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Norman Foster has always treated technology as a form of expression. As one of the pioneers of high-tech architecture (along with his friend and colleague Richard Rogers), his buildings celebrate exposed structure, advanced engineering, and machine-age style. Think of the flashy steel trusses and tension rods of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank headquarters, the transparent spirals of the Reichstag dome in Berlin, or the diagonal frame of the elliptical Gherkin in London. His latest project, dubbed the Gateway to Venices Waterway, recently unveiled at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, extends that tradition into electric mobility. Developed with Porsche and the Norman Foster Foundation, Gateway is a sinuous, 120-foot-long structure hovering over a wooden walkway perched along the water. Part bridge, part biomorphic sculpture, part charging station, its shimmering, tessellated skindrawn from Porsches Kubus patternshifts in the sun, casting strange shadows. Composed of aluminum tubing and sheet metal (inspired by automotive surfaces) the permeable surface diffuses light, promotes natural cooling, and allows for modular construction and reuse. The lightweight installation, which Foster describes as both an animal with a head, body, and tail and as a platform to explore new forms of clean mobility, temporarily made Venices canals a test site of sorts for Schiller water bikes and the Frauscher x Porsche 850 Fantom Air, a sleek electric boat powered by the Porsche Macan e-drive. Foster says the system, which is largely recyclable, could also be installed in other cities, although new sites have not yet materialized. [Photo: courtesy Norman Foster Foundation] But whether or not Fosters Gateway provocation takes off, the project has a more important value: It draws attention to the rise of multimodal, electrified urban networks, which are on the verge of transforming transportation. Infrastructure is, slowly (although more quickly in Europe and Asia) becoming less about roads and rails and more but charging nodes, mobility hubs, and adaptable energy systems. The Frauscher x Porsche 850 Fantom Air [Photo: Porsche] People need to imagine whats possible, says Kyle Shelton, director of the University of Minnesotas Center for Transportation Studies. He points to what were slowly evolving efforts to familiarize users with new technologies like trains and cars, which were massive leaps when first introduced. People were like, What do you mean this is going to travel at 45 miles per hour? What do you mean I can get to another place in less than a day? Theres an advantage to putting these things out into the world and saying this is a thing. This is a possibility. [Photo: Loop/courtesy Norman Foster Foundation] Travels hybrid future That future, say most experts, will be multipronged. Mobility is moving toward a hybridized future, says Chris Cherry, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Well need stations that can serve everything from scooters to cars to vertical takeoff aircraft. In some places, this is already happening. Amsterdam, which has long provided charging for multiple types of vehicles at major train stations, is rolling out a series of eHUBS, offering charging for e-bikes, e-scooters, and electric cars. Paris has implemented mobility stations across the city that support shared electric cars, bikes, and scooters. The Dutch province of Utrecht has launched a series of mobility hubs near train stations and residential developments that offer car and bike EV charging, shared cars and bikes, and powered infrastructure. And in Sacramento, California, a new mobility hub will help power zero-emissions vehicles (a broader category that includes fuel cell vehicles), electric shuttles, and e-bikes. This kind of unified hub is not the only solution, notes Cherry, who points to the emergence of more informal networks of chargers. You might ask: Do we need one flashy multimodal superhub, or dozens of low-tech, scattered points people can actually use? Along those lines, Oslo has built out dense networks of curbside EV chargers, often repurposing streetlights as chargers and converting gas stations into EV hubs. London has installed thousands of EV chargers, including electric avenues with clusters of residential curbside charging points. Shopping centers across the U.S. are starting to provide charging capabilities, although mainly for electric cars. In many places, Cherry says, charging for lower-voltage vehicles like e-bikes comes down to simply making more power outlets available. Chargers installed on a London street, 2024 [Photo: John Keeble/Getty Images] But the key to transitioning to this new kind of infrastructure, says Shelton, is taking a more holistic view, far beyond charging. We need a systems-based approach that integrates transit, energy, digital platforms, and regulation. Were not just talking about plugging in a scooter. Were talking about building an interlaced system of batteries, software, roads, chargers, hubs, and policies that all work together. A potentially larger issue, Shelton adds, is power. We have a power production and distribution crisis, he says. Were already seeing massive strain from data centers and household electrification, and we dont have the infrastructure to move electricity where its needed most. Indeed, in the U.S., investments in clean energy generation have not kept pace with the demand from EVs, transit systems, and digital infrastructure. And transmission and storage systemsthe physical grids and substations needed to carry and manage that powerare severely underbuilt. Another elephant in the room is equity. Right now, access to charging infrastructure is deeply uneven, notes Omar Asensio, associate professor at the Carter School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech. Gig workers who drive EVs often dont have home chargers, and rely on a fragile public network. Electric scooters dont even exist in some neighborhoods. And for now the biggest complaint among users, says Asensio, is not the availability of chargers, but their reliability. The screens are broken. The plugs dont work. If you want the public to adopt this, the system has to work every single time. The transition only works if its embedded in a broader, dependable system.
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One of the world’s most distinctive new buildings is now poking out of the center of a small village in the Swiss Alps. The structure, a cylinder of bone-white columns topped by a dome, wasn’t built in the traditional sense. It was 3D-printed. It’s now the tallest 3D-printed tower in the world, and it could offer a technique for other 3D-printed buildings to rise even higher. Standing on the base of an existing building, the tower rises to a height of 98 feet, with four floors connected by a central staircase. The tower itself is all structure, with 32 tree-inspired concrete columns forming a cage-like shell that’s open to the air. Gradually widening as it rises, the tower’s top floor is a double-height space with a wide circular platform that can hold dozens of people. [Photo: Birdviewpicture/Nova Fundaziun Origen] The tower is envisioned as a performance space for Mulegns, a village of just 11 people in southeastern Switzerland. The roof of an adjacent building has also been used as the base for tiered grandstand seating that faces the tower. [Photo: Birdviewpicture/Nova Fundaziun Origen] Known as Tor Alva, or White Tower in the local Romansh language, the project is a collaboration between the Swiss cultural foundation Nova Fundaziun Origen and the university ETH Zürich. It was designed by architect Michael Hansmeyer together with Benjamin Dillenburger, a professor of digital building technologies at the university. Possibly more consequential than its height, the tower’s columns are also load-bearing, which enables the structure to rise so high. A special concrete mixture had to be developed to make the project possible, and represents a novel solution to the problem of reinforcing 3D-printed concrete, which can be difficult to do without sacrificing the speed and cost-efficiency of additive manufacturing. Most other 3D-printed concrete buildings are single-story structures as a result. [Photo: Benjamin Hofer/Nova Fundaziun Origen] This new technique involves a combination of two robots: One robot acts as the 3D printer, applying concrete in layers, while the other places a ring-shaped reinforcement in the new structure every 20 centimeters. Additional rebar is added after printing. In total, it took five months to print the 32 main columns of the tower, each of which has a unique spiraling ornamentation. In total, the tower is made of 124 3D-printed pieces and has a vague resemblance to a layered cake. [Photo: Birdviewpicture/Nova Fundaziun Origen] This cake-like appearance is a reference to the region’s history of confectioners, who developed new cake and candy-making approaches and brought them to other parts of Europe. The village Mulegns was once a center of confectionary arts, but is now depopulating. Tor Alva is seen as a new tourist attraction. Tor Alva is planned to sit in the village for around five years, after which it can be dismantled and reconstructed elsewhere. So, not only is it the tallest 3D-printed building, it could also be the first 3D-printed tower to pick up and move.
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested 11 people after their court hearings at the San Diego Immigration Court last Thursday as part of a new nationwide operation to try to fast track deportations. Beginning on Tuesday, May 20, in courts including those in Santa Ana and Las Vegas, attorneys representing the U.S. governmentwho are also employed by ICErequested that immigration judges close cases of some people who had been in the U.S. for less than two years and who had shown up without attorneys. Normally a closed immigration court case would mean that the government is no longer trying to deport someone. But instead, ICE officers waited outside courtrooms to arrest those people and put them into expedited proceedings that do not require a judge. Going to immigration court is your chance to be heard, said Michelle Celleri, an attorney and legal rights director of Alliance San Diego. It is your right. It is part of due process. Celleri said that arresting people who show up for their hearings would discourage others from coming to immigration courts. ICE and the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which runs the immigration court, did not respond to requests for comment from Beyond the Border. ICE has told other news outlets that it is detaining people who are subject to a fast-track deportation authority. That fast-track deportation process is called expedited removal. In expedited removal, an immigration officer, rather than a judge, gives the deportation order. In an executive order issued in January, President Donald Trump called for officers to use the process on anyone who has been in the U.S. for less than two years. With expedited removal, they can deport them tonight, said Ginger Jacobs, a private immigration attorney in San Diego. Theyre short-cutting the due process these folks came here to receive in immigration court. But not everyone detained in San Diego last Thursday had closed cases. ICE arrested several people who had received future hearings dates from the immigration judges they appeared before, according to their attorneys and friends. Ruth, a volunteer with the grassroots group Detention Resistance who asked not to be fully identified because of concerns about potential retaliation, said she had accompanied her friend, a man from Colombia who has been in the U.S. for just under a year, to court Thursday morning. She said that when her friend left the courtroom to go to the bathroom, officers tried to detain him even though his hearing hadnt happened yet. During his hearing, Ruths friend told the judge that he was afraid of being arrested when he went back outside the courtroom. The judge told her friend that he wasnt affiliated with ICE and couldnt control what they did, Ruth said. Her friend turned in his asylum application, and the judge gave him another hearing date. When her friend left his hearing, ICE officers took him into custody. He came in good faith keeping with his asylum process, Ruth said. Now we dont even know whats going to happen to him. Ruth said her friend has been active in the San Diego community and getting involved as a volunteer to help others in need. Tracy Crowley, an immigration attorney with Immigrant Defenders Law Center, took on Ruths friends case as he was being detained. She said she was still trying to figure out the legal reason for taking him into custody. Its wild, Crowley said. The warrants are very bareboned and dont include the legal basis for detaining them. Crowley was among a group of lawyers who jumped in to try to represent people in their court proceedings throughout the day in an effort to avoid additional arrests. Jacobs, the private immigration attorney, said her office took on four cases on May 22, including that of a young woman from Turkey who seemed terrified by the officers presence. In the afternoon, Jacobs helped a mother and her teenage son, quickly getting to know them in the courtroom in the moments before the hearing began. Outside in the hallway, more than 10 officers waited. ICE also called in two private security guards and two Federal Protective Services officers because of the presence of journalists, attorneys, and community members documenting their actions in the hallway. After the family left the courtroom, ICE appeared to follow them to try to detain them. Jacobs followed after the officers, and she said that ICE decided to let the family go. Jacobs said ICE let the family go because the son had accompanied his mother. ICE officers in San Diego mistakenly attempted to arrest two additional people that same day. The officers later acknowledged the error. In one case, an attorney from the American Bar Association Immigration Justice Project accompanied his client out of the courtroom. When ICE moved to arrest the client, the attorney objected, asking to see a warrant. Officers shoved themselves between the attorney and his client. Two officers took hold of the man and he ended up on the ground. Beyond the Border witnessed him begin to gasp for air and hyperventilate. The attorney asked to be allowed to help his client, but ICE officers kept him away. A man kneels in the hallway outside immigration court after being detained by ICE on May 22, 2025. [Photo: Kate Morrissey] May I please see a warrant because the warrant you provided is not that person, the attorney said after ICE showed him their documentation. You are making an unlawful arrest. ICE continued to keep him away from his client, saying that the man was having a medical emergency. Hes having a medical emergency thanks to you, the attorney replied. Another attorney in the hallway called for an ambulance, and eventually ICE backed away from the man. The attorney helped his client down the hallway to the elevator, holding the mans arm over his shoulders to support his weight so that he could move away from the officers. I will help my client at this point, the attorney said as they left. You guys have done enough. Several people who had accompanied family members to their hearings were left in the hallway in tears as they watched loved ones being taken away. Celleri worried about family members who werent there and would have no way of knowing what had happened. For those who are unrepresented, to their family they have just disappeared, and they are not going to know where they are for 48 hoursand thats if they know how to find them, Celleri said. Officers told attorneys in the hallway that those arrested on Thursday would be taken to Otay Mesa DetentionCenter in San Diego. Lindsay Toczylowski, an attorney and CEO of Immigrant Defenders Law Center who was among the first to publicly call attention to the ICE operation, called the arrests a bait and switch. By detaining people in courtrooms, we are discouraging people from doing what we have always asked them to do, Toczylowski said. We have always stressed how important it is for people to show up to court, to avail themselves of the system to follow the rules that are set out. She said courts in Santa Ana, Chicago, Phoenix, and Miami also saw arrests this week. Celleri said people with upcoming hearings should know that if they dont come to court, they will likely be ordered deported in their absence. She said that if ICE attempts to arrest someone, that person should make sure the officers have the correct name and that if that person has already paid bond to get out of immigration custody, the person should not be detained again. By Kate Morrissey, Capital & Main This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.
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