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Good news for Donald Judd fans: The renovation of his Marfa, Texas, architecture office is now complete. The two-story brick building built in 1907 looks almost exactly as Judd left it when he died in 1994, but now it features environmentally conscious building methods, some contemporary and some traditional, including energy-efficient windows, rooftop solar, and a passive cooling technique called night flushing. Designed by the Houston-based architect Troy Schaum of Schaum Architects and the Donald Judd Foundation, the project illustrates how historic preservation and honoring an artists legacy intersect with the realities of climate change. This is a locally responsive based system of conservation, Schaum says. [Photo: Matthew Millman/ Judd Foundation] A Desert Town Dedicated to Art and Architecture After moving to Marfa in the 1970s, Judd purchased 22 buildings in the small Chihuahua desert town and transformed them into spaces to live, work, and display art. Among them are a former military complex turned residence and galleries for his large-scale pieces, an adobe house for his paintings and collection of antique Swedish and Shaker furniture, and an old Safeway for his art studio. Donald Judd in Marfa, Texas. 1993. [Photo: Laura Wilson/courtesy Judd Foundation] As the towns economy declined and more spaces went up for sale, he purchased them in order to realize his vision of a city where art was everywhere and accessible to anyone. This is what led him to the 5,000-square-foot, brick building he renovated into his architecture office in 1990. As with most of his architectural work in Marfa, Judd exercised a light touch with his renovations. He sandblasted paint from the exterior, removed anything inside that wasnt original to the building, then brought in tables and desks he designed. The ground floor storefront became a place for him to display architectural drawings and models and receive clients (his architecture studio was in a former bank building across the street); the second floor held apartments. [Photo: Matthew Millman/ Judd Foundation] This was an office with no telephone, no fax, no computerjust a place to look at things on tables, says Flavin Judd, Judds son and the artistic director of the Judd Foundation. While most of Judds work in Marfa was about the town itself, he used this space for European projects he had hoped to build, but never realized like a train station in Basel, Switzerland. Its a very simple space and it was right next door to the office where his assistants were, Flavin says. The interior wall is brick and you don’t really hang art on a brick wall, so that would indicate the building needs to be for something else. And using it as an office makes a lot of sense. Historic Preservation with Contemporary Considerations In the years after Judds passing, the building deteriorated. The structure was boarded up and had a leaky roof that led to significant interior damage. The brick facade had cracked. In his will, the artist left instructions to maintain his properties as he had left them and to open them to the public. But the Judd Foundation recognized that for the long-term health of the building, and greater sense of environmental responsibility, they couldnt just reconstruct everything exactly as it was. Instead, they interpreted what low-impact design means in the context of today. We’re basically just continuing in a certain sense what Don was doing, says Flavin. The overall kind of ethic for both us and Don and originally was being responsible to past energy spent on building something, to the planet, and for the future. [Images: Matthew Millman/ Judd Foundation (photos), John Chamberlain/Fairweather & Fairweather LTD/Artists Rights Society, New York (artwork)] The initial work involved retracing Judds steps, then figuring out where to go from there. Fortunately, Schaum and the Foundation had a lot of historic documentation of the building to work with, including photographs from the artists archives as well as from the state of Texas and Marfa Public Library. Schaum was familiar with the building. He visited the town for the first time in the 1990s and began working with the Judd Foundation on other restoration projects in Marfa in 2013. But working with Judds architecture in the context of restoration led him to more intensely study what made it unique. One of the first things he noticed was how Judd treated the bricks as distinct forms. In addition to sandblasting the paint from the facade, he also raked the mortar between the bricks. You see a shadow between the brick instead of seeing mortar between the brick, Schaum says. The facade is a series of individual elements of brick sitting next to each other with a shadow in between, which is, in my opinion, a very Judd way of thinking about composition and assembly in that you have one part sitting next to another. Then, inside Judd had removed plaster from an interior wall to reveal the brick behind it. He left the tin ceilings and wood floors as they were. [Photos: Matthew Millman/ Judd Foundation] Judds practice was one of restraint, of erasure and revealing strategies that opens up the building rather than adding a lot of things to a building, Schaum says. This conceptual underpinning informed Schaums interventions. So how do you restore something without covering up that or without getting in the way of that very subtle revealing that Donald Judd was engaged in his architecture? Schaum and the Foundation decided to keep as much of the original architecture as they could, working with masonry consultants to repoint the brick to Judds style. But the realities of Texass climate becoming warmer each year led to some modifications. They kept the single-pane storefront windows because of their distinctive hardware and because integrating double-paned glass would have been too big of a departure from the original building. They then applied a low-e coating to block heat from the sun. They also reconstructed the damaged mahogany frames out of Accoya, a responsibly forested engineered wood to avoid using tropical hardwood. To further protect the storefront from the sun, they added a metal awninga detail that wasnt present during Judds tenure but had existed in previous years. Since the building is in a prominent downtown location and there are larger historic preservation efforts happening in the city of Marfa itself (the National Parks Service listed Central Marfa on the National Register of Historic Places in 2022 and designated a Donald Judd Historic District in the city this year), the design team deemed the addition appropriate. This [building] is from a time before air-conditioning when if you had big windows in the desert, they were shaded, Flavin says. You didn’t have plate glass, you didn’t have reflective glass, you didn’t have glass buildings. So that simply makes sense. [Image: Matthew Millman/ Judd Foundation (photo), John Chamberlain/ Fairweather & Fairweather LTD/Artists Rights Society, New York (artwork)] A Climate-Informed Approach The Judd Foundation experimented with passive cooling strategies to keep the building comfortable instead of relying on artificially cooled air. In the high desert, temperatures reach into the 90s during the day but drop down to the 40s at night. Using the buildings thermal mass and a technique called night flushingwhich floods the interior with cool air at night and vents hor air during the day with fansthey hope theyll be able to keep the interiors cool. Its an attempt to go back to 19th-century cooling methodswith an eye toward 21st-century apocalypse, Flavin says. [Image: Matthew Millman/ Judd Foundation (photo), John Chamberlain/Fairweather & Fairweather LTD/Artists Rights Society, New York (artwork)] The Foundation will use the upstairs apartments as accommodations, and they decided to install air-conditioning on that level just in case someone needs it. But downstairs, in the spaces that are reserved for Judds work, its all naturally ventilateda departure from conventional conservation practices that typically call for an environment that remains at a stable temperature. Working with the Image Permanence Institute at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Schaum and the Foundation modeled four-hour intervals of indoor temperature to determine if the archival materials would remain protected even if there were swings into red zones that might negatively impact preservation. What we’re trying to do is end up in the red zone as little as possible, but not necessarily have perfect stasis, Schaum says. Its a shift in thinking that acknowledges were in a precarious environment. Hes also exploring what passive systems for museums hes working on in New Orleans and India could look like, predicting that the buildings might be affected by power loss due to storms and might have to be self-sufficient for periods of time. Looking ahead at where the climate’s going, its saying maybe a consumption-based model of conservation is not totally sustainable, Schaum says. And to cap the project off: The Foundation added rooftop solar to power the building. In a 1993 interview, Judd said that a good building should embody a certain wholeness, consistency, coherence, attention to the function, attention to what the building is supposed to be for, consideration for the people who work in the building or use it, he said. The restoration and adaptation of the architecture office keeps true to these values in perpetuity. What this work has taught me, and what I always say Donald Judds work teaches me, is a mature architects lesson, Schaum says. It teaches me about restraint and about care.
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When Stephanie Downs, cofounder of Uncaged Innovations, a biomaterials startup creating alternatives to animal leathers, learned about the tariffs earlier this year she was forced to add manufacturing outside of the U.S. Since less than 2% of fashion goods are produced in the U.S., all of Uncaged customers are overseas and now enduring a price hike. Like many startup founders, Downs has had to react and adjust operations and business plans based on geopolitical and economic shifts. Over half of small business leaders report negative impacts of changing tariff and trade policies as of this July, according to the WSJ/Vistage Small Business CEO Confidence Index. Just as the pandemic forced massive shifts across sectors, todays founders are navigating a new wave of disruptions: tariff uncertainties, declining federal grants, and changing customer behavior. The same index found that two out of five business leaders are reporting delayed orders, as well as longer sales cycles and a more carefully examined buying process. Downs has experienced similar challenges at Uncaged, with some customers canceling orders due to tariffs on materials shipping into China. Tack and shift These shifts arent always within a founders controlbut how they respond to them is. Companies that simply freeze in uncertainty often dont survive. Those that tack and shift their approach can manage though, and even take advantage, of the changes. At Golden Seeds, after two decades of experience investing in early-stage women-led companies, weve come to view this as swerving and its just as criticalif not more sothan the dramatic course corrections that pivots imply. The art of adapting isnt a one-time decision. Its a continuous process of listening, learning, and iterating. Its important to distinguish between the two concepts. Think of a swerve as proactive responsiveness. Its when startups pick up on early signalslike customer feedback, market shifts, or changes in funding sourcesand adjust accordingly. They are often smaller, tactical shifts that respond to new data. A pivot, in contrast, usually emerges when the product market fit hasnt been clearly determined or the product is no longer viable. Its a deliberate, and often high-stakes, decision to fundamentally change the product, business model, or target market. Why Swerving MattersMaybe More Than Pivoting Every startup swerves. Or at least, every successful one does. It might not be flashy. It doesnt always make headlines. But its the everyday work of managing a company: testing assumptions, talking to customers, analyzing sales patterns, and adjusting accordingly. Its also what investors are often really betting onnot just the initial idea, but the founders judgment and willingness to adjust when reality doesnt match the original vision. Failure to swerve can be fatal. Companies that rigidly stick to the original plan, even when its not working, tend to burn through capital and fade away. Remember, hope is not a strategy. If the company isnt making sales targets, find out exactly why. When the Pivot Is Necessary Still, sometimes swerving isnt enough. When a startup realizes the product isnt viable or the market has evaporated, its time for a true pivot. Take BentoBox, for example. Originally a marketing services platform for restaurants, the company saw opportunityand urgencyduring the pandemic. As dining rooms closed, restaurants needed digital tools for online ordering and payments. BentoBox made a do-or-die shift to become a payments and e-commerce platform, ultimately selling for over $300 million. Lark Health is another notable pivot. Initially a consumer sleep device company, it evolved into an AI-driven nurse platform treating millions of patients struggling with chronic conditions on behalf of health insurers, employers, and PBMs. That transformation didnt happen overnight, but it was a full reinvention that unlocked significant market potential. These examples highlight another common thread: successful pivots often come from companies that were already good at swerving. They were listening, learning, and adapting all alongso when the time came for a bigger move, they were well positioned to act quickly. Great founders and teams are constantly testing, refining, and asking hard questions. They sit in on sales calls. They ask why a customer said no. Is it a product issue? Is onboarding taking too long? Does it require too much manual intervention? Is it too expensive? They look for patterns in whats working and whats not. They make small bets, try new features, and critically, know when its time to either double down or switch gears entirely. They also know how to test demand. In hard tech, for instance, that might mean getting a customer to fund development of a new featurenot just waiting and hoping a sale materializes. That kind of resourcefulness and discipline is what gives a company options when the winds shift. Advice for Investors and Founders For angel investors and board members, supporting a startup goes far beyond capitalit’s about recognizing when a company is at an inflection point and helping the team navigate it with clarity and confidence. That means staying close to the business, asking probing questions, and encouraging founders to test their assumptions early and often. Swervesthose smaller, iterative shiftsshould be a regular topic at the board table, not just in times of crisis. This type of creative and adaptive thinking should be a part of every board meeting. Great investors and advisers recognize that swerving is simply managing a company, its not a sign of failure. And when a pivot becomes necessary, investors can play a critical role in helping leadership assess whether the product, market, or business model needs to changeand how to communicate that shift to employees, customers, and future funders. Great board members challenge, guide, and help founders course correct before the runway runs out. Ultimately, whether you’re advising a tactical swerve or leading a company through a full-scale pivot, the goal remains the same: stay aligned with the market, respond to what the data and customers are telling you, and keep moving forward. In the world of startups, and most specially in this current economy, resilience is importantbut adaptability is essential. The companies that endure and thrive are the ones that listen, learn, and evolveover and over again.
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E-Commerce
This year, global EV sales are expected to jump almost 25% compared with 2024. As the demand for electric vehicles soars, theres a looming concern for industry experts: figuring out the best way to repurpose the several-hundred-pound batteries that power these vehicles. According to a 2023 study by McKinsey, the global supply of EV batteries for recycling is steadily increasing and is expected to hit a whopping 7,850 kilotons in 2035. That same year, McKinsey projects that EV battery recycling will be a $7.2 billion industry in the U.S. Currently, though, experts are still trying to find the best way to actually scale the recycling process. The prevailing strategy is a technique that essentially involves shredding EV batteries into a superfine powdera process that has proved costly, complicated, and inefficient. Now, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have published a study showing a new way to potentially bypass the shredding step altogether. According to Yukio Cho, lead author on the study and a Stanford energy postdoctoral fellow, the team has developed a new way to build a battery that makes it much easier to separate its component parts, leaving them ready for recycling. The current state of EV recycling The two main ways that EV batteries are diverted away from landfills are through reuse and recycling. Some companies are finding ways to repurpose EV batteries after theyre no longer fit for driving. One startup is using retired EV batteries to power up an entire data center in Nevada, for example, while another is repurposing old batteries to run new EV charging stations. Others are searching for ways to break these batteries down and reuse their valuable components. The current industry standard is to shred the batteries into a fine powder called black mass, which has to be sorted into salvageable metal parts. The sorting process is messy, complicated, and often requires specialized facilities in advanced recycling markets like China to actually make the metals usable. Even then, Cho says, the acids used to sort out the metals can pose an environmental riskand, to top it all off, the whole process is expensive. Elemental components are so complicated, Cho says. Once youve generated this black mass, it’s really difficult to make recovering the critical materials cost-positive. Cho says theres not much consensus among experts today on how many EV batteries are actually getting recycled and how many are being diverted to landfills. What is clear, though, is that theres plenty of motivation to turn EV manufacturing into a more circular economy. To start, siphoning e-waste into trash heaps poses the risk of leaching hazardous materials into soil and water. From an economic perspective, EV batteries also contain valuable metals like nickel, cobalt, manganese, and lithium, which can be harvested and reused to prevent more expensive and polluting ore-mining operations. Imagine an EV battery like a ham sandwich To skirt around the issue of black mass entirely, Cho and his team decided to take a totally novel approach to EV battery design. So far in the battery industry, weve focused on high-performing materials and designs, and only later tried to figure out how to recycle batteries made with complex structures and hard-to-recycle materials, Cho told MIT News in an interview. Our approach is to start with easily recyclable materials and figure out how to make them battery-compatible. A rendering shows (left) the mPEGAA molecule designed by researchers, (middle) how the molecules self-assemble into nanoribbons, and (right) how the molecules are used for the battery electrolyte. [Image: courtesy of the researchers] EV batteries are made of three main parts: the positively charged cathode, the negatively charged electrode, and the electrolyte that shuttles lithium ions between them. Typically, EV batteries are sealed so tightly that, in order to take them apart efficiently, shredding them becomes the best way to recycle them. The novel innovation from the MIT team is a new electrolyte material which, when soaked in an organic solvent, just dissolves like cotton candy, easily separating the batteries parts. Cho compares the innovation to a hypothetical ham sandwich. Imagine that the sandwich has been glued shut, and in order to retrieve the bread, lettuce, and ham, it has been shredded and must be sorted by minute particles. Now, imagine that the sandwich was held together by mayo instead: You could easily separate all of the sandwiches compoents. Thats essentially the difference between the black mass recycling step and the electrolyte process that his team is working on. Chos team created a solid-state battery to test the material, finding that it held up against the batterys demands. Then, once the battery was treated with an organic solvent, the material dissolvedcutting out the necessity of a shredding step entirely. A depiction of batteries made with MIT researchers new electrolyte material, which is made from a class of molecules that self-assemble in water, named aramid amphiphiles (AAs), whose chemical structures and stability mimic Kevlar. [Image: courtesy of the researchers/edited by MIT News] Whats next There are a few shortcomings with the current dissolvable prototype. To start, Cho says the test batterys performance was well below that of todays gold-standard commercial batteries. The performance is at a level that the industry will never think aboutif you have an iPhone 13, youll never think about swapping that for an iPhone 4, Cho says. Matching the performance to the current state-of-the-art batteries is definitely a challenge we haven’t demonstrated yet. Part of that performance deficit, Cho says, likely comes from the fact that his team built its battery from the ground up. While it will be at least several years before this new material might be commercially viable, he believes it could be swapped into future EV batteries without too much hassle on manufacturers parts. I think in the future, we can integrate this material as a part of the battery, Cho says. If you imagine that it dissolves like cotton candy, it can just be a very thin layer somewhere in between the component parts. That will serve the purpose of opening the battery in an autonomous way.
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E-Commerce
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