What happens when globally renowned artists trade studios for the clatter of machines, industrial dyes, and production lines? At the National Festival of Making in Blackburn, the result is a bold, joyful, and often surprising collision of creativity and craft. Now entering its ninth year, the festival's flagship commissioning programme, Art in Manufacturing, has announced three major new residencies for 2025. This year's headline artists are Matter at Hand, the new studio of Lewis Jones (co-founder of Turner Prize-winning Assemble), graphic artist and community powerhouse Morag Myerscough, and collage and sculpture specialist Liaqat Rasul. Each will embed themselves inside a leading UK manufacturer in Lancashire, creating ambitious site-specific works that celebrate the region's legacy of making while pushing the boundaries of material and form. Held annually in Blackburn town centre, the National Festival of Making draws tens of thousands each July for a free weekend of performances, exhibitions, talks, and installations. Its Art in Manufacturing strand has become a vital national model for artist-industry collaboration, pairing artists with factories to produce original work from heritage processes, specialist tools, and skilled workforces. Since its launch in 2016, over 30 artists have taken part across 20 manufacturers. Lewis Jones. Credit: Niamh Riordan "These commissions have always been about shining a light on the extraordinary creativity behind closed doors," says Elena Jackson, Co-Director and Curator of Art in Manufacturing. "It's an invitation for artists to experiment with materials and scale." This year, she adds, is no exception: "The artists are exploring clay, colour and collage - making new permanent work for Blackburn, turning industrial waste into finely crafted collage, and through an expanded two-year placement, developing in-depth research into sustainable making practices through new architectural and sculptural outcomes." Jones's project, through his new practice Matter at Hand, marks the start of an extended two-year residency inside Darwen Terracotta, one of the UK's leading manufacturers of architectural ceramics. Stationed on the factory floor, Jones is working on an interactive installation inside Blackburn Cathedral that reimagines clay as a sustainable material for the built environment. His installation will showcase new prototypes and sculptural experiments drawn from Darwen's heritage techniques, blending material innovation with architectural storytelling. Morag Myerscough. Credit: Marc Sethi For Morag Myerscough, the festival is a chance to inject her signature burst of positivity into Blackburn's urban fabric. Working with Crown Paints, she will create three new public-facing works, including a permanent mural, participatory workshops, and a garden-inspired installation that speaks to greening the high street. Her 'Colour Factory' takeover of Prism Contemporary promises to be one of the festival's most immersive and energetic moments. Meanwhile, Liaqat Rasul will bring his deeply personal, collage-based practice to Herbert Parkinson, part of the John Lewis Partnership. Through intimate workshops with John Lewis Partners, Rasul will explore themes of memory, identity and community. His final installation of sculptural mobiles will invite audiences to slow down and reflect, celebrating the human stories behind everyday manufacturing. Liaqat Arnold. Credit: Daniel Farmer Photography These three projects exemplify the festival's ethos: that art and making are not separate spheres but overlapping, collaborative forces. By embedding artists within factories, Art in Manufacturing collapses the distance between creative experimentation and real-world production and, in doing so, gives both artists and manufacturers a platform to innovate. A new publication, Radical Pairings, will launch at this year's festival. It documents the programme's history and legacy and features an essay by art critic Elizabeth Fullerton. The essay explores the unusual and inspiring nature of these residencies and the potential of creative partnerships to reframe both industry and art. Art in Manufacturing 2025 will debut at the National Festival of Making on 5–6 July, with installations continuing in venues across Blackburn thereafter. For those curious about what happens when artists roll up their sleeves and step into the engine rooms of British industry, it's not one to miss.

Try, try again SpaceX test-fires Starship for an all-important next flight A notice to mariners suggests SpaceX's next Starship test flight could launch as soon as May 21. Stephen Clark – May 13, 2025 6:33 pm | 0 Starship's six Raptor engines fired for about 60 seconds Monday on a test stand in South Texas. Credit: SpaceX Starship's six Raptor engines fired for about 60 seconds Monday on a test stand in South Texas. Credit: SpaceX Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more SpaceX fired six Raptor engines on the company's next Starship rocket Monday, clearing a major hurdle on the path to launch later this month on a high-stakes test flight to get the private rocket program back on track. Starship ignited its Raptor engines Monday morning on a test stand near SpaceX's Starbase launch facility in South Texas. The engine ran for approximately 60 seconds, and SpaceX confirmed the test-firing in a post on X: "Starship completed a long duration six-engine static fire and is undergoing final preparations for the ninth flight test." SpaceX hasn't officially announced a target launch date, but maritime warnings along Starship's flight path over the Gulf of Mexico suggest the launch might happen as soon as next Wednesday, May 21. The launch window would open at 6:30 pm local time (7:30 pm EDT; 23:30 UTC). If everything goes according to plan, Starship is expected to soar into space and fly halfway around the world, targeting a reentry and controlled splashdown into the Indian Ocean. After Monday's successful static fire test, SpaceX is in the final stretch of preparations for Starship's ninth full-scale test flight. Last month, SpaceX test-fired the rocket's massive booster stage, known as Super Heavy. The Super Heavy booster assigned to the next Starship launch will become the first that SpaceX will reuse from a previous test flight. This, alone, is a significant step for the Starship program. SpaceX wants the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage to become rapidly reusable, eventually operating more like an airplane than a legacy rocket. The booster slated to launch on Flight 9 made its first flight in January, when it soared to the edge of space, released SpaceX's Starship upper stage, and returned to the launch pad, where it was caught in mid-air by heavy-duty mechanical arms. SpaceX will again try to catch the Super Heavy booster on Flight 9. Righting the ship While reusing the first stage is a noteworthy milestone, the next flight is important for another reason. SpaceX's last two Starship test flights ended prematurely when the rocket's upper stage lost power and spun out of control, dropping debris into the sea near the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. With Flight 9, SpaceX hopes to get the Starship program back on track. The company aimed for as many as 25 Starship test flights this year, but will now likely fall short of that number. Near-term goals beyond Flight 9 include returning Starship from low-Earth orbit to the launch site, with a tower catch similar to the one SpaceX used to recover the Super Heavy booster. Then, SpaceX will begin flight experiments with an in-space refueling system to transfer super-cold liquid propellants between two Starships in orbit. This is an important milestone for NASA, which has a contract with SpaceX worth more than $4 billion to develop a version of Starship for landing humans on the Moon. To do that, SpaceX must launch around 10 Starship refueling tankers—the exact number remains unclear—to gas up the Moon-bound Starship lander before it can depart low-Earth orbit. SpaceX founder Elon Musk also wants Starship to fly to Mars, which will, likewise, require a mastery of in-space refueling. NASA may also soon rely on Starship and other massive commercial rockets to launch astronauts from Earth. The Trump administration has proposed canceling NASA's Space Launch System rocket after two more flights in favor of lower-cost commercial options. Starship's black heat shield tiles are visible here during the rocket's static fire test on Monday morning. Before any of this becomes possible, SpaceX must prove it has overcome the setbacks encountered on the two previous test flights. Both flights failed at roughly the same time—approximately eight minutes after liftoff—near the end of the ship's engine firing. SpaceX investigators, working under the oversight of the Federal Aviation Administration, determined the Starship test flight in January failed after propellant leaks led to fires in the rocket's aft compartment, or attic. This led to the early shutdown of the rocket's engines and eventual breakup. Engineers concluded the leaks were most likely caused by vibrations during the ship's climb into space. The vibrations were in resonance with the vehicle's natural frequency, intensifying the shaking beyond the levels SpaceX predicted. For the next test flight on March 6, SpaceX made changes to the ship's feed lines routing fuel to its Raptor engines, made adjustments to propellant temperatures, and flew the engines at a new throttle setting. But that didn't solve the problem. Once again, Starship's engines cut off too early, and the rocket broke apart before falling to Earth. SpaceX said "an energetic event" in the aft portion of Starship resulted in the loss of several Raptor engines, followed by a loss of attitude control and a loss of communications with the ship. The similarities between the two failures suggest a likely design issue with the upgraded "Block 2" version of Starship, which debuted in January and flew again in March. Starship Block 2 is slightly taller than the ship SpaceX used on the rocket's first six flights, with redesigned flaps, improved batteries and avionics, and notably, a new fuel feed line system for the ship's Raptor vacuum engines. SpaceX has not released the results of the investigation into the Flight 8 failure, and the FAA hasn't yet issued a launch license for Flight 9. Likewise, SpaceX hasn't released any information on the changes it made to Starship for next week's flight. What we do know about the Starship vehicle for Flight 9—designated Ship 35—is that it took a few tries to complete a full-duration test-firing. SpaceX completed a single-engine static fire on April 30, simulating the restart of a Raptor engine in space. Then, on May 1, SpaceX aborted a six-engine test-firing before reaching its planned 60-second duration. Videos captured by media observing the test showed a flash in the engine plume, and at least one piece of debris was seen careening out of the flame trench below the ship. SpaceX ground crews returned Ship 35 to the production site a couple of miles away, perhaps to replace a damaged engine, before rolling Starship back to the test stand over the weekend for Monday's successful engine firing. Now, the ship will head back to the Starbase build site, where technicians will make final preparations for Flight 9. These final tasks may include loading mock-up Starlink broadband satellites into the ship's payload bay and touchups to the rocket's heat shield. These are two elements of Starship that SpaceX engineers are eager to demonstrate on Flight 9, beyond just fixing the problems from the last two missions. Those failures prevented Starship from testing its satellite deployer and an upgraded heat shield designed to better withstand scorching temperatures up to 2,600° Fahrenheit (1,430° Celsius) during reentry. Stephen Clark Space Reporter Stephen Clark Space Reporter Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet. 0 Comments

The International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia,  has returned, with its grand opening held in early May. The exhibition runs until November 23, 2025 The Canada Council for the Arts, Commissioner of Canada’s official participation in the International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, administers the selection process and oversees the exhibition at the Canada Pavilion. But in addition to the Canada Pavilion, Canadian architects and designers have a presence in several other exhibitions that are part of this year’s festival. Here’s a round-up of the Canadian work in Venice. Picoplanktonics. Photo credit: Valentina Mori Picoplanktonics led by Living Room Collective Canada’s official entry to the Biennale is Picoplanktonics, a 3D-printed living artwork incorporating cyanobacteria—a global first at the intersection of architecture, biotechnology, and art. The exhibition, developed by the Living Room Collective, showcases the potential for collaboration between humans and nature. Picoplanktonics is an exploration of the potential to co-operate with living systems by co-constructing spaces that “remediate the planet rather than exploit it.” The installation transforms the Canada Pavilion into an aquatic micro-ecosystem, where architectural structures grow, evolve, and naturally degrade alongside their living components. It was designed according to regenerative architecture principles, and is not only a built object, but also a breathing organism interacting with its environment, which prompts reflection on potential futures of the built environment. The creative team is led by bio-designer Andrea Shin Ling, alongside core team members Nicholas Hoban, Vincent Hui and Clayton Lee. Etude Ile Verte by Atelier Pierre Thibault. Photo credit Alex Lesage Les boucaneries de l’île Verte by Atelier Pierre Thibault Atelier Pierre Thibault has been invited to participate in this year’s Venice Biennale as the only team from Québec. His project is inspired by the old fish smokehouses, or boucaneries, of Île Verte. With the support of the fifty permanent residents of Île Verte, Atelier Pierre Thibault has designed a participatory architectural project that aims to reinterpret the boucaneries as creative canvases to imagine new uses to strengthen Île Verte’s autonomy. This includes community greenhouses, artist studios, and gathering places. The exhibition aims to highlight, as Thibault puts it, “the strength of a sensitive and collective gesture in response to the erosion of traditional buildings and the major climate challenges faced by inhabitants living year-round in an isolated island environment.” The construction of the installations, along with the exchanges sparked with the community, was documented through photography and video, and captures both the process and the spirit of collaboration that defined the project. Celebrating the Verdoyants’ collective intelligence and inviting reflection on the future of the boucaneries, this participatory project highlights the exemplary and internationally resonant nature of this approach. The Atelier Pierre Thibault project will be on view at the Corderie dell’Arsenale. The pavilion itself will take the form of a temporary, lightweight structure constructed from reused materials, situated on the grounds of the French Pavilion, which is currently undergoing renovation. The curators have selected 50 projects to be featured across six thematic sections: Living With the Existing, the Immediate, the Broken, Vulnerabilities, Nature, and Combined Intelligences. Image courtesy of WZMH Architects Speedstac by WZMH Architects as part of Living With…Combined Intelligences  As part of the exhibition “Living With… Combined Intelligences,” WZMH Architects presents Speedstac, a prefabricated modular precast solution that aims to reimagine how urban areas devastated by war can be rebuilt. Originally designed to accelerate housing construction in Canada, Speedstac took on urgent new relevance following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. With more than 170,000 buildings damaged or destroyed and millions displaced, WZMH’s innovation, developed through its R&D lab, sparkbird, aims to offer a scalable solution: self-contained, plug-and-play building modules with integrated electrical and plumbing systems that can be seamlessly inserted into existing structures. The use of modern materials such as high-performance concrete can reduce the weight of the modules, making them easier to lift and move using conventional crane equipment. Using a robust locking mechanism, several modules can be securely fastened and unfastened as needed, to produce an adaptive modular housing solution. The Speedstac system aims to offer a solution to the challenges of traditional construction methods, enabling faster, more flexible, and more sustainable building projects. The Vivre Avec / Living With exhibition is hosted in the French Pavilion. Presentation, Northern Horizons. Photo credit: Blouin Orzes architectes Northern Horizons by Blouin Orzes architectes as part of Time Space Existence  Through a wide selection of projects—ranging from conceptual works, models and photographs to videos, sculptures and site-specific installations—the exhibition Time Space Existence, hosted by the European Cultural Centre, aims to provoke participants to question their relationship with space and time, re-envisioning new ways of living and rethinking architecture through a larger lens. Quebec firm Blouin Orzes’ participation revolves around their first-hand understanding of Inuit territories, where they have been working since 2000. Their contribution is based on their  recent publication, Northern Journeys. Blouin Orzes’ contribution in on display at the Palazzo Mora, and additional contributions to Time Space Existence are on view at the Palazzo Bembo and Marinaressa Gardens. View of Commercial and Residential Towers from Seymour and West Georgia Streets. Image credit: Henriquez Partners Studio BC Glass Sea Sponge Another contribution to Time Space Existence is the work of Henriquez Partners Studio. The transformative mixed-use development which they are presenting merges architectural innovation, social responsibility and urban revitalization, and has recently been submitted to the City of Vancouver. The project is about ambitious city-building, and aims to unlock public benefits on currently underutilized land in a way that supports some of the city’s most urgent needs, while contributing bold architecture to the city skyline. Four towers, designed by Henriquez, draw inspiration from rare and ancient glass sea sponge reefs, whose ecological strength and resilience have shaped both form and structure. These living marine organisms, which are unique to the Pacific Northwest, aim to serve as a metaphor for regeneration and adaptation. This concept is translated through the architectural language of the towers: silhouettes, sculptural forms, and sustainable performance. The tallest tower, a stand-alone hotel, proposed at 1,033 feet, is shaped by a structural diagrid exoskeleton that allows for column-free interiors while maximizing strength and minimizing material use. Developed in collaboration with Arup, the structural system references the skeletal lattice of sea sponges; a concept researched at Harvard for its groundbreaking structural efficiency. Henriquez Partners’  contribution is on display at Palazzo Bembo. Renewal Development Shishalh Project Duplex Renderings – Image credit: Renewal Development Shíshálh Nation: Ten Home Rescue Project as part of theLiving With / Vivre avec exhibition Vancouver-based company Renewal Development has been selected to appear as part of the French Pavilion’s exhibition on housing innovation. In 2024, Renewal Development partnered with developer Wesgroup and the shíshálh Nation to relocate ten high value Port Moody homes set for demolition to the shíshálh Nation on the Sunshine Coast. The Nation has been experiencing an acute housing shortage with 900 Nation members currently on a waitlist for housing. Renewal Development says that this initiative reflects its “deeply held values of sustainability, and reconciliation” and its “work to offer real-world solutions to waste and housing shortages by reimagining what already exists.” The project will be on display in the French Pavilion. The following is a list of other Canadian groups and individuals contributing to this year’s Venice Biennale: On Storage Brendan Cormier is a Canadian writer, curator, and urban designer based in London. He is currently the lead curator of 20th and 21st Century Design for the Shekou Partnership at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Prior to this he served as the managing editor of Volume Magazine. La Biennale di Venezia and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London present for the ninth consecutive year the Applied Arts Pavilion Special Project titled On Storage, curated by Brendan Cormier, in collaboration with Diller, Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R). It explores the global architecture of storage in service of the circulation of things, and features a newly commissioned six-channel film directed by DS+R. From Liquid to Stone: A Reconfigurable Concrete Tectonic Against Obsolescence Inge Donovan, based in Boston, achieved her Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Design and Architectural History, Theory and Criticism from the Daniels Faculty of Architecture at the University of Toronto in 2019 after growing up in Nova Scotia, Canada. The Curse of Dimensionality Adeline Chum is currently a Graduate Research Assistant at the Center for Spatial Research and third-year student in the MArch Program at GSAPP. She has received her Bachelor of Architectural Studies from the University of Waterloo, Canada and has worked in small and medium-sized architecture firms in Toronto, New York, and London. Oceanic Refractions Elise Misao Hunchuck, born in Toronto and currently based Berlin and Milan, is a transdisciplinary researcher, editor, writer, and educator. Her practice brings together architecture, landscape architecture, and media studies to research sites in Canada, Japan, China, and Ukraine, employing text, images, and cartographies to document, explore, and archive the co-constitutive relationships between plants, animals, and minerals—in all of their forms. SpaceSuits.Us: A Case for Ultra Thin Adjustments Charles Kim is a designer currently based in Boston. Stemming from his background in architecture, he is interested in materials, DIY, and the aesthetics of affordability. Since graduating from Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2022, he has been working as an architectural designer at Utile. Uncommon Knowledge: Plants as Sensors Sonia Sobrino Ralston is a designer, researcher, and educator, and is currently an Assistant Teaching Professor in Landscape Architecture and Art + Design at Northeastern University in the College of Arts, Media, and Design. She is interested in the intersections between landscape, architecture, and the history of technology. Doxiadis’ Informational Modernism Mark Wasiuta is Senior Lecturer in Architecture at Columbia GSAPP and Co-Director of the Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture program. Wasiuta is recipient of recent grants from the Onassis Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council, NYSCA, and the Graham Foundation, where he was an inaugural Graham Foundation Fellow. Blue Garden: The Architecture of Emergence Tanvi Khurmi, based in London, UK, is a multidisciplinary designer and artist. Her practice is focused on addressing and combatting issues surrounding the climate crisis. After receiving a Bachelor’s in Architecture with a minor in Environmental Studies from the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture at the University of Toronto, she earned a Masters of Architecture in Bio-Integrated Design at the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London. Design as an Astronaut Dr. Cody Paige is the Director of the Space Exploration Initiative at the MIT Media Lab, a team of 50+ students, faculty, and staff building and flying advanced technology for space exploration. The Initiative focuses on helping students take their research into space. The pipeline developed to achieve this works with students from across the Media Lab and the MIT community to prototype space-related research in the lab, fly and test them in microgravity on parabolic and suborbital flights, and finally to take them to the International Space Station or on to the Moon. Cody also has a background in geology, specifically quaternary geochronology, and completed her Master of Applied Science at the University of Toronto in Aerospace Engineering and her Bachelor of Applied Science from Queen’s University in Engineering Physics.   The post Round-up: Canadian-led exhibitions at the 2025 Venice Biennale appeared first on Canadian Architect.