised when, several months later, the man’s wife called.The couple, who had rented in the Hamptons for years, had found an idyllic site on a peninsula in Sag Harbor, private but close to town. Though their city home is traditional, they chose William Reue, a New York architect known for crisp, modernist geometry, to design the house. He conceived of a three-story home with six bedrooms, large enough for the couple and a parade of guests, including their four grown children and their partners. Landscape designer Edmund Hollander, renowned for projects such as the public garden at the Kennedy Center in Washington, was brought in to envision an environment worthy of the setting. Pernille LoofEven before the foundations were poured, the couple invited Huniford to the site. They made it clear that they didn’t want either a conventional shingled beach house or a stark white box. “They told me, no trends,” he says. “They wanted a sense of playfulness. And they love color.” The man’s wife explained exactly what she wanted: “A house where I feel like I’m on vacation every time I step inside. And even when I am inside, I want to feel like I’m outside.” In some ways Huniford was an unexpected choice, since he is not often tapped for sleek, contemporary interiors. But he proved to be a wise one. He has an eclectic eye that can discern the beauty in a rusted tool or an old road sign, in rough-hewn beams or a clunky Victorian washstand. He juxtaposes these disparate elements with clean-lined furnishings, in restrained but never cold spaces. Over the past two decades he has designed apartments and country houses for a variety of people in the worlds of finance, media, and entertainment, including Broadway producers Jeffrey Seller and John Gore. “I never doubted that [Ford] was the right person,” the wife says. “I knew the house would be beautiful. Some people were surprised at our choice, saying, ‘That’s not his style.’ But so what? A good designer always has more up their sleeve than people think.”“They told me, no trends. They wanted a sense of playfulness. and they love color.” —James HunifordHuniford immediately knew water would be central to his conception. “The light is extraordinary,” he says. “The reflection off the water inspired the palette of saffron, green, and blue.” For inspiration he looked to French modernism, especially the simple, sunstruck variety in the South of France, exemplified in Eileen Gray’s 1929 house in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, and the nearby beach cabin Le Corbusier built two decades later. To soften this home’s geometry, Huniford filled the rooms with craftsmanship, incorporating both vintage furnishings and commissioned items. The dramatic wood staircase was based on one he had spotted at an antiques dealer on the Left Bank in Paris. The den’s paneling is inset with butter-fly joints evocative of iconic designer George Nakashima’s woodworking techniques.Huniford divided the huge living area into zones, creating a sense of loft living at the beach. Wit and color are equally evident: in the dressing room’s postmodern “Queen Anne” chair by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown; in the kitchen’s gold-streaked stone, which the designer dubs “Cy Twombly marble”; and in the powder room lined in Yves Klein–blue parchment.Huniford’s good fortune on this project extended beyond the initial chance encounter. These clients let him stretch into new territory, more colorful and contemporary. “They pushed me,” he says. “And they trusted me.” ◾ This story originally appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of Elle Decor. SUBSCRIBE

html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" A still from a demo shot created using MotionMaker, the new generative AI toolset introduced in Maya 2026.1 for roughing out movement animations. Autodesk has released Maya 2026.1, the latest version of its 3D modeling and animation software for visual effects, games and motion graphics work.The release adds MotionMaker, a new AI-based system for generating movement animations for biped and quadruped characters, especially for previs and layout work. Other changes include a new modular character rigging framework inside Bifrost for Maya, plus updates to liquid simulation, OpenPBR support and USD workflows. Autodesk has also released Maya Creative 2026.1, the corresponding update to the cut-down edition of Maya for smaller studios. MotionMaker: new generative AI tool roughs out movement animations The headline feature in Maya 2026.1 is MotionMaker: a new generative animation system.It lets users “create natural character movements in minutes instead of hours”, using a workflow more “like giving stage directions to a digital actor” than traditional animation. Users set keys for a character’s start and end positions, or create a guide path in the viewport, and MotionMaker automatically generates the motion in between. At the minute, that mainly means locomotion cycles, for both bipeds and quadrupeds, plus a few other movements, like jumping or sitting. Although MotionMaker is designed for “anyone in the animation pipeline”, the main initial use cases seem to be layout and previs rather than hero animation. Its output is also intended to be refined manually – Autodesk’s promotional material describes it as getting users “80% of the way there” for “certain types of shots”. Accordingly, MotionMaker comes with its own Editor window, which provides access to standard Maya animation editing tools. Users can layer in animation from other sources, including motion capture or keyframe animation retargeted from other characters: to add upper body movements, for example. There are a few more MotionMaker-specific controls: the video above shows speed ramping, to control the time it takes the character to travel between two points. There is also a Character Scale setting, which determines how a character’s size and weight is expressed through the animation generated. You can read more about the design and aims of MotionMaker in a Q&A with Autodesk Senior Principal Research Scientist Evan Atherton on Autodesk’s blog. According to Atherton, the AI models were trained using motion capture data “specifically collected for this tool”. That includes source data from male and female human performers, plus wolf-style dogs, although the system is “designed to support additional [motion] styles” in future. Bifrost: new modular character rigging framework Character artists and animators also get a new modular rigging framework in Bifrost.Autodesk has been teasing new character rigging capabilities in the node-based framework for building effects since Maya 2025.1, but this seems to be its official launch. The release is compatibility-breaking, and does not work with earlier versions of the toolset. The new Rigging Module Framework is described as a “modular, compound-based system for building … production-ready rigs”, and is “fully integrated with Maya”. Animators can “interact with module inputs and outputs directly from the Maya scene”, and rigs created with Bifrost can be converted into native Maya controls, joints and attributes. Bifrost: improvements to liquid simulation and workflow Bifrost 2.14 for Maya also features improvements to Bifrost’s existing functionality, particularly liquid simulation. The properties of collider objects, like bounciness, stickiness and roughness, can now influence liquid behavior in the same way they do particle behavior and other collisions. In addition, a new parameter controls air drag on foam and spray thrown out by a liquid. Workflow improvements include the option to convert Bifrost curves to Maya scene curves, and batch execution, to write out cache files “without the risk of accidentally overwriting them”. LookdevX: support for OpenPBR in FBX files LookdevX, Maya’s plugin for creating USD shading graphs, has also been updated. Autodesk introduced support for OpenPBR, the open material standard intended as a unified successor to the Autodesk Standard Surface and Adobe Standard Material, in 2024. To that, the latest update adds support for OpenPBR materials in FBX files, making it possible to import or export them from other applications that support OpenPBR: at the minute, 3ds Max plus some third-party renderers. LookdevX 1.8 also features a number of workflow improvements, particularly on macOS. USD for Maya: workflow improvements USD for Maya, the software’s USD plugin, also gets workflow improvements, with USD for Maya 0.32 adding support for animation curves for camera attributes in exports.Other changes include support for MaterialX documents and better representation of USD lights in the viewport. Arnold for Maya: performance improvements Maya’s integration plugin for Autodesk’s Arnold renderer has also been updated, with MtoA 5.5.2 supporting the changes in Arnold 7.4.2.They’re primarily performance improvements, especially to scene initialization times when rendering on machines with high numbers of CPU cores. Maya Creative 2026.1 also released Autodesk has also released Maya Creative 2026.1, the corresponding update to the cut-down edition of Maya aimed at smaller studios, and available on a pay-as-you-go basis.It includes most of the new features from Maya 2026.1, including MotionMaker, but does not include Bifrost for Maya. Price and system requirements Maya 2026.1 is available for Windows 10+, RHEL and Rocky Linux 8.10/9.3/9.5, and macOS 13.0+.The software is rental-only. Subscriptions cost $255/month or $2,010/year, up a further $10/month or $65/year since the release of Maya 2026. In many countries, artists earning under $100,000/year and working on projects valued at under $100,000/year, qualify for Maya Indie subscriptions, now priced at $330/year. Maya Creative is available pay-as-you-go, with prices starting at $3/day, and a minimum spend of $300/year. Read a full list of new features in Maya 2026.1 in the online documentation Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don’t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.

Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a 3D printed, self-powered mechanoluminescent (ML) photonic skin designed for communication and safety monitoring in underwater environments. The stretchable device emits light in response to mechanical deformation, requires no external power source, and remains functional under conditions such as high salinity and extreme temperatures. The findings were published in Advanced Materials by Xiaolu Sun, Shaohua Ling, Zhihang Qin, Jinrun Zhou, Quangang Shi, Zhuangjian Liu, and Yu Jun Tan. The research was conducted at NUS and Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). Schematic of the 3D printed mechanoluminescent photonic skin showing fabrication steps and light emission under deformation. Image via Sun et al., Advanced Materials. 3D printing stretchable light-emitting skins with auxetic geometry The photonic skin was produced using a 3D printing method called direct-ink-writing (DIW), which involves extruding a specially formulated ink through a fine nozzle to build up complex structures layer by layer. In this case, the ink was made by mixing tiny particles of zinc sulfide doped with copper (ZnS:Cu), a material that glows when stretched, with a flexible silicone rubber. These particles serve as the active ingredient that lights up when the material is deformed, while the silicone acts as a soft, stretchable support structure. To make the device more adaptable to movement and curved surfaces, like human skin or underwater equipment, the researchers printed it using auxetic designs. Auxetic structures have a rare mechanical property known as a negative Poisson’s ratio. Unlike most materials, which become thinner when stretched, auxetic designs expand laterally under tension. This makes them ideal for conforming to curved or irregular surfaces, such as joints, flexible robots, or underwater gear, without wrinkling or detaching. Encapsulating the printed skin in a clear silicone layer further improves performance by distributing mechanical stress evenly. This prevents localized tearing and ensures that the light emission remains bright and uniform, even after 10,000 cycles of stretching and relaxing. In previous stretchable light-emitting devices, uneven stress often led to dimming, flickering, or early material failure. Mechanical and optical performance of encapsulated photonic skin across 10,000 stretch cycles. Image via Sun et al., Advanced Materials. Underwater signaling, robotics, and gas leak detection The team demonstrated multiple applications for the photonic skin. When integrated into wearable gloves, the skin enabled light-based Morse code communication through simple finger gestures. Bending one or more fingers activated the mechanoluminescence, emitting visible flashes that corresponded to messages such as “UP,” “OK,” or “SOS.” The system remained fully functional when submerged in cold water (~7°C), simulating deep-sea conditions. In a separate test, the skin was applied to a gas tank mock-up to monitor for leaks. A pinhole defect was covered with the printed skin and sealed using stretchable tape. When pressurized air escaped through the leak, the localized mechanical force caused a bright cyan glow at the exact leak site, offering a passive, electronics-free alternative to conventional gas sensors. To test performance on soft and mobile platforms, the researchers also mounted the photonic skin onto a robotic fish. As the robot swam through water tanks at different temperatures (24°C, 50°C, and 7°C), the skin continued to light up reliably, demonstrating its resilience and utility for marine robotics. Comparison of printed photonic skin structures with different geometries and their conformability to complex surfaces. Image via Sun et al., Advanced Materials. Toward electronics-free underwater communication While LEDs and optical fibers are widely used in underwater lighting systems, their dependence on rigid form factors and external power makes them unsuitable for dynamic, flexible applications. In contrast, the stretchable ML photonic skin developed by NUS researchers provides a self-powered, adaptable alternative for diver signaling, robotic inspection, and leak detection, potentially transforming the toolkit for underwater communication and safety systems. Future directions include enhanced sensory integration and robotic applications, as the team continues exploring robust photonic systems for extreme environments. Photonic skin integrated into gloves for Morse code signaling and applied to robotic fish and gas tanks for underwater safety monitoring. Image via Sun et al., Advanced Materials. The rise of 3D printed multifunctional materials The development of the photonic skin reflects a broader trend in additive manufacturing toward multifunctional materials, structures that serve more than a structural role. Researchers are increasingly using multimaterial 3D printing to embed sensing, actuation, and signaling functions directly into devices. For example, recent work by SUSTech and City University of Hong Kong on thick-panel origami structures showed how multimaterial printing can enable large, foldable systems with high strength and motion control. These and other advances, including conductive FDM processes and Lithoz’s multimaterial ceramic tools, mark a shift toward printing entire systems. The NUS photonic skin fits squarely within this movement, combining mechanical adaptability, environmental durability, and real-time optical output into a single printable form. Read the full article in Advanced Materials 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 a schematic of the 3D printed mechanoluminescent photonic skin showing fabrication steps and light emission under deformation. Image via Sun et al., Advanced Materials.

Standard modular construction was given a softened appearance with the addition of residential wood truss roofs and the introduction of shorter modules in select locations to create courtyards. Photo by doublespace photography PROJECT Durham Modular Transitional Housing, Beaverton, Ontario ARCHITECT Montgomery Sisam Architects Inc. In cities, homelessness can be painfully visible, in the form of encampments or people sleeping rough. But in rural areas, people experiencing homelessness are often hidden away. It’s this largely invisible but clearly present need that led to the construction of Beaverton Heights, a 47-unit transitional housing residence about 100 kilometres from Toronto that serves the northern part of the Regional Municipality of Durham. The region had run a pilot project for transitional housing in Durham during the Covid pandemic, out of a summer camp property—so when provincial and federal funding became available for modular, rapidly delivered transitional housing, they were quick to apply. Montgomery Sisam Architects is no stranger to modular supportive housing, or to the site, for that matter. 15 years ago, they designed Lakeview Manor, a 200-bed long-term care facility for the region, on an adjoining parcel of land. At the time that they took on Beaverton Heights, they had completed two modular supportive housing projects for the City of Toronto. (They have since completed four more.)  The initial Toronto projects were done on a massively compressed timeline—a mere eight months from design to the move-in date for the first, and nine months for the second. “So we knew that’s as tight as you can crunch it—and that’s with all the stars aligned,” says Montgomery Sisam principal Daniel Ling.  As transitional housing, the Beaverton facility is designed to help residents overcome their barriers to housing. To achieve this, the program not only includes residential units, but communal spaces, including a double-height dining room and lounge that occupy the western half of the project. This part of the complex can also be used independently, such as for community activities and health supports. To create the needed volume, Montgomery Sisam decided to prefabricate the community structure in steel: the entire west half of the project was constructed and assembled in a factory to ensure that it would fit together as intended, then disassembled and reassembled on site. The double-height community space includes a reading room, terrace, administrative areas, and communal dining room served by a full commercial kitchen. The building can also be used for community-wide functions, such as medical clinics. A cluster of columns marks the area where the dining area’s eight steel modular units join together. Photo by Tom Ridout For both the steel community structure and its wood residential counterpart, the prefabrication process was extensive, and included the in-factory installation of plumbing, electrical and mechanical systems, interior and exterior finishes, and even furnishings in each module. “Basically, just remove the plastic from the mattress and take the microwave from the box that’s already in the unit,” says Jacek Sochacki, manager of facilities design, construction, and asset management at the works department of the Regional Municipality of Durham. Within the building, the most extensive on-site work was in the hallways, where the modules met: building systems needed to connect up, and flooring and finishes needed to be completed over the joints after the modules were installed. One of the most surprising aspects of the project is how un-modular it looks. Montgomery Sisam’s previous experience with modular construction allowed them to find leeway in the process—small tweaks that would change the look of the project, without affecting the construction cost. The long site allowed the architects to use a single module as a glazed hallway, connecting the two buildings, and creating generous courtyards on its two sides. In two other areas, shorter modules are specified to transform the massing of the building. The resulting cut-outs serve as an entry forecourt and as a dining terrace. Instead of flat roofs, the team used residential trusses—“the same wood trusses you would see in subdivisions,” says Ling—to create sloped roof forms. From the outside, the windows of the residential units are slightly recessed behind a frame of wood cladding, adding further dimension to the façade.  Photo by doublespace photography Since it was a design-build process, all of these decisions were vetted through the builder for their cost effectiveness. “It wasn’t hard to convince them, we’re going to use some shorter modules—you are going to build less there,” recalls Ling. “These are things that actually don’t cost a lot of money.” The resulting massing is intentionally lower towards the front of the property, where the community space faces residential neighbours, and doubles to four storeys towards the back. As you approach the project, the courtyards and cut-outs give it the appearance of smaller discrete masses, rather than a single volume. Topping the project is the region’s largest solar panel array, which provides 35 to 40 percent of the all-electric building’s energy needs. Modular construction aided in airtightness and performance—in its first months of operation, it delivered an EUI of 102 kWh/m2/year.   Balancing between independence and community was an important principle for the program, and for the design. To this end, each studio is designed to function as a self-sufficient dwelling, with its own kitchen, full washroom, and heat pump with independent temperature control. Small spatial nudges—like daylight at both ends of corridors, seating nooks with built-in benches throughout the project, and generous common rooms—aim to coax residents outside of their units. The property is bracketed by the dining area at the front, and an outdoor basketball court at the rear. A long storage shed holds some of the facility’s mechanical equipment along with bikes—an easy way to get into town for residents who may not have cars.  Located between the residences and the community building, a semi-private courtyard offers a quiet place for clients to rest or socialize with others. Photo by doublespace photography The building looks so good that, had the finishes be chosen for luxury rather than durability, it could easily pass as a family resort. But is that too nice? Often, government-funded buildings—especially for a stigmatized program such as transitional housing—come under criticism if they appear to be too fancy.  I put this to Sochacki, who replies: “There’s this misnomer that if the building looks good or unique, it costs a lot of money. I think we proved that it doesn’t.” Apart from a wood surround for the fireplace, the components of the building are utilitarian and basic, he says. “It’s just like: how do you make the most out of common materials? It costs us exactly the same, but we’re doing things that are actually nice.” Screenshot That niceness is not just a perk, but essential to the core purpose of helping people experiencing homelessness to make their way back into society. “Making it nice is important,” says Sochacki. “Nice lighting, nice windows, nice places to sit, nice spaces that people enjoy being at—because that’s what’s going to make the difference.”  “If you build a place that people just want to spend all their time in their room and they don’t come out, that’s not going to help them with transitioning back to a sustainable, permanent housing lifestyle,” he adds. “You’ve got to create a place where they feel welcome and that they want to spend time in—they want to meet other people and they want to get the support, because there’s a place and space for it, and it’s successful for them to get the support.” A terrace adjoins the reading lounge and dining area, inviting outdoor barbecues and gatherings in warm weather. The cut-out was created by using a shorter module in this section of the building, minimizing the impact to construction costs and logistics. Photo by Tom Ridout CLIENT Regional Municipality of Durham | ARCHITECT TEAM Daniel Ling (FRAIC), Enda McDonagh, Kevin Hutchinson, Sonja Storey-Fleming, Mateusz Nowacki, Zheng Li, Grace Chang, Jake Pauls Wolf, Mustafa Munawar, Paul Kurti, William Tink, Victoria Ngai, Kavitha Jayakrishnan, Max Veneracion, Megan Lowes | STRUCTURAL/MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL Design Works Engineering | LANDSCAPE Baker Turner | INTERIORS Montgomery Sisam Architects | CONTRACTOR NRB Modular Solutions | CIVIL Design Works Engineering | CODE Vortex Fire | FOOD SERVICES Kaizen Foodservice Planning & Design | ENERGY MODELlING Design Work Engineering | SPECIFICATIONS DGS Consulting Services | AREA 3,550 m2 | COMPLETION October 2024 ENERGY USE INTENSITY (operational) 101.98 kWh/m2/year   As appeared in the June 2025 issue of Canadian Architect magazine  The post Invisible Need, Visible Care: Beaverton Heights, Beaverton, Ontario appeared first on Canadian Architect.

New York City’s Brooklyn-Queens Expressway is falling apart. Built between 1946 and 1964, the urban highway runs 12.1 miles through the heart of the two boroughs to connect on either end with the interstate highway system—a relic of midcentury car-oriented infrastructure, and a prime example of the dwindling lifespan of roads built during that time.  The degradation is most visible—and most pressing—in a section running alongside Brooklyn Heights known as the triple cantilever. This 0.4-mile section, completed in 1954, is unique among U.S. highways in that it juts out from the side of a hill and stacks the two directions of traffic on balcony-like decks, one slightly overhanging the other. A third level holds a well-loved park, the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.  This unusual layer cake of a freeway was a marvel of engineering in its day, though not without controversy. Masterminded by Robert Moses, the city’s all-powerful, often ruthless city planner for more than four decades, the roadway bisects working-class and immigrant neighborhoods that grapple with the health and environmental fallout to this day. Like the reputation of the man who built it, the triple cantilever has aged poorly. Its narrow width, (33.5 feet for the roadway in either direction) has made all but the most basic maintenance incredibly difficult, and its 71-year-old structure is constantly battered by the ever heavier automobiles and trucks. Designed to accommodate around 47,000 vehicles per day, it now carries more than three times that amount. Deteriorating deck joints and failing steel-reinforced concrete have led many to worry the triple cantilever is on the verge of collapse. An expert panel warned in 2020 that the triple cantilever could be unusable by 2026, and only then did interim repairs get made to keep it standing. [Photo: Alex Potemkin/Getty Images] The mounting concern comes amid a 50-year decline in direct government spending on infrastructure in the U.S., according to a recent analysis by Citigroup. Simply maintaining existing infrastructure is a challenge, the report notes. Meanwhile, the American Society of Civil Engineers’ grade for the country’s infrastructure has improved, from a D+ in 2017 to a C in 2025. Now even private credit firms are circling: As reported in Bloomberg, Apollo Global Management estimates that a boom in infrastructure deals help could grow the private debt market up to a staggering $40 trillion.   Independent urban designer Marc Wouters has an idea on how to fix BQE’s cantilever. He’s been working on it for years. “My process is that I always interview people in the community before I do any drawings,” he says. “So I really have listened to pretty much everybody over the past few years.” Unsolicited and developed in his own spare time, Wouters has designed an alternative for the triple cantilever that he named the BQE Streamline Plan. BQE Streamline Plan [Image: courtesy Marc Wouters | Studios/©2025] His concept, based on decades of experience in urban planning, infrastructure, and resilience projects in communities across the country, is relatively simple: extend the width of the two traffic-bearing cantilevers and add support beams to their outside edge, move both directions of traffic onto four lanes on the first level, and turn the second level into a large freeway cap park. Instead of major rebuilding efforts, Wouters’s proposal is more of a reinforcement and expansion, with a High Line-style park plopped on top. Though he’s not an engineer, Wouters is confident that his design would shift enough strain off the existing structure to allow it to continue functioning for the foreseeable future. (What actual engineers think remains to be seen.) “What I’ve done is come up with a plan that happens to be much less invasive, faster to build, a lot cheaper, and it encompasses a lot of what the community wants,” he says. “Yet it still handles the same capacity as the highway does right now.” So what will it take for this outsider’s idea to be considered a viable design alternative? This idea had been brewing in his mind for years. Wouters, who lives near the triple cantilever section of the BQE in Brooklyn Heights, has followed the highway’s planning process for more than a decade.  As complex infrastructure projects go, this one is particularly convoluted. The BQE is overseen by both the state of New York and New York City, among others, with the city in charge of the 1.5-mile section that includes the triple cantilever. This dual ownership has complicated the management of the highway and its funding. The city and the state have launched several efforts over the years to reimagine the highway’s entire length. In winter 2018, the city’s Department of Transportation (NYC DOT) released two proposals to address the ailing cantilever. Not seeing what they wanted from either one, Brooklyn Heights Association, a nonprofit neighborhood group, retained Wouters and his studio to develop an alternative design. He suggested building a temporary parallel bypass that would allow a full closure and repair of the triple cantilever. That proposal, along with competing ideas developed under the previous mayoral administration, went by the wayside in 2022, when the latest BQE redesign process commenced. Wouters found himself following yet another community feedback and planning process for the triple cantilever. The ideas being proposed by the city’s DOT this time around included a plan that would chew into the hillside that currently supports the triple cantilever to move the first tier of traffic directly underneath the second, and add a large girding structure on its open end to hold it all up. Other options included reshaping the retaining wall that currently holds up the triple cantilever, moving traffic below grade into a wide tunnel, or tearing the whole thing down and rebuilding from scratch. Each would be time-consuming and disruptive, and many of them cut into another well-loved public space immediately adjacent to the triple cantilever, Brooklyn Bridge Park. None of these options has anything close to unanimous support. And any of them will cost more than $1 billion—a price tag that hits much harder after the Federal Highway Administration rejected an $800 million grant proposal for fixing the BQE back in early 2024. BQE Streamline Plan [Image: courtesy Marc Wouters | Studios/©2025] Wouters is no highway zealot. In fact, he’s worked on a project heading into construction in Syracuse that will replace an underutilized inner-city highway with a more appropriately sized boulevard and developable land. But he felt sure there was a better way forward—a concept that would work as well in practice as on paper. “I just kept going to meetings and waiting to see what I thought was a progressive solution,” Wouters says. Unimpressed and frustrated, he set out to design it himself. Wouters released the Streamline Plan in March. The concept quickly gathered interest, receiving a flurry of local news coverage. He has since met with various elected officials to discuss it. But as elegant as Wouters’s concept may be, some stakeholders remain unconvinced that the city should be going all in on a reinterpretation of the triple cantilever. What might be more appropriate, critics say, is to make necessary fixes now to keep the triple cantilever safe and functional, and to spend more time thinking about whether this section of highway is even what the city needs in the long term. A group of local organizations is calling for a more comprehensive reconsideration of the BQE under the premise that its harms may be outnumbering its benefits. Launched last spring, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway Environmental Justice Coalition wants any planning for the future of the BQE to include efforts to address its health and environmental impacts on neighboring communities and to seek an alternative that reconnects communities that have been divided by the corridor. One member of this coalition is the Riders Alliance, a nonprofit focused on improving public transit in New York. Danny Pearlstein, the group’s policy and communications director, says implementing a major redesign of the triple cantilever would just reinforce car dependency in a place that’s actually well served by public transit. The environmental justice coalition’s worry is that rebuilding this one section in a long-term fashion could make it harder for change across the length of the entire BQE and could increase the environmental impact the highway has on the communities that surround it. “This is not just one neighborhood. This is communities up and down the corridor that don’t resemble each other very much in income or background who are united and are standing together for something that’s transformative, rather than doubling down on the old ways,” Pearlstein says. [Photo: ©NYC DOT] Lara Birnback is executive director of the Brooklyn Heights Association, representing a neighborhood of roughly 20,000 people. Her organization, which worked directly with Wouters in the past, is circumspect about his latest concept. “It’s certainly more interesting and responsive to the kinds of things that the community has been asking for when thinking about the BQE. It’s more of those things than we’ve seen from any of the designs that New York City DOT has presented to us through their engagement process,” she says. “But at the end of the day, it’s still a way of preserving more or less the status quo of the BQE as a major interstate highway running through the borough.” She argues it makes more sense to patch up the triple cantilever and use the extra years of service that buys to do a more radical rethinking of the BQE’s future. (For example, one 2020 proposal by the Brooklyn-based architecture studio Light and Air proposed a simple intervention of installing buttresses on the open-air side of the triple cantilever, propping it up with a relatively small addition of material.) “We really strongly encourage the city to move forward immediately with a more short-term stabilization plan for the cantilever, with repairs that would last, for example, 20 to 25 years rather than spending billions and billions of dollars rebuilding it for the next 100 years,” Birnback says. Birnback says a major rebuilding plan like the one Wouters is proposing—for all its community benefits—could end up doing more harm to the city. “I think going forward now with a plan that both embeds the status quo and most likely forecloses on the possibility of real transformation across the corridor is a mistake,” she says. NYC DOT expects to begin its formal environmental review process this year, laying the necessary groundwork for deciding on a plan for what to do with the triple cantilever, either for the short term or the long term. The environmental process will evaluate all concepts equally, according to DOT spokesperson Vincent Barone, who notes that the department is required to review and respond to all feedback that comes in through that process. There is technically nothing holding back Wouters’s proposal from being one of the alternatives considered. And he may have some important political support to help make that happen. Earlier this month, Brooklyn’s Community District 2 board formally supported the plan. They are calling for the city’s transportation department to include it in the BQE’s formal environmental review process when it starts later this year. [Photo: Sinisa Kukic/Getty Images] Wouters argues that his proposal solves the pressing structural problems of the triple cantilever while also opening resources to deal with the highway’s big picture challenges. “The several hundred million dollars of savings is now funding that could go to other parts of the BQE. And there are other parts that are really struggling,” he says. “I’m always thinking about the whole length and about all these other communities, not just this one.” With a new presidential administration and a mayoral primary election in June, what happens with the triple cantilever is very much up in the air. But if the environmental review process begins as planned this year, it only makes sense for every option to fall under consideration. What gets built—or torn down, or reconstructed, or reinterpreted—could reshape part of New York City for generations.

Smart speakers have swiftly transitioned from futuristic gadgets to indispensable components of the modern home. Their convenience is undeniable, offering voice-controlled access to information, entertainment, and smart home functions. However, when it comes to their visual appeal, the majority of manufacturers tend to adhere to a rather uniform aesthetic. We’re often presented with devices clad in neutral-toned meshes and grills, prioritizing a minimalist design intended to blend seamlessly into any environment. While this understated approach can be appreciated for its subtlety, it often leaves those with a penchant for more expressive decor wanting. Tokyo-based Metal Goat Studio has come up with a smart speaker holder called Kogani. Basically, it looks like a crab that is seemingly formed out of origami and its main function is to house smart speakers and add a bit of style to your space. It is compatible with devices like Google Nest Mini, Echo Dot (both the flat and round), and the HomePod Mini. It’s part of the brand’s Capsule Animals series, which is a line of interior elements that are integrated with smart technologies but uses compact geometries, zoomorphic references. Designer: Metal Goat Studio Kogani, derived from the Japanese word for “small crab” (小蟹 – [kogani]), is more than just a holder for your small smart speaker; it’s a piece of art. Crafted in a stunning origami style, this crab-shaped stand brings a unique touch of elegance to any space. The intricate folds and lines of the origami-inspired design create a visually captivating piece that elevates the charm of your device. It is also sustainably made, using synthetic washi paper, warm brass joints, and an acrylic structure that makes your smart speaker into “an object of calm and intention.” Aside from making your smart speaker look more interesting, it of course has other functions. It is able to prevent spills or clutter buildups in your space by lifting the speaker off your surfaces. It’s also a conversation piece when people see that your speaker is anchored in this aesthetic holder. Kogani allows you to bring a touch of the artistic and unique into your home or office. Metal Goat Studio’s dedication to combining craftsmanship and innovation is evident in every fold of this exquisite speaker holder. It’s a simple yet impactful way to personalize your space and showcase your smart speaker. As they say “This crab is ready to crawl into your life — and hold your speaker with pride.” The post Origami and crab inspired speaker holder adds a simple beauty to your space first appeared on Yanko Design.

Millennial culture has officially made it to the history books.  A history teacher recently turned her sixth grade classroom into a museum for millennial paraphernalia with the help of her Gen Alpha students’ parents. Judging by the comments on the teacher’s TikTok video, millennials aren’t sure whether to be thrilled or horrified.  Malinda Nichols (@hipsterhistorywithmrsn) posted the video earlier this month, highlighting “historical artifacts from the 1990s” for her students’ benefit. Out on display were flip phones, Nintendos, and disposable cameras. Boyz II Men and Beanie Babies also made an appearance. “The collection in here has easily got to be worth 10s of dollars,” she joked. “But the nostalgic value is truly priceless.” In a second video, with almost 800,000 views on TikTok, she showed the students’ reactions to the “museum of the millennial,” as she called it. Students played POGS, a popular playground game played with flat circular cardboard milk caps, and attempted to figure out how buttons worked on an old-school Nokia.  The parents also made a surprise appearance for a “history lesson” straight from the horse’s mouth. Students’ questions included: “How did you make plans with your friends before texting?” and “What commercials or jingles do you still remember from when you were younger?” Finally, students were tasked with creating their own AOL screen names to round out the full millennial experience.  “I created the ‘museum of the millennial’ lesson for my sixth grade students to show them that history isn’t just found in dusty textbooks—it’s alive, personal, and being made every day,” Nichols told Fast Company. “By inviting parents to share artifacts from their childhood in the ’80s and ’90s, students saw firsthand how the people who raised them, including myself—I’m a proud millennial and parent of a sixth grader—helped pioneer the digital age, even if we didn’t realize it at the time because for us it was just living our lives.” For a much-maligned generation (those born roughly between 1981 and 1996), it was a welcome change to see their culture finally getting the recognition it deserves. For too long, millennials have been forced to listen as older generations chastised them for overspending on avocado toast, before they became sandwiched by a younger generation who roasted them for their unironic love of Harry Potter and penchant for burger joints.  Nichols’s video also brought with it the horrifying realization for millennials that their childhood is now the subject of history lessons. “Historical Artifacts?” one wrote. “I feel attacked.”

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have developed a novel resin system for multicolor digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing that enables rapid fabrication of freestanding and non-assembly structures using dissolvable supports. The work, led by Zachariah A. Page and published in ACS Central Science, combines UV- and visible-light-responsive chemistries to produce materials with distinct solubility profiles, significantly streamlining post-processing. Current DLP workflows are often limited by the need for manually removed support structures, especially when fabricating components with overhangs or internal joints. These limitations constrain automation and increase production time and cost. To overcome this, the team designed wavelength-selective photopolymer resins that form either an insoluble thermoset or a readily dissolvable thermoplastic, depending on the light color used during printing. In practical terms, this allows supports to be printed in one material and rapidly dissolved using ethyl acetate, an environmentally friendly solvent, without affecting the primary structure. The supports dissolve in under 10 minutes at room temperature, eliminating the need for time-consuming sanding or cutting. Illustration comparing traditional DLP 3D printing with manual support removal (A) and the new multicolor DLP process with dissolvable supports (B). Image via University of Texas at Austin. The research was supported by the U.S. Army Research Office, the National Science Foundation, and the Robert A. Welch Foundation. The authors also acknowledge collaboration with MonoPrinter and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. High-resolution multimaterial printing The research showcases how multicolor DLP can serve as a precise multimaterial platform, achieving sub-100 μm feature resolution with layer heights as low as 50 μm. By tuning the photoinitiator and photoacid systems to respond selectively to ultraviolet (365 nm), violet (405 nm), or blue (460 nm) light, the team spatially controlled polymer network formation in a single vat. This enabled the production of complex, freestanding structures such as chainmail, hooks with unsupported overhangs, and fully enclosed joints, which traditionally require extensive post-processing or multi-step assembly. The supports, printed in a visible-light-cured thermoplastic, demonstrated sufficient mechanical integrity during the build, with tensile moduli around 160–200 MPa. Yet, upon immersion in ethyl acetate, they dissolved within 10 minutes, leaving the UV-cured thermoset structure intact. Surface profilometry confirmed that including a single interface layer of the dissolvable material between the support and the final object significantly improved surface finish, lowering roughness to under 5 μm without polishing. Computed tomography scans validated geometric fidelity, with dimensional deviations from CAD files as low as 126 μm, reinforcing the method’s capability for high-precision, solvent-cleared multimaterial printing. Comparison of dissolvable and traditional supports in DLP 3D printing. (A) Disk printed with soluble supports using violet light, with rapid dissolution in ethyl acetate. (B) Gravimetric analysis showing selective mass loss. (C) Mechanical properties of support and structural materials. (D) Manual support removal steps. (E) Surface roughness comparison across methods. (F) High-resolution test print demonstrating feature fidelity. Image via University of Texas at Austin. Towards scalable automation This work marks a significant step toward automated vat photopolymerization workflows. By removing manual support removal and achieving clean surface finishes with minimal roughness, the method could benefit applications in medical devices, robotics, and consumer products. The authors suggest that future work may involve refining resin formulations to enhance performance and print speed, possibly incorporating new reactive diluents and opaquing agents for improved resolution. Examples of printed freestanding and non-assembly structures, including a retainer, hook with overhangs, interlocked chains, and revolute joints, before and after dissolvable support removal. Image via University of Texas at Austin. Dissolvable materials as post-processing solutions Dissolvable supports have been a focal point in additive manufacturing, particularly for enhancing the efficiency of post-processing. In Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), materials like Stratasys’ SR-30 have been effectively removed using specialized cleaning agents such as Oryx Additive‘s SRC1, which dissolves supports at twice the speed of traditional solutions. For resin-based printing, systems like Xioneer‘s Vortex EZ employ heat and fluid agitation to streamline the removal of soluble supports . In metal additive manufacturing, innovations have led to the development of chemical processes that selectively dissolve support structures without compromising the integrity of the main part . These advancements underscore the industry’s commitment to reducing manual intervention and improving the overall efficiency of 3D printing workflows. Read the full article in ACS Publications. 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: Hook geometry printed using multicolor DLP with dissolvable supports. Image via University of Texas at Austin.