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At a time of broken climate pledges and an economy-wide bearhug of automation and artificial intelligence, the dominant themes of the recently announced 2026 National Design Awardsclimate action, sustainability, dedication to craftare a refreshing reset. Rewarding innovation and impact among U.S.-based designers, the awards are both an honor and a pulse check on the state of design. This year’s group of winners represent a diverse group of practitioners and firms exploring ways that work in design and the arts can counteract environmental catastrophe and re-center the human hand in shaping the future. Honorees include the indigenous underpinnings in the textiles of fashion designer Josh Tafoya, the cross-border ecological and social research outposts of Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, and the environmentally sensitive museum design of architecture firm Frida Escobedo Studio. Other winners were selected for works pushing the boundaries of fields from digital cartography to ecological restoration. Josh Tafoya, Ranchero La Bruja [Photo: Courtesy of Josh Tafoya/Cooper Hewitt] Launched in 2000 by the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, the awards honor designers across design disciplines from architecture to digital design to interior design. Despite the awards program being created as a project of the White House Millennium Council, this year’s honorees zag away from the trendlines of current national politics. Two standout honorees include Mattaforma, a New York City-based architecture and research studio focusing on mass-timber and sustainable building materials, and Berea College Student Craft, a hands-on experiential design and craft program that dates back to 1893. Mattaforma, Parkview Mountain House [Photo: Courtesy of Lauren Kerr/Cooper Hewitt] The 2026 jury was chaired by Aric Chen, director of the Zaha Hadid Foundation, and also included Liz Danzico, vice president of design at Microsoft AI, Henk Ovink, executive director and founding commissioner for the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, and Valerie Steele, director and chief curator of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Berea College Student Craft, Squibble Broom [Photo: Courtesy of Cooper Hewitt] Here’s the full list of categories and winners: Architecture: Frida Escobedo Studio Climate Action: UCSD Community Stations by Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman Communication Design: Thought Matter Design Visionary: Robert Earl Paige Digital Design: Laura Kurgan Emerging Designer: Mattaforma Fashion Design: Josh Tafoya Interior Design: Charlap Hyman & Herrero Landscape Architecture: Ten Eyck Landscape Architects Product Design: Berea College Student Craft
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Next week, a rare celestial event will take to the skies. On March 3, amateur astronomers will get to witness a blood moon and a worm moon all at once. According to Space.com, a blood moon occurs during a total lunar eclipse, as the Earth passes directly between the Sun and Moon and casts a shadow across the moon’s surface. The moon appears red due to the way the Earth’s atmosphere filters sunlight. “This effect, known as Rayleigh scattering, is the same reason that the sky takes on magnificent shades of red and orange around sunset,” the site explains. While different seasons often bring exciting astrological events, this one is exceptionally rare. According to NASA, a blood moon can only occur during the full moon phase. But the blood moon also coincides with March’s full worm moon, named for the time of year when the Earth begins to thaw (which the worms appreciate). When can I see the blood moon? The eclipse, which will be visible across most of the U.S., is set to begin at 3:33 a.m. EST on March 3. The eclipse won’t begin to enter totality until around 6:04 a.m. EST, reaching its “greatest point at 6:33 a.m. ET, just minutes before the Full Moon peak,” explains Almanac.com. Do I need to wear protective glasses? Luckily, you won’t need any special equipment to view the event. It’s safe to look directly at a lunar eclipse (unlike a solar eclipse, which you need to wear protective eyewear to safely view, minus during complete totality). Still, NASA says that, if you want an even better view, binoculars are a good idea. “For a more dramatic observing experience, seek a dark environment away from bright lights. Binoculars or a telescope can also enhance your view,” it explains. What other celestial events are coming up? After the dramatic show next week, the event will not take place again until New Years Eve 20282029. That means, if you’re hoping to catch the show, you better make sure you’re looking up. Especially because constellations may appear brighter, too, as the moon’s light is dimmed. But another exciting astrological event will take place just days later. Space.com says on March 8, a “conjunction” of Venus and Saturn will appear in the sky. While the planets are, in fact, very far apart, as Venus “passes one degree to the upper right of Saturn,” they’ll appear closer than ever from Earth.
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E-Commerce
The growing backlash to data centers, and the rising electricity bills that accompany them, has become difficult for politicians to ignore. President Donald Trump is now the latest to address the issue. In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Trump announced what he called a ratepayer protection pledge, for which the White House will tell major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs. We have an old grid, Trump said. It could never handle the kind of numbers, the amount of electricity thats needed. Under the agreement, tech companies can build their own power plants, which Trump says will protect community electricity prices from going up. In many cases, he added, prices of electricity will go down for the community, and very substantially down. Another empty promise? To climate experts, though, that pledge sounds like another empty promise from the president, just like his campaign vow to reduce Americans utility costs. One of Trumps key campaign promises was to slash Americans energy bills in half within the first year of his presidency. But in reality, electricity bills rose 13% nationally by the end of 2025, according to Climate Power, a climate advocacy organization. That hike hasnt been entirely because of the AI-driven data center boom. Bills rose in part because the Trump administration has canceled clean energy projects like wind and solar and instead made the country more dependent on foreign oil and fossil fuels. Those efforts will only exacerbate the energy costs associated with data centers. Wind and solar power are cheaper than coal and natural gas for utility-scale electricitybut as data centers demand more and more power, the country is building more natural gas power plants. If Trump and Republicans were serious about lowering costs, theyd focus on bringing more made in America clean energy onto the grid, Climate Power senior advisor Jesse Lee said in a statement following the State of the Union. Instead, theyre trying to ban it. Data centers becoming a political issue Trumps ratepayer protection pledge is the latest version of a data center solution that has been growing in popularity. As they face increased backlash, with communities opposing data center projects in their backyards, some tech companies like Anthropic have taken it upon themselves to promise to pay for their increased energy use. Politicians, on both sides of the aisle, are also increasingly calling for fixes. In November 2025, Abigail Spanberger won the Virginia governor’s race after focusing on rising electricity bills during her campaign. She specifically called out data centers, saying shell make sure they pay their own way and their fair share of their new electricity and transmission needs. More recently, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley introduced a bill this month to stop data centers from driving up energy costs by requiring them to have their own power sources. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders just this week went for a more extreme solution, calling for a moratorium on data center construction. Its not clear if these efforts will do anything to stem the rising costs for all the data centers already planned or in the works, thoughwhich would add a total of 93 GW of electricity demand to the grid by 2029. Already in response to that demand, proposals for new natural gas plants are soaring, tripling in 2025 compared to the year prior, according to nonprofit research organization Global Energy Monitor. The U.S. now has the most gas-fired power capacity in development (that includes projects that have been announced as well as those in preconstruction and/or construction), the nonprofit sayswith more than a third of that capacity slated to directly power data centers.
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