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After closing for five months due to smoke damage from the Palisades Fire, the Eames House (Case Study House #8) in Los Angeles has reopened to visitorsnow with a more determined mission to serve as a place of community. [Photo: Chris Mottalini, 2025/ 2025 Eames Office, LLC.] Nearly 7,000 buildings were destroyed in the Palisades Fire, and though the Eames House was spared, cleanup efforts have been intensive. A crew took about a week to wipe away flame retardant that had been dropped to slow the fire from advancing from the outside of the home. They also dug up the property’s plantings beds so the soil could be replaced due to concerns about toxic materials. Eames Demetrios, Lucia Dewey Atwood, and Adrienne Luce outside the studio. [Photo: Chris Mottalini, 2025/ 2025 Eames Office, LLC.] “We were very fortunate,” says Lucia Atwood, the granddaughter of architects Charles and Ray Eames who built the Pacific Palisades home in 1949. The home is a model of resilience, but its stewards were also proactive. Atwood tells Fast Company interventions began in 2011 to better fire- and drought-proof the home, which is a National Historic Landmark and on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. Those efforts that took on greater urgency after the Getty Fire in 2019. Charles and Ray balancing on the steel framing of the Eames House in Pacific Palisades, California, 1949. [Photo: 2025 Eames Office, LLC.] “At that point it became very clear that there were going to be an increasing number of of extremely damaging fires,” says Atwood, the former executive director of the Eames Foundation. The foundation has worked to harden the landscape, a process that included clearing brush and removing some of the more than 250 trees that were on the property. [Photo: Chris Mottalini, 2025/ 2025 Eames Office, LLC.] Reopening events this month with local leaders, neighbors, and fire survivors have turned the Eames House into an Eames home for the community, as is the case for patrons of the Palisades Library, which was destroyed in the fires. After offering the library the use of the property, including the home’s studio, which is open to the public for the first time, for events like book clubs and sales, the head of the library got emotional, says Adrienne Luce, who was announced the Eames Foundation’s first non-family member executive director in April. “This place is for you,” Luce recalls telling the library’s head, and she says she started to choke up. “Being so close to the devastation actually is a wonderful opportunity to serve and support the local community and long-term community rebuilding efforts.” Reopening means “really engaging and serving the local community,” Luce says.
Category:
E-Commerce
Singapore-based solar panel manufacturer Bila Solar is suspending plans to double capacity at its new factory in Indianapolis. Canadian rival Helienes plans for a solar cell facility in Minnesota are under review. Norwegian solar wafer maker NorSun is evaluating whether to move forward with a planned factory in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And two fully permitted offshore wind farms in the U.S. Northeast may never get built. These are among the major clean energy investments now in question after Republicans agreed earlier this month to quickly end U.S. subsidies for solar and wind power as part of their budget megabill, and as the White House directed agencies to tighten the rules on who can claim the incentives that remain. This marks a policy U-turn since President Donald Trumps return to office that project developers, manufacturers and analysts say will slash installations of renewable energy over the coming decade, kill investment and jobs in the clean energy manufacturing sector supporting them, and worsen a looming U.S. power supply crunch as energy-hungry AI infrastructure expands. Solar and wind installations could be 17% and 20% lower than previously forecast over the next decade because of the moves, according to research firm Wood Mackenzie, which warned that a dearth of new supplies could slow the expansion of data centers needed to support AI technology. Energy researcher Rhodium, meanwhile, said the law puts at risk $263 billion of wind, solar, and storage facilities and $110 billion of announced manufacturing investment supporting them. It will also increase industrial energy costs by up to $11 billion in 2035, it said. “One of the administrations stated goals was to bring costs down, and as we demonstrated, this bill doesn’t do that,” said Ben King, a director in Rhodium’s energy and climate practice. He added the policy “is not a recipe for continued dominance of the U.S. AI industry.” The White House did not respond to a request for comment. The Trump administration has defended its moves to end support for clean energy by arguing the rapid adoption of solar and wind power has created instability in the grid and raised consumer prices assertions that are contested by the industry and which do not bear out in renewables-heavy power grids, like Texas’ ERCOT. Power industry representatives, however, have said all new generation projects need to be encouraged to meet rising U.S. demand, including both those driven by renewables and fossil fuels. Consulting firm ICF projects that U.S. electricity demand will grow by 25% by 2030, driven by increased AI and cloud computing a major challenge for the power industry after decades of stagnation. The REPEAT Project, a collaboration between Princeton University and Evolved Energy Research, projects a 2% annual increase in electricity demand. With a restricted pipeline of renewables, tighter electricity supplies stemming from the policy shift could increase household electricity costs by $280 a year in 2035, according to the REPEAT Project. The key provision in the new law is the accelerated phase-out of 30% tax credits for wind and solar projects: it requires projects to begin construction within a year or enter service by the end of 2027 to qualify for the credits. Previously the credits were available through 2032. Now some project developers are scrambling to get projects done while the U.S. incentives are still accessible. But even that strategy has become risky, developers said. Days after signing the law, Trump directed the Treasury Department to review the definition of beginning of construction. A revision to those rules could overturn a long-standing practice giving developers four years to claim tax credits after spending just 5% of project costs. Treasury was given 45 days to draft new rules. “With so many moving parts, financing of projects, financing of manufacturing is difficult, if not impossible,” said Martin Pochtaruk, CEO of Heliene. “You are looking to see what is the next baseball bat that’s going to hit you on the head.” About face Heliene’s planned cell factory, which could cost as much as $350 million, depending on the capacity, and employ more than 600 workers, is also in limbo, Pochtaruk said in an interview earlier this month. The company needs more clarity on both what the new law will mean for U.S. demand, and how Trump’s trade policy will impact the solar industry. “We have a building that is anxiously waiting for us to make a decision,” Pochtaruk said. Similarly, Mick McDaniel, general manager of Bila Solar, said “a troubling level of uncertainty” has put on hold its $20 million expansion at an Indianapolis factory it opened this year that would create an additional 75 jobs. “NorSun is still digesting the new legislation and recent executive order to determine the impact to the overall domestic solar manufacturing landscape,” said Todd Templeton, director of the company’s U.S. division that is reviewing plans for its $620 million solar wafer facility in Tulsa. Five solar manufacturing companies – T1 Energy, Imperial Star Solar, SEG Solar, Solx and ES Foundry – said they are also concerned about the new law’s impact on future demand, but that they have not changed their investment plans. The policy changes have also injected fresh doubt about the fate of the nation’s pipeline of offshore wind projects, which depend heavily on tax credits to bring down costs. According to Wood Mackenzie, projects that have yet to start construction or make final investment decisions are unlikely to proceed. Two such projects, which are fully permitted, include a 300-megawatt project by developer US Wind off the coast of Maryland and Iberdrolas 791 MW New England Wind off the coast of Massachusetts. Neither company responded to requests for comment. “They are effectively ready to begin construction and are now trapped in a timeline that will make it that much harder to be able to take advantage of the remaining days of the tax credits,” said Hillary Bright, executive director of offshore wind advocacy group Turn Forward. Nichola Groom, Reuters
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E-Commerce
IBM announced strong second quarter 2025 earnings that beat expectations on many points, helped in part by response to its new AI-focused mainframe computer. So why is the stock sliding today? First, a look at the results. IBM Q2 2025 earnings results Shares in the stock (NYSE: IBM) were down over 8% on Thursday in midday trading, after the tech giant beat expectations for “revenue, profit, and free cash flow” this quarter. The company reported revenue of $16.98 billion, topping expectations of $16.59 billion, with earnings-per-share (EPS) of $2.80, beating expectations of $2.64. It also raised its full year forecast. “With our strong first-half performance, we are raising our full-year outlook for free cash flow, which we expect to exceed $13.5 billion,” IBM chief executive Arvind Krishna said in a statement. “IBM remains highly differentiated in the market because of our deep innovation and domain expertise, both crucial in helping clients deploy and scale AI. Our generative AI book of business continues to accelerate and now stands at more than $7.5 billion.” That’s all good news for investors. In fact, IBMs revenue increased nearly 8% year-over-year in the quarter, according to its earnings statement. So why the stock dive? IBM stock price slides as earnings miss on software revenue The answer: software revenue. While revenue from software rose about 10% to $7.39 billion, it fell short of analyst expectations of $7.43 billion, CNBC reported. “You’re seeing the stock pull back, because there’s just not a lot of room to miss,” Dan Morgan, senior portfolio manager at Synovus Trust, told Reuters. “This would be more evidence that software is not growing at the pace that the Street was expecting.” At the time of this writing, the company had a market capitalization of $239.39 billion.
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E-Commerce
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