PM Network Diciembre 2021

PM NETWORK
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021 VOLUME 35, NUMBER 5

MOST INFLUENTIAL PROJECTS 2021
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021, VOLUME 35, NUMBER 5
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PMNetwork
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021 VOLUME 35, NUMBER 5
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Unprecedented
Times Meet
Unprecedented
Innovation
W
hen PMI started Most Influential Projects three
years ago, no one could have imagined the dis-
ruption to The Project Economy that would soon
follow. The pandemic forced organizations everywhere to adapt,
meeting the moment with a mix of resilience and agility. As we
unveil our third edition of Most Influential Projects, the virus still
persists. Yet the initiatives we highlight reveal a promising path
forward for not only containing COVID-19 but also for tackling
climate change as well as rethinking cities, mobility and infra-
structure. These breakthrough projects touch every part of our
world and every aspect of human endeavor.
Against all odds, scientists delivered coronavirus vaccines in
record time—and teams then tried to ensure that the world’s most
vulnerable populations had access to those shots. Other organiza-
tions launched projects that reshaped the workplace, whether by
reimagining office spaces or mapping out new protocols for an
increasingly hybrid workforce.
We’re also celebrating future-focused initiatives in transporta-
tion, renewable energy, financial services, technology, education,
architecture and space exploration. You’ll see some amazing proj-
ects where teams found ways to tailor products and services to be
more inclusive and accessible. Such challenging times also mean
people sometimes just needed a break, so you’ll find projects that
delivered some much-needed fun.
Our lists include nearly 250 innovative projects that aim to
make the world a better place—and provide hope amid continued
uncertainty. The teams behind these projects showed how col-
laboration and creativity can deliver groundbreaking outcomes
and positive social impact.
Congratulations to the 2021 Most Influential Projects!
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021 PM NETWORK 3

New
Ways
Forward
T
his year’s edition of Most Influential Projects comes at
a time of unprecedented change—as the world comes How the Lists Were Chosen
together to build a new future. From lifesaving vaccines To identify the Most Influential Projects, PMI
gathered input and recommendations from
to bold new energy infrastructure, these projects demonstrate
experts, members and stakeholders across the
many pivots born of the global pandemic, but also showcase the globe. Finalists were then individually re-
drive to explore and conquer new dimensions. There’s a main list searched, with each project required to achieve
of 50 Most Influential Projects as well as 30 Top 10 lists published a significant milestone over the past 18 months.
online that highlight the best of the best in sectors and geographic The ultimate selections were chosen to repre-
regions. Together, there’s a collection of more than 200 projects sent the broad portfolio of activities, regions
and industries fueling The Project Economy.
that create an emerging playbook for companies looking to make
For more information or to nominate a project
a difference in their own businesses—and the world at large. for 2022 Most Influential Projects, please email
MostInfluential@PMI.org.
ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN DEVOLLE
4 PM NETWORK NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021 PMI.ORG


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mRNA
COVID-19
Vaccines
For helping forge a path out of
the pandemic
A
s COVID-19 began its global rampage in early 2020, the health of a
global population—and the fate of a global economy—hung in the bal-
ance. A vaccine couldn’t come fast enough. Yet most take a decade to
develop, test and make their way to market. Even the fast-tracked 1967 mumps
vaccine took four years from start to finish.
But two teams had a secret weapon. One team was U.S. biotech firm Mod-
erna. The other was a collaboration between pharma giant Pfizer and German
biotech company BioNTech. Both believed they could deliver COVID-19 vac-
cines in less than a year by using messenger RNA (mRNA). Instead of using the
virus or viral proteins—which are expensive to create and difficult to store—
mRNA uses the DNA code of a virus to direct a person’s cells to make specific
proteins to fight infections.
By the end of 2020, both teams had delivered—and jabs were soon being
administered around the world. Now researchers are examining how the tech
might be used to combat other diseases, including malaria, cancer and cardio-
vascular disease.
PHOTO BY MAT NAPO / UNSPLASH
“We believe our mRNA platform can solve the world’s greatest health chal-
lenges, from diseases impacting millions, to ultra-rare diseases impacting doz-
ens, to medicines personalized down to the individual level,” said Moderna CEO
Stéphane Bancel.
BioNTech CEO and co-founder Dr. Ugur Sahin echoed that sentiment: “The
response to the pandemic has shown that science and innovation can transform
people’s lives when all key stakeholders work together towards a common goal.”

Here are the critical milestones—and chal-
lenges—that marked the historically fast path for
the mRNA vaccines.
11 January 2020
On the same day Chinese scientists publish the
DNA sequence of the coronavirus, researchers at
Moderna pin down the genetic sequence they plan
to use for the vaccine, focusing on mRNA technol-
ogy that had first been discussed in the 1950s, but
not developed until 2005. The company had been
eyeing mRNA’s potential to fight coronaviruses, and
its researchers need just two days to develop a vac-
cine they believed would be safe and effective.
25 January 2020
In Germany, BioNTech quickly ramps up, using
mRNA technology and a proprietary software to
design 10 vaccine candidates. “There was not even
one day to lose,” Özlem Türeci, BioNTech’s chief
medical officer, said in an August 2021 TED Talk.
“This was the mindset of the entire team.”
24 February 2020
After collaborating with U.S. National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Coali-
tion for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, Mod-
erna ships the first batch of its mRNA vaccine to the
U.S. National Institutes of Health—just 42 days after
sequencing was shared. The agency soon approves it
for human trials.
1 March 2020
With just 1,000 employees, BioNTech’s Sahin knows
he needs a bigger team—and a strategic partner—to
scale efforts. So he calls Pfizer executive Kathrin
Jansen to propose a collaboration to develop, test
and distribute the mRNA vaccines. Pfizer agrees
and invests US$500 million to buy the equipment
required to make tens of millions of vaccine doses.
16 March 2020
The first mRNA COVID-19 vaccine trial in the
world starts at the Kaiser Permanente Washington
Health Research Institute in Seattle, where a volun-
teer receives a Moderna shot. It happens just 66 days
after the coronavirus sequence was published.
10 April 2020
Officials at the U.S. Department of Health and
Continued on the next page

Continued from the previous page and Pfizer/BioNTech launch an expanded vaccine
trial in the United States to initiate phase 3 testing
Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Food and required by the FDA. Typically, phase 3 would not
Drug Administration (FDA) submit a proposal begin until two earlier phases were complete, but
to HHS Secretary Alex Azar. The plan: create a the FDA allows all three phases to run concurrently
large-scale government effort dubbed “Operation to accelerate development.
Warp Speed” to help private-sector drugmakers
develop a vaccine, while also helping manufactur- 21 October 2020
ers establish enough capacity to make hundreds After months of R&D to determine the best way
of millions of doses in just a few months’ time. to preserve the vaccine during shipping, Pfizer/
The government ultimately commits US$18 billion BioNTech reveal they are prepared to send millions
2
toward the effort. of doses from a facility specially designed to keep
the vaccines at ultra-cold temperatures of minus-70
23 April 2020 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-56.7 Celsius). Doses are
Pfizer/BioNTech narrow their vaccine candidates slated to be shipped out in dry-ice-filled containers
from 20 to just four and begin testing them on a the size of suitcases.
group of volunteers in Germany.
18 November 2020
1 May 2020 At completion of their phase 3 trial, Pfizer/BioN-
Using part of the US$2.48 billion in Operation Warp Tech say their mRNA vaccine is found to be 95
Speed funding it would eventually receive, Moderna percent effective against COVID-19 and days later
announces a deal with Swiss manufacturer Lonza to ask the FDA for emergency use authorization for
make enough mRNA for up to 1 billion doses per year. the vaccine. However, raw material supply-chain
obstacles force the team to cut year-end global deliv-
9 June 2020 ery projections in half to 50 million doses.
“We believe Operation Warp Speed leaders authorize a US$204
our mRNA million contract with Corning and a US$143 million 30 November 2020
platform deal with SiO2 Materials Science to boost capacity Moderna reports its mRNA vaccine is 94 percent
can solve for making specialty vaccine vials. effective in preventing COVID-19 and asks the FDA
the world’s for emergency use authorization.
greatest 30 June 2020
health U.S. and Europe regulators throw teams a curve, 2 December 2020
challenges.” requiring late-stage trials to have 30,000 subjects The U.K. grants emergency use of the Pfizer/BioN-
instead of 8,000. In response, Pfizer/BioNTech make Tech vaccine, becoming the first Western country to
—Stéphane Bancel, quick changes to a plant in Belgium, accelerating provide access to the general public.
Moderna
prep work to make more trial doses and adding
another formulation machine at the facility. These 11 December 2020
shifts add US$10 million to the project budget Pfizer/BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine is authorized for
(immediately approved)—but help the team triple emergency use in the United States. Within days, a
production in a matter of weeks. team of doctors and nurses then receives the first
approved doses—less than 11 months after BioN-
22 July 2020 Tech designed its first COVID-19 vaccines.
The U.S. government announces a US$2 billion
order for 100 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech 18 December 2020
vaccine with an option to buy 500 million more. The FDA tweets it has authorized Moderna’s
Three weeks later, it announces a deal to buy mRNA vaccine for emergency use. Five days
100 million doses of Moderna’s mRNA vaccine for later, government health officials in Canada also
US$1.5 billion, with the option to purchase an addi- greenlight the vaccine. In the weeks that follow,
tional 400 million. agreements are reached to supply the Pfizer/BioN-
Tech or Moderna vaccines to countries across the
27 July 2020 world, including Costa Rica, Qatar, Belgium and
Both Moderna (in conjunction with the NIAID) South Korea.

2 The Great Work From
Home Experiment
For fast-tracking the long-simmering shift to more flexible
work arrangements
W
hat began as a necessary adaptation
to keep employees safe during the
height of the pandemic fast became
an incubator for fresh thinking around office work.
Or what used to be office work. After more than
a year of hunkering down at home, a big chunk of
employees is simultaneously settled into their rou-
tines … and craving time together. Employers are
tions, redesigning offices for fewer people, improving
well-being and collaboration—and fundamentally
rethinking what being “at work” even means. Here’s
how some companies are making it work:
Out of Office
n U.S. retailer REI planned to move into its brand-
new Seattle-area headquarters in mid-2020. Instead,
listening—and adapting, whether it’s by going com- it quickly transitioned to a remote-working model
pletely virtual, welcoming workers back to the office and sold the 400,000-square-foot (37,161-square-
or some combo of the two. McKinsey estimates 20 meter) campus in September 2020, just four years
percent of the global workforce could effectively do after the new HQ project was first announced. The
their jobs from home several days a week and sug- company will rely on several satellite offices in the
gests there could be four times as many doing so area, while leaning into remote work. “We believe
ANCHIY / E+ / GETTY IMAGES
than pre-pandemic. the future of work is much more fluid,” says Chris
That leaves project leaders translating lessons Putur, REI’s EVP of technology and operations.
learned from the great WFH experiment into “We’re building the future around the work that
spaces and systems that can flex to employees—and needs to get done, and creating flexible, agile and
employers—needs. Doing so requires even bolder
actions: closing some of those high-profile HQ loca- Continued on the next page

Continued from the previous page to quickly respond to public health changes around
its various office locations. Using local health data
inclusive ways to deliver innovation for our custom- and government guidance to determine the safety
ers—and we no longer believe we need a traditional of on-site work, the company will designate a stage
office model to do so.” for a given office at a given time. In stages 1 and 2,
employees will be required to work from home, while
n Facebook hired Annie Dean as its first “director in stages 3-5 they’ll be encouraged to work remotely.
“We’re of remote” to oversee the company’s move to long- Stage 6 means the all-clear for in-office work.
building term distributed work. Among her project priorities:
the future retool onboarding procedures, devise a glossary n U.K. insurer Aviva found that opinions about the
around the of remote work terminology to get everyone on optimal balance of remote and in-office work varies
work that the same page and create avenues for the “remote- greatly from employee to employee, often correlat-
needs to get curious” to transition to permanent remote work. ing with age and gender. Rather than instituting a
done, and one-size-fits-all return-to-work plan, the team cre-
creating n In May 2020, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke declared ated five worker “profiles” to help managers deter-
flexible, “office centricity is over” and proclaimed the Cana- mine what proportion of time is best spent in the
agile and dian e-commerce company would be going “digital office for their team members.
inclusive by default.” But when employees work from home,
ways to a company’s carbon footprint steps right through n Dropbox discovered a little structure can help
deliver their front doors. So the company launched a project flexibility work better. Since the online file-sharing
to incorporate its workers’ home energy use into its company became virtual-first, it has instituted “core
innovation corporate emissions calculations. collaboration hours”—dedicated time windows dur-
for our ing the day set aside for meetings. That way everyone
customers.” Flex Time knows when meetings might happen and can build
—Chris Putur, REI n Microsoft developed its Hybrid Workplace Dial their personal schedules around them.
ANDREYPOPOV / ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS

New Frontiers of Space
3
n With a majority of Googlers—as CEO Sundar
Pichai calls them—working in the office just three
days a week, Google is reimagining its workspaces
PHOTO BY OSKARS SYLWAN / UNSPLASH
for the hybrid era. The company known for provid-

ing employees ping-pong tables and endless snacks is
now focused on creating modular spaces that can be
reconfigured for group or solo work and conference
rooms in-the-round decked out with large moni-
tors so everyone in the meeting feels equal, whether
they’re on site or off.
Give It 100%
n As Vivo envisions its new headquarters in Shen-
zhen, China, the smartphone maker is working

with architectural studio NBBJ to create a next-
For creating a framework to futureproof the
gen workplace integrating nature, health and equal
world’s ocean economy
access to amenities. The 32-floor tower will be
A
scored with a spiral of exterior gardens and feature healthy ocean contributes US$1.5 trillion and millions of jobs to the
alternate work environments. In another nod to global economy annually, according to the Organisation for Economic
biophilia, there will be greenery on every floor and Co-operation and Development. Yet climate change has already
green hubs that connect to each level’s kitchen wreaked havoc on some ocean economies and threatens to put more at risk. So
space, letting employees connect with nature while the leaders of 14 countries that make up 40 percent of the world’s coastlines are
enjoying breaks and meals. banding together. The goal? Sustainably manage nearly 30 million square kilo-
meters (11.5 million square miles) of waters by 2025.
n To learn how people use their facilities, cowork- The High Level Panel for a Sustainable
ing company Spaces put tiny sensors under tables Ocean Economy (known as Ocean Panel)
Waves of Impact
and chairs at its location in the iconic Red Elephant includes Canada, Japan and Australia as
What would a sustainable ocean
building in the Hague. By sensing body tempera- well as emerging economies like Chile,
economy look like?
ture, the devices shed light on how areas were being Namibia and México.
6x
used—or not used—so the company could redesign Together, the group completed a two-
based on real-world data. One example: Swapping year effort to craft recommendations that
hard wooden seats for cushy office chairs bumped were released in December 2020. And by more sustainable seafood
use of a large shared table by 30 percent. the team’s calculations, accomplishing by 2050
every item from its 74-point plan would
n When Hootsuite redesigned its Vancouver office help oceans reach their potential benefits, US$15.5 trillion
including six times more food produc- in net benefits by 2050
for more flexible working, it made sure the waste
12
from the downsizing project—desks, chairs, com- tion. It would also generate up to one-fifth
puters, decor and more—was handled sustainably. of the greenhouse gas emissions reduc-
Working with specialists from partner Green Stan-
dards, the social media company diverted 19 tons of
tions needed to stay within the warming
threshold set by scientists to curb the
million new jobs
by 2030
furniture waste from landfills (equivalent to a reduc- worst of climate change’s effects.
tion of 65 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions) The team is now working to finance Up to 1/5
and donated it to local nonprofits. and scale the initiatives identified by the of the greenhouse gas
panel, with each member country aim- reduction needed to keep
the world within 1.5-degree
ing to sustainably manage 100 percent
Celsius threshold
Want to learn more about the future of corpo- of waters under its national jurisdiction
rate office design? Listen to our Projectified®
episode for insights from Todd Heiser, principal
and co-managing director of Gensler’s Chicago
within four years.
“The ocean is neither too big to fail 30% fully
protected
marine protected areas
office, and Kahn Yoon, the director of interna- nor too big to fix, but it is too big and too
tional projects at global workplace design firm central to our future to ignore,” said Jane Source: Ocean Solutions that Benefit People,
Nature and the Economy, High Level Panel for
M Moser Associates in Singapore. Lubchenco, PhD, co-chair of the Ocean A Sustainable Ocean Economy, 2020
Panel Expert Group.

4
PHOTO COURTESY OF WHO / PAHO
Covax E
ven before COVID-19, policymakers around
the world had long struggled with the
wicked problem of vaccine equity. Look-
The original vision behind the project was fairly
straightforward: COVID-19 Vaccines Access Facil-
ity, or Covax, would use donations from the world’s
For acting as the ing to change that, a rock star force of global non- richest countries to pre-purchase vaccines from
world’s conscience profits—the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness major manufacturers, then distribute them so every
Innovations, World Health Organization (WHO), country would get a fair share based on its popula-
on global vaccine UNICEF and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance—mobilized tion. But virus variants, supply competition and
equity around a singular goal: Accelerate the development vaccine hoarding by wealthier countries have forced
and manufacturing of vaccines, while guaranteeing project leaders to execute pivot after pivot—and
access for the neediest people. sometimes face sharp criticism. Tedros Adhanom
Here’s a look at how Covax has pursued vaccine equity around the world: 1
2
DAVOS, SWITZERLAND LONDON GENEVA
January 2020 June 2020 3
1 Two months 2 3 December 2020 6
At the Global Covax announced
before WHO declared Vaccine Summit, deals to acquire 2 billion 8
4
a global pandemic, Dr. representatives from doses of vaccines— 7
5
Seth Berkley, CEO of 62 countries pledged enough to inoculate
Gavi, along with others US$8.8 billion to Covax about 20 percent of the
attending the World to procure and distribute population in more than
Economic Forum, COVID-19 vaccines 100 countries in 2021.
hatched a novel idea to both wealthy and Gavi agreed to coordinate
during an informal poorer nations around distribution of the shots. BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA WASHINGTON, D.C.
meeting in a hotel lobby. the world. It marked the March 2021 June 2021
5 Nearly 120,000 6 As part of its strategy
To combat the type of first time world leaders ACCRA, GHANA
“vaccine nationalism” had committed to February 2021 doses of Pfizer’s shift, Covax secured its first
that has hurt emerging equitable immunization 4 As the pandemic vaccine arrived for major donation of surplus
economies in prior during a pandemic. raged, UNICEF distribution throughout vaccines from wealthier
pandemics, they And AstraZeneca coordinated a flight to Colombia, marking nations. The United States
proposed creating became the first vaccine deliver 600,000 doses of the first acquired by a provided 60 million doses,
a common pool of manufacturer to ink AstraZeneca’s vaccine. self-financing Covax following a US$4 billion
COVID-19 vaccine a sale of vaccines to These were the first doses member in Latin pledge in Feburary to fund
purchasing for the 92 Covax, guaranteeing distributed by Covax to America. On the ground, further efforts. The team
poorest countries in the 300 million doses, a developing country Covax works with local prioritized those doses for
world. pending drug approval. and the first COVID-19 groups to create pop- distribution primarily to Latin
vaccines of any kind to up vaccination sites, America and the Caribbean,
arrive in Africa. including in remote or followed by South Asia,
hard-to-reach places. Southeast Asia and Africa.

Ghebreyesus, WHO director general, didn’t mince
words at an address in April: “Vaccine equity is the
challenge of our time. And we are failing.”
The team’s initial plan crumbled as Covax found
itself competing against wealthy countries buy-
ing vaccines directly from drugmakers. Then one
of Covax’s top suppliers, Serum Institute of India,
stopped exporting its vaccines beyond India’s bor-
ders. During the resulting supply crunch, the team
began asking wealthy countries for any and all sur-
plus vaccines. Covax also secured project funding
from at least 29 private organizations and individu-

als, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Founda-
tion, Cisco, Mastercard, Visa Foundation and Shell.
The response: a slow but steady payoff. In the six
months since starting vaccine rollout in February,
Covax facilitated 240 million doses in 139 coun-
5
tries. And more help is on the way: In September,
the United States pledged to donate 500 million
doses of Pfizer vaccine to Covax. Days before that
U.S. donation, the group projected that, by the end Sand Dollar
of 2021, Covax would make available 1.2 billion For establishing the first government-
doses for lower-income countries in the program,
backed digital currency
enough to ensure shots for 40 percent of adults in
T
92 economies. he people and businesses of the Bahamas
are spread across roughly 30 islands in
the Caribbean—and the nation’s banking
system is just as fractured as its geography. With
a declining number of brick-and-mortar banks,
JOHANNESBURG MANILA, PHILIPPINES the government must ship large sums of cash to its
June 2021 August 2021 smaller islands so businesses and residents can pay
7 As vaccine supplies In a milestone
8 that showed their bills. But transporting and managing all that
for poorer nations physical currency across a vast area of ocean can get
remained in woefully Covax’s strategic shift
expensive. The process also shuts out some residents
short supply, Covax was paying dividends,
and a consortium of 20 million vaccine doses from the most basic financial services. And it adds
South African biotech were distributed to the another layer of risk for businesses, leaving their
companies began work Western Pacific region, physical money vulnerable to theft.
on a vaccine technology where island countries So the Central Bank of the Bahamas launched
transfer hub. The aim that had avoided the
a four-year project to create and deploy a digital
is to build an mRNA worst of the pandemic
vaccine development were seeing a spike in version of the Bahamian dollar. When the Sand
and manufacturing cases. Combined with Dollar debuted in October 2020, it became the
network within Africa additional vaccines world’s first government-backed blockchain-based
that would create a more either produced in the digital currency.
efficient supply chain area, purchased from Along with difficulties in moving money around,
to serve the continent. overseas or donated by
the Bahamas’ financial system has been further
The consortium includes other nations, the Covax
Biovac, Afrigen Biologics delivery was enough to challenged in recent years by economic downturns
and Vaccines, the Africa vaccinate all 26 million and natural disasters, said Kimwood Mott, the proj-
Centres for Disease healthcare workers in ect manager who led the implementation of Sand
Control and Prevention, the region. Dollar at the Central Bank of the Bahamas, Nassau.
as well as several
With Sand Dollar, citizens can receive and make
universities.

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Continued from the previous page
payments electronically from a digital wallet using

either their mobile phone or a physical payment card
they can manage via kiosks across the country. And
because it’s issued by a central bank, Sand Dollar
has the same financial protections as the country’s
legal tender.
Banking on Buy-in
Unlike cryptocurrencies that are decentralized
and anonymous, central bank digital currencies
(CBDCs) are extensions of government-issued fiat
currency. That made developing and launching Sand
Dollar a highly complex endeavor that required buy-
in from myriad entities.
After launching the project in 2018, the team
began a pilot in 2019 using 48,000 Sand Dollars
on the islands of Exuma and Abaco, which have a
combined population of fewer than 25,000 people.
But as the team got closer to scaling nationwide, the
project began to hit roadblocks. The Central Bank’s
first challenge was convincing commercial banks,
credit unions, payment service providers (PSPs) and
money transmission businesses to become autho-
rized financial institutions (AFIs) within the Sand digital wallet that would compete with the com-
Dollar network. pany’s own services.
Some institutions perceived Sand Dollar as a “[The Central Bank] clarified their position—
threat to traditional banking essentially, they’re minters of the currency and
“In those districts services—a deposit alternative encouraging all licensed financial institutions to
where we find some that might draw resources out transact in Sand Dollar,” said Richard Douglas, co-
technical challenges, of banks and other financial founder and CEO of Island Pay. “So we embraced
we want to make institutions. To show how the that idea and worked with them to integrate their
sure we go in and do project would enhance the entire APIs into our platform.”
an assessment and, financial industry rather than As part of that buy-in, Island Pay had to upgrade
undermine it, the Central Bank its infrastructure to support real-time transac-
if need be, provide
conducted personal outreach to tions, enhance security and support contingen-
local assistance.” financial institutions and general cies in case of natural disasters. By decoupling
—Kimwood Mott, Central Bank outreach through the media and project components and breaking development
of the Bahamas
chambers of commerce. into sprints, Island Pay was able to accelerate prog-
PSPs were among the first to bite, led by Island ress enough to launch its Sand Dollar services six
Pay, a Bahamian digital payment platform that months after the Central Bank.
facilitates cashless payments to merchants and
consumers. Initially, Island Pay leaders were con- Ready, Set … Not Yet
cerned that Sand Dollar would be transacted in a The Central Bank planned to launch the currency

a part of that ecosystem when it decides to convert,
it will sacrifice market share to early adopters.”
That messaging resonated: By September 2021,
five AFIs had brought their apps to market.
Scaling Up
Next, the team must scale the system across all
islands by building the necessary infrastructure and
continuing to educate citizens and merchants on
the long-term value of digital currency. For example,
Island Pay offers point-of-sale devices to merchants
so they can accept digital payments and operates a
network of physical kiosks where users can convert
physical cash into digital currency.
Internet access is an issue on some islands, which
means no Sand Dollar transactions for merchants or
residents in those areas, Mott said. To fix that, the
Central Bank is collaborating with the government to
plan initiatives like free Wi-Fi on the Family Islands.
“These are things we have to recognize will
be barriers to a CBDC being properly adopted in
certain districts,” Mott said. “So in those districts
where we find some technical challenges, we want
with six AFIs, but only two were ready to go to mar- to make sure we go in and do an assessment and, if
PHOTO COURTESY OF CENTRAL BANK OF THE BAHAMAS VIA LINKEDIN
ket on time. Planning failures, resource shortages need be, provide local assistance.”
and technical challenges bogged down the rest as The Central Bank foresees a future when Sand
they developed their own proprietary applications Dollar is fully integrated into the Bahamas’ tourism
for transacting with Sand Dollars. industry, including hotels, taxis, cruise ships, tour
So the Central Bank took a more hands-on operators and attractions. Sand Dollar’s impact could
approach with laggard AFIs, keeping tabs on their have a global reach as well, unlocking lessons learned
respective development life cycles and incen- for countries like China and Sweden, which are test-
tivizing progress, said Mott. The Central Bank ing digital currencies, and for Silicon Valley giants
established a new benchmark of midyear 2021 to like Facebook that have encountered false starts on
coincide with the planned adoption of Sand Dollar the way to launching their own cryptocurrencies.
by the Bahamian government, which was work- Sand Dollar’s success has already led to global
ing on its own digitization project. That initiative partnerships. In February 2021, Island Pay teamed
would see Sand Dollar as an accepted means of up with Mastercard to release a prepaid card that
payment and disbursements and a replacement for allows users to convert Sand Dollars into tradi-
traditionally cash-only transactions. tional Bahamian dollars for use wherever the card
“The way we messaged it was: The government is is accepted.
the biggest distributor of cash in the economy and “Your average person … can now go get a credit
one of the largest collectors of cash in the econ- card and buy something on Amazon—which they
omy,” Mott said. “If your financial institution is not weren’t able to do a year ago,” Douglas said.

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6 2022
Winter
Olympics
For going for the green
B
eijing will make history next year by
becoming the first city to host both the
Summer and Winter Olympic and Para-
lympic Games. But that’s not the only title govern-
ment leaders are out to claim: They also want to
make the 2022 Winter Olympics the greenest.
Olympic host cities have been long been criticized
as merely paying lip service to sustainability. A 2021
academic analysis in the journal Nature Sustain-
ability found that—despite huge advances in tech-
nology and stakeholder awareness—sustainability
of the Games has actually declined since 1992.
Using its 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Win-
ter Games Sustainability Plan to guide decisions,
the Beijing Organising Committee is vowing to
turn that tide by addressing sustainability from all
angles. The idea is to create a positive environmental
impact through renewable energy, forestation and
wildlife protection projects, as well as deliver new
development that will improve people’s lives and
bring lasting benefits.
Ice—Without the Impact
The National Speed Skating
Oval is only one of two
permanent new downtown
venues planned by Beijing.
Also known as “the ice
ribbon,” it has an internal
surface area of 12,000 square
meters (129,100 square feet),
making it the largest speed-
skating venue in Asia. But
keeping all that ice cool can
be an energy drain. To cut
emissions, a team will use
carbon dioxide refrigerant,
rather than the usual
hydrofluorocarbons, at most
of the Olympic ice venues.
According to organizers, the
swap could save the equivalent
of 1.2 million trees.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE

Power On Back on Track—and Really Fast
The 2022 Olympics will be the first Games to power all its Events span beyond Beijing, including suburban Yanqing as well as
venues solely from renewable sources. To get the job done, Zhangjiakou. To increase transportation access, project leaders trans-
China built the world’s first flexible DC power grid, which formed a century-old rail line. The new high-speed, self-driving trains
could help save 49 million tons of standard coal and 12.8 are capable of reaching 350 kilometers (217 miles) per hour and have sen-
THIS PAGE, TOP LEFT, PHOTO BY LINTAO ZHANG/GETTY IMAGES. TOP RIGHT, PHOTO BY N509FZ VIA WIKIPEDIA. MIDDLE ROW PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE IOC. BOTTOM PHOTO BY XINHUA / ALAMY STOCK.
million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. China Daily sors to help predict mechanical or safety issues. Game spectators will be
reports that this project alone has driven US$8.5 billion in encouraged to travel by public transport, but the project’s legacy will be to
investments for wind and photovoltaic power projects. strengthen the regional economy and power the expected boom in tourism.
From Steel Mill to Snowboarders’ Domain Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Shougang Industry Park is a huge former steel complex that To cut down on needless new infrastructure, Beijing is repur-
was relocated out of the city around the time of the Beijing posing legacy projects from the 2008 Summer Olympics. The
2008 Games. As part of the urban regeneration plan, an National Indoor Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest, will host ice
iron ore storage tower was converted to serve as the 2022 hockey, while the National Aquatics Centre, or the Water Cube,
Organising Committee’s headquarters since 2017. And now has temporarily become the “Ice Cube,” with four curling rinks
blast furnaces are being transformed into training centers, built on top of its pools. Organizers are also promising any tem-
while snowboarders will be flying down ramps set off the porary infrastructure will be built using energy-efficient and green
side of the site’s 70-meter (239-foot) cooling towers. technologies, as well as renewable and recyclable materials.
(Re)planting for the Future

To clear space for the Beijing 2022 venues
without clear-cutting any trees, project lead-
ers opted to transplant more than 20,000
plants (some of them protected) to the out-
lying areas of the Winter Olympic Forest
Park. Working closely with the Beijing For-
estry University, the team conducted an eco-
logical survey and feasibility plan. Multiple
test runs helped the team hit a 90 percent
success rate, and trees are now tagged with
individual QR codes, so any passerby can
learn of each tree’s transplanting process.

7
Riyadh Metro
For introducing the power of public transportation to Saudi Arabia’s largest city
D
espite its surging size—expected to hit 8.3 billion, seven-year metro megaproject, with each of
million by 2030—Riyadh had no public the three sections completed by a global consor-
transportation system. Residents in Saudi tium of engineering companies and contractors.
Arabia’s biggest city relied mostly on private cars, The first two lines, completed by Bechtel, Almabani
racking up an estimated 10 million motorized pas- General Contractors, Consolidated Contractors Co.
senger journeys each year, fueling traffic jams and and Siemens, make up 36 percent of the lines and 40
air pollution. percent of the stations.
But a sprawling state-of-the-art commuter net- Line three—the longest, with 11 kilometers (6.8
work aims to transform mobility in the kingdom’s miles) of underground tunnels—was tackled by
capital city. Riyadh Metro, which is scheduled to a group that included Webuild Group, Larsen &
open this year, consists of six autonomous train lines Toubro, Nesma, Hitachi Rail, Bombardier Trans-
spanning 176 kilometers (109 miles). And it’s just portation, Idom and Worley. Lines four, five and six,
one part of the world’s largest public transportation with 29.8 kilometers (18.5 miles) of viaducts and 26.6
8
initiative, which includes 956 buses covering 1,150 kilometers (16.5 miles) of underground track, were
kilometers (715 miles). completed by FCC Construction, Samsung C&T,
With so much ground to cover, the government Alstom, Strukton Civiel, Freyssinet Saudi Arabia,
authorized a divide-and-conquer plan for the US$23 Atkins, Tecnica Y Proyectos and Setec.
When You See Yourself NFT

For taking nonfungible tokens into the musical mainstream
B
etween pandemic-era tour cancellations allow for ownership of a piece of art to be memorial-
and streaming services and recording ized and transparent.”
companies keeping the lion’s share of prof- Katz launched YellowHeart in 2017 as a ticketing
its, musical artists could use some new revenue platform that used NFTs to eliminate scalpers, but
sources. So when the internet started losing its mind when the pandemic forced music venues to close,
over nonfungible tokens (NFTs), Kings of Leon he started talking with bands about creating digital
didn’t miss a beat, becoming the first major musical albums using NFTs. The manager for Kings of Leon,
act to offer an album in the format. Andy Mendelsohn, immediately saw the potential
NFTs are a digital asset similar to cryptocurrency, and by late 2020, he paved the way for the band to
but their quantities are much more limited. And make an NFT album with a portfolio of other assets
they’re increasingly part of the mainstream—with to support it.
the sales to prove it: US$2.5 billion for the first half But the partners had to strategically map out
of 2021, up from just US$13.7 million what the package would include. That meant con-
over the same period last year, per Dapp- vincing the band that their fan base would embrace
Radar. the opportunity to purchase music as NFTs, then
For musical acts, they offer a new way determining what assets would generate the most
of selling their music and other digital excitement and value.
content directly to fans. “It takes time to ideate the project,” Katz said.
“NFTs allow artists to interact with “You need to understand your buyer and the creative
their fan base unencumbered,” said Josh process so you can build something that’s super
Katz, founder and CEO of YellowHeart, compelling.”
an NFT marketplace that partnered The band worked with longtime creative partner
with Kings of Leon on the project. “They Night After Night to build a narrative around the

The project will efficiently move residents
from point to point, but just as crucially, it
will do so in an eco-friendly way—helping the
kingdom move toward its Vision 2030 plan
that calls for reducing the nation’s dependence
on oil and creating a more sustainable future.
The latter goal is reflected in Downtown
IMAGE COURTESY OF RIYADHMETRO
Station, designed by the Norwegian archi-

tectural firm Snøhetta. Located near the
governor’s palace, the 20,000-square-meter
(215,278-square-foot) station includes a
reflective stainless-steel canopy that provides
shade over public spaces and funnels indirect
light into the metro station below. Another
touch of green: Irrigation channels line the
plaza floor, providing an elegant water feature that an interactive exhibition that showed residents
also supports interior planting. And solar panels how Riyadh Metro would work and how it would
atop system stations are designed to generate 20 improve the lives for commuters.
percent of each facility’s electricity needs. Such efforts will likely pay off. Riyadh Metro’s
Even though the project finished one year behind network is expected to initially attract 1.16 million
schedule, the government took action to maintain passengers a day and can accommodate 3.6 million
public buy-in throughout. For instance, it launched passengers, leaving plenty of room for growth.
T album—one that drove decisions for the type of

digital music and art fans would respond to and
model for future album releases, allowing artists
to bypass streaming and traditional download
ultimately purchase. The content for When You See markets in favor of collecting album sales directly.
Yourself was completed in early 2021, and three types For example, when Grimes created digital art-
of tokens were made available beginning 5 March. work and music as NFTs in March, she made
The first was a US$50 token offering a special US$5.8 million.
minted album package with enhanced media ele- That potential boost to music sales would be “It takes time
ments, a digital download of the music and limited- enough of a win. But NFTs could also be a boon to to ideate
edition vinyl record. The second featured six sets of the secondary sales market, with a percentage of the project.
elaborate audio-visual art, with prices ranging from each resale going back to the artist, while embedded
You need to
US$95 to US$2,500. Finally, the team also created 18 resale limits could deter scalpers.
“golden ticket” tokens that included four front-row “Artists are over the moon,” Katz said, noting
understand
seats to every Kings of Leon concert for all current other bands and managers have flooded him with
your buyer and
and future tours, along with backstage passes, a calls about the NFT process and whether it would
the creative
concierge, a driver, swag bags and other VIP expe- be right for their music. process so
riences. YellowHeart auctioned six to the highest The Kings of Leon project took on new dimen- you can build
bidders (with one going to charity), and the rest were sions in September: The crew of SpaceX Inspira- something
put in a vault to gain value over time. tion4, the first all-civilian mission to orbit, made that’s super
The project racked up rave reviews. During the the band’s “Time in Disguise” the first NFT song compelling.”
two-week sales window, Kings of Leon sold more to be played in space and then auctioned off for
—Josh Katz, YellowHeart
than US$2 million of the tokens, with US$600,000 charity.
donated to Crew Nation, a relief fund for touring Like any new tech, NFTs are largely the province
crews that couldn’t work during the pandemic. of early adopters, but Katz predicts a shift: “People
are getting used to using crypto wallets to exchange
Remixes and Covers and share assets. It’s becoming the norm.”
The Kings of Leon project could be a powerful And that’s likely to mean encores—and copycats.

9 Energy Island
For revolutionizing renewables—yet again
T
hirty years after Denmark built the first
offshore wind farm, it’s pioneering another
energy first: creating an artificial island
expected to generate enough wind power for the
country’s entire grid, plus other parts of Europe.
Slated to be operational in 2033, the DKK210
billion Danish Energy Agency facility is the largest
construction project in the country’s history. And
the North Sea hub could also provide a blueprint
for other coastal nations looking for alternatives to
traditional land-gobbling renewable energy infra-
structure.
Here’s a look at Energy Island’s ambitious goals—and what it will take to turn them into reality:
PUBLIC MEETS OFFSHORE INNOVATIONS THINKING BIG
IMAGE COURTESY OF TENNET

PRIVATE
1991: Denmark builds the from the island to other
Most of the fund-
world’s first offshore wind parts of Europe.
ing for the US$34
farm on the island of Lolland.
billion megaproject 2024: Energinet, the Danish
will come from the 2019: The government operator of the power trans-
private sector, but launches a DKK65 million mission network, is slated
the Danish State study to find suitable sites to to complete studies for
will be the majority build large wind farms and seabed and environmental
owner of the hub.
FUTUREPROOF
power plants on artificial
islands.
impacts of the offshore wind
turbines. 30 acres
(12.1 hectares)
Denmark later unveils a 2026: Energy Island project
PLANS Total footprint of the island—the
climate action plan that activities are scheduled to
Surplus solu- equivalent of 18 football pitches.
calls for big investments in begin.
tion: The team will A new hub-and-spoke model calls for
renewable energy and a 70
design the island The breakdown: the island to be built 80 kilometers
percent reduction in green-
to store excess —2 years for design and (50 miles) off the Danish coast and
house gas emissions by 2030
electricity when planning then act as the transmission center
over 1990 levels.
supply is greater —3 years for building for 200 gigantic wind turbines,
than demand. February 2021: The Danish each stretching up to 260 meters
Power to Pivot: government introduces the Much of the offshore (853 feet) into the sky.
Plans include an Energy Island project and construction will take place
LAUNCH PHOTO COURTESY OF SPACEX. CREW PHOTO COURTESY OF NASA

option for power launches preliminary studies during the warmest months.
conversion facili-
ties that can turn
on the seabed around the
island in May.
To keep the project on
schedule, some elements 3 gigawatts
electricity into of the facility will be built Amount of power the farm is expected
2022: Project owners are to generate each year—eventually
another form of onshore during the colder
expected to close public- cranking out as much as 10 gigawatts.
energy, such as months.
private partnership deals for That would help put the EU closer to
hydrogen through building transmission cables 2033: Energy generation is
electrolysis. its target of 300 gigawatts to achieve
that will send surplus power slated to start. climate neutrality by 2050.
“This decision marks the start of a new era

of sustainable energy production in Denmark
3 million
Number of homes that initially would
and the world and it links very ambitious be powered by the farm—with up to
climate goals with growth and green jobs.” 10 million after full implementation
—Dan Jørgensen, Government of Denmark Sources: World Economic Forum, Danish Energy Agency

10
Crew-1
Mission
For taking commercial
spaceflight to a new dimension
C
all it one giant leap for commercial space-
flight. When the SpaceX Falcon Rocket
propelled the company’s Crew Dragon
capsule into orbit in November 2020, it marked the
first mission that used a NASA-certified private
spacecraft to send a full crew of astronauts to the
International Space Station (ISS). The four-person
crew spent 168 days conducting scientific and main-
tenance work.
While the activities aboard the ISS may have
been largely business as usual, the mission itself
was decidedly not. For the first time, the U.S. space
agency assigned much of the design, development
and testing of human-rated spacecraft to the private
sector. Through the U.S. space agency’s commercial
crew program, Boeing received US$4.2 billion in
funding (although software issues delayed its proj-
ect), while SpaceX snagged US$2.6 billion.
The SpaceX mission paves the way for more com-
mercial flights carrying researchers, professional
astronauts and eventually paying passengers into
orbit—pointing to a future where human spaceflight
is not only more affordable but also routine.
SpaceX certainly seems to be keeping busy: The
Crew-2 mission,
using another Crew
Dragon spacecraft,
launched in late
April, and a Crew-3
mission was slated to
launch 30 October.
For company
founder Elon Musk,
NASA’s validation
“inspires confidence
in our endeavor to
return to the Moon, travel to Mars and ultimately
help humanity become multi-planetary.”

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Regenerate
Australia
For protecting an iconic
ecosystem with a future-
focused climate plan
T
he devastation of the 2019-2020 bushfires in O’Gorman said. “We wanted to regenerate what was
Australia was overwhelming: up to 19 mil- lost and futureproof Australia against other climate
lion hectares (47 million acres) scorched, disasters.”
nearly 3 billion animals killed or displaced, and 434
million metric tons of carbon dioxide blasted out Seeding a Rebirth
into the area’s delicate ecosystem. To help restore the 12.6 million hectares (31.1 mil-
“It was a window into the climate future that lion acres) of forest and bushland destroyed by the
nobody wanted,” said Dermot O’Gorman, CEO of fire, Aussie startup AirSeed Technologies is deploy-
conservation group WWF-Australia. “The images ing drones that can shoot 40,000 eucalyptus seed
that we all saw were really Armageddon type.” pods into the ground per day, then monitor growth
Even in the middle of a pandemic, the group through AI. The tech is designed to help achieve the
recognized that kind of environmental reckon- goal of planting and protecting 2 billion trees by
ing demanded a response—and kicked off what it 2030 and could become a next-gen solution for rapid
proclaims the “largest and most innovative wildlife reforestation around the world. AirSeed co-founder
recovery and landscape regeneration program in and CEO Andrew Walker called the technology “a
Australia’s history.” “We tool in the arsenal to combat biodiversity loss and
Launched in October 2020 with hopes to raise wanted to climate change.”
AU$300 million over five years, Regenerate Australia regenerate The tree-planting initiative is part of a broader
aims to rebuild the ecosystem: doubling the number what was strategy to ensure landholders, farmers, Indigenous
of koalas on the country’s east coast by 2050, rebuild- lost and communities, businesses and government agencies
ing forests and rewarding renewable energy produc-
futureproof work together to make Australia a global reforesta-
PHOTOS COURTESY OF WWF AUSTRALIA
tion achievements to make the country more resilient tion leader by 2030, O’Gorman said. “Australia’s for-
to future crises. But to become a true catalyst for
Australia ests are our shared heritage and our legacy, and we
change, O’Gorman’s team also searched for innova-
against all have a part to play in saving and restoring them
tive solutions and developed strategic partnerships
other for future generations of people and nature.”
with future-focused investors, councils, communi- climate Those forests also provide essential food and
ties, universities, corporations and think tanks. The disasters.” habitat for native creatures, including koalas, but
objective: establish bold targets and scalable models. —Dermot O’Gorman, 61,000 were killed, injured or displaced during the
“We didn’t just want to put back what was here,” WWF-Australia bushfires, per WWF-Australia. To nurture a koala

other perspectives that we’re unable to see,” said
Darren Grover, head of healthy land and seascapes,
WWF-Australia. “They need a little bit of funding
to take them from that idea stage through to reality,
and that’s what makes it exciting to support these
creative thinkers.”
A Call to Action
Determined to tackle one of the root causes of wild-
fires around the world, WWF-Australia is also taking
a climate-change moon shot: turn Australia into the
world’s leading exporter of renewable energy by 2030.
Through a combination of wind, solar and hydro-
electric projects, Australia was generating 21 percent
of electricity from renewable sources in 2019, but
O’Gorman’s team wants the public and private sec-
tors to think bigger and imagine a zero-carbon future.
To get there, they’ve set some ambitious goals,
including meeting 100 percent of national electricity
needs through renewable sources. Plans also call for
building enough surplus hydrogen and solar energy
that it can be sold to countries in Southeast Asia.
Hitting those targets would spur massive job
growth. And those economic projections are help-
ing O’Gorman’s team galvanize support for the
energy transformation. In 2020, governments across
Australia invested more than AU$7 billion in clean
energy projects as part of their COVID-19 recovery
stimulus measures, according to WWF’s renew-
able energy report card. Queensland, for example,
appointed its first minister for renewables and
hydrogen, and pledged AU$500 million for state-
owned renewable projects.
Seeding drone “They now see it as an opportunity to improve
nature and lives,” O’Gorman said.
The private sector is jumping on board, too. More
comeback, the organization aims to fund local wild- than 100 companies have thrown support behind
life hospital upgrades, establish a mobile veterinary the initiative. And O’Gorman’s team is collaborating
response unit and build a state-of-the-art hospital with policymakers and financial markets to create
for Australia’s injured wildlife. carbon-offset credit incentives that can be stacked
WWF-Australia is dialing up the innovation, to make private investments more attractive.
too, providing AU$1.32 million for nine projects to The disruptive approach to climate change and
develop, test or scale solutions. For example, a team bushfire restoration is an extension of WWF-Aus-
at University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland tralia’s organizational transformation that began
is working on solar-powered ear tags with very high six years ago. To ensure mutual benefits for all
frequency technology that will help scientists track stakeholders, teams were retrained in areas like
koalas from a longer range. Another team at Mac- design thinking and collaboration. As a result,
quarie University in Sydney made portable pods that teams responded with greater agility.
could give koalas a place to hide as fire encroaches “WWF will continue to advocate for policies that
on their natural habitats. benefit both people and nature,” O’Gorman said.
“It brings ideas that are out of the box or left field, “That is how we will restore what has been lost, and
from people who see things in a different way, from ensure we build back a more resilient Australia.”

12
Perlmutter
13
Mumbai
For mapping the universe at warp
speed—and that’s just for starters Metro Line 3
T
he project to build what’s billed as the world’s For digging deep to make
fastest artificial intelligence supercomputer transportation safer in one of the
just wrapped in May. And it’s already acing world’s most populous cities
one of its first assignments: The super-speedy Perl-
M
mutter is helping create a 3D map of the visible uni- umbai’s railway system typically serves
verse—all 11 billion light-years of it—by processing more than 7 million commuters every
data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument day, but the jam-packed trains in the
(DESI), a kind of cosmic camera that can capture as world’s eighth-largest city create risks that regularly
many as 5,000 galaxies in a single exposure. injure and even kill riders. Although the rate of acci-
Prepping that type of data would typically take dents declined with the drop in ridership in 2020
weeks or months on prior systems. But due to the pandemic, there were 2,691 deaths and
Perlmutter, which crunches numbers “Perlmutter’s 3,194 injuries reported in 2019. Looking to provide
with the 16-bit and 32-bit mixed-preci- ability to fuse safe mass transit to its rapidly growing population,
sion math used in AI applications, can get AI and high- Mumbai Metro Rail Corp. (MMRC)—a consortium
it done within just a few days. performance of India’s state and central governments—is building
The US$146 million project was a computing the city’s first underground train system.
joint endeavor between the U.S. National will lead to To deliver Mumbai Metro Line 3, the team first
Energy Research Scientific Computing breakthroughs had to complete one of the world’s longest metro
Center, Nvidia and Hewlett Packard in a broad tunneling projects, spanning 33.5 kilometers (20.8
Enterprise. And while starting to map the range of miles) with 27 stations. Collaborating with design and
universe might be celebration enough,
fields.” engineering consultants including AECOM, Padeco,
the team behind Perlmutter sees that LBG and Egis Group, the team broke down the
application as just the beginning. —Jensen Huang, Nvidia megaproject into two sections: The first is on pace to
“Perlmutter’s ability to fuse AI and high-perfor- be delivered by December 2021, with the remaining
mance computing will lead to breakthroughs in a section expected to be operational by mid-2022.
broad range of fields from materials science and “Tunneling in Mumbai is extremely challenging
quantum physics to climate projections, biological as the alignment passes through densely populated
research and more,” said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. and congested parts of the city,” said Subodh Gupta,
projects director, MMRC. “In addition, there are
high-rise, heritage and dilapidated buildings, flyovers,
metro viaducts and railway lines in close proximity.”
To get the massive 360-foot (109.7-meter) tunnel-
boring machines through Mumbai’s narrow streets,
PHOTO COURTESY OF NERSC
the team shipped them in parts, then reassembled

them underground. During digging, a 36-foot-wide
storm drain had to be dismantled and re-routed to
make room for the tunnel. For another section, the
team had to dive deeper, installing two 1.5-kilometer
(0.9-mile) long tunnels underneath the Mithi River.

PHOTO COURTESY OF MUMBAI. MUMBAI METRO RAIL CORPORATION LIMITED
14
Atala Prism
For using blockchain to improve
educational outcomes—and drive
positive socioeconomic change
S
ilicon Valley doesn’t have a lock on cutting-
edge technological innovation.
Ethiopia is working on a new blockchain-
With 8,000 workers and 17 boring machines working based identification system that could pave the way
24 hours a day to stay on schedule, proactive planning to social and financial mobility for students—par-
helped the team mitigate possible disruptions. When ticularly the 80 percent living in rural areas.
the coronavirus threatened to grind work to a halt, The problem? The country had no system for
project leaders created new safety protocols for work- keeping or sharing performance records. And that
ers in confined underground spaces: When one worker made it all but impossible for students to prove
tested positive, the entire team was quarantined, forc- their academic credentials to potential employers or
ing tunnel work to pause on several occasions. higher-learning institutions—which often severely
Aware that Mumbai’s monsoon season could dra- limited their prospects. Looking to change that, the
matically slow progress, the team set up hundreds of Ministry of Education in April announced Atala
work-site pumps to control flooding, and managers Prism, a national digital data-
provided real-time updates to MMRC leadership via base developed by Hong Kong’s
WhatsApp. The result? In the rare instance when rain IOHK, the company behind
halted work, it was only for a few hours. Cardano cryptocurrency.
With an estimated 1.6 million expected to use the The new system will provide
subway daily, the team also focused on rider safety and secure digital identities to 5
convenience. Upgrades include larger air-conditioned million students and 750,000
IMAGE COURTESY OF IOHK
train cars, platform screens to prevent accidental falls teachers across 3,500 schools.
or suicides and escalators and elevators across stations. Teachers can monitor student
To protect historic buildings, project partner Sonneville performance, pinpoint under-
also installed low-vibration track technology. achieving areas and better
“MMRC specially considered the needs for the peo- allocate educational resources.
ple in the city,” Sonneville President Peter Laborenz As the largest blockchain deal
said. “This should lead to a new type of living, of hav- ever signed by a government, the project is demon-
ing a better future.” strating how crypto assets can help drive positive
The project also has an eye on reducing the proj- socioeconomic change across Africa and beyond.
ect’s carbon footprint. In coordination with Forest Ethiopia ranks as one of the world’s fastest grow-
Development Corp. of Maharashtra, MMRC is planting economies, but still faces high poverty rates.
ing 9,000 trees and 8,888 mangroves to compensate And with 46 percent of the country’s population
for about 108 mangroves cut down during the con- under age 15, coming up with a way to track and
struction of two train stations. potentially improve education outcomes could be a
Once the train is up and running, MMRC hopes gamechanger—and mark significant progress toward
Mumbai will not only get a much-improved transit the Digital Ethiopia 2025 transformation strategy.
system, but increased business investments and con-
tinued job creation. Continued on the next page

With the project scheduled to be completed by How did you convince Ethiopia’s government
the end of 2021, John O’Connor, IOHK’s director that blockchain was the right solution?
of African operations, talks about the impetus and States are starting to understand that digital
promise of the project. identity based on blockchain is not as disrup- “This is
tive or iconoclastic as they might have thought.
about doing
What problem did you hope to solve? Instead, it enables governments to fulfill their
We’re capturing data that didn’t exist before, and traditional role of engendering trust when it
something
we’re enabling the Ministry of Education to start comes to documentation, while participating in
that has a
saying, “Within the Amhara region we’ve got really this new digital world.
legacy that is
good math outcomes, but in the Oromia region sustainable
those outcomes are incredibly poor. Why is that?” How did you establish a framework with such a and can be
And they can start to dig into those questions. steep learning curve? replicated in
other similar
PHOTO BY STEPHAN WITTE/KDF-TV & PICTURE/PICTURE ALLIANCE VIA GETTY IMAGES

From a student perspective, you want to be able We did quite a lot of bespoke building to be able
to see analytics about your performance, you want to create a useful experience. The process required markets.”
to be able to see your digital credentials—and that a lot of engagement, not just from the Ministry of
—John O’Connor, IOHK
information also needs to sit around other features Education, but with so many stakeholders—stu-
and functionality, like class scheduling. In the future, dents, for example. This isn’t just about delivering
we may also integrate learning-management systems, a product. This is about doing something that has
so students can use the system to figure out what a legacy that is sustainable and can be replicated in
homework they need to do—and do it on the tablet. other similar markets.
15T
Andes Renovables
For building a sustainable energy source and powering up the local economy
o really move the needle on Chile’s energy The project also provides a big economic boost,
consumption, Mainstream Renewable Power solidifying Chile’s reputation as a renewable energy
is thinking big: a US$1.8 billion project to powerhouse and helping shift the country from its
build seven wind farms and three photovoltaic solar heavy reliance on mining. On a visit to three sites
farms across the country. One of the largest renewable across Antofagasta, Regional Minister for Energy
energy initiatives in Latin America, it could supply 1.3 Aldo Erazo praised the megaproject for “contributing
gigawatts of clean power, enough to meet the needs of significantly to economic recovery,” noting “a strong
20 percent of Chilean households, when all the pieces local presence among the workforce.”
go fully operational as early as 2022. That could mean The project is driven by a global array of power
a significant advance toward Chile’s ambitious 2050 players, including wind farm contractors Sacyr
carbon neutrality target. Industrial and Elecnor; Vestas, Nordex and Sie-
mens Gamesa supplying turbines; Sterling and
PHOTO COURTESY OF MAINSTREAM RENEWABLE POWER
Wilson and Metka Egn building solar components;

and Hitachi ABB, Transelec, Inprolec and Isotron-
Siemens providing transformers and connecting
the grid.
The first of the platform’s three phases, Condor,
came online in July. And Mainstream Renewable
Power is already spinning lessons learned from this
megaproject into ambitions for its next big power
play: Nazca Renovables, a program of six Chilean
renewable energy projects with a combined 1 giga-
watt of capacity.

16 I
n the age of digital disruption, even criminal
networks have turned to encrypted messaging
services to hide their activities from authorities.
So a team of top law enforcement agencies around
the world created their own undercover communi-
cation app—and duped drug traffickers and mob-
sters into using it. Over the course of 18 months,
the global high-tech sting decoded all their secrets
and snared hundreds of organized crime syndicates.
Operation Trojan Shield was led by the U.S. Fed-
eral Bureau of Investigation (FBI) along with Europol,
the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the
Operation
Dutch National Police, the Swedish Police Authority,
and law enforcement groups in 13 other countries.
Together, they were able to install the messaging
Trojan Shield
app, called ANOM, on at least 12,000 mobile devices
distributed to criminal groups on the black market.
The app allowed the team to monitor communi-
For outsmarting some of the world’s most
sophisticated criminals with a simple app Continued on the next page

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cations and capture data, culminating in a two-day Phantom Secure to help commandeer a next-gen
takedown in June. After police arrested more than encryption device being developed, which is trans-
800 suspects in Europe, Australia, New Zealand formed into ANOM.
and the United States, Europol called it “one of the
largest and most sophisticated law-enforcement October 2019
operations to date in the fight against encrypted As Operation Trojan Shield officially commences,
1
criminal activities.” criminals around the world begin to take the
But there might be more to come. Although the ANOM app bait. Authorities eventually scale the
team disabled ANOM after Trojan Shield ended, Australia-based ANOM network to outlaws in more
Europol said it’s still investigating messages on the than 100 countries.
app for other potential crimes.
“Encrypted criminal communications plat- July 2020
forms have traditionally been a tool to evade law Authorities in France and the Netherlands shut
enforcement and facilitate transnational orga- down EncroChat, another encrypted communica-
nized crime,” said Calvin A. Shivers, the FBI’s tions platform popular among the transnational
assistant director, criminal investigative division. criminal crowd. As criminals flock to ANOM, the
“The FBI and our international partners continue app’s global user base eventually grows to more
to push the envelope and develop innovative ways than 12,000.
to overcome these challenges and bring criminals
to justice.” June 2021
Operation Trojan Shield culminates with police
March 2018 in 16 countries—Australia, Austria, Canada, Den-
An FBI operation shuts down Phantom Secure. The mark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Lith-
Canadian company had built a secure communica- uania, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway,
tions network used by high-level drug traffickers Scotland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the
and leaders of other criminal organizations. The United States—coordinating arrests of hundreds of
FBI subsequently recruits an informant with ties to individuals who had used ANOM.
By the Numbers The haul:

The scale of the operation: 2 tons of synthetic drugs
16 >300
countries criminal syndicates
6 tons of synthetic drug precursors
8 tons of cocaine
700 >800
house searches arrests
22 tons of cannabis
55 luxury vehicles
27 million
messages 250 firearms
—in 45 languages—obtained and
reviewed from the app US$48 million in paper and digital currencies
Source: Europol

17 T
Mineral
For cultivating next-gen tech
to feed the world
he latest innovation out of Alphabet Inc.’s

moonshot factory X aims to transform how
the world produces food: promising higher
yields with less harm to the environment. Mineral
brings together plant breeders and growers across
Argentina, Canada, the United States and South
Africa to test new models for sustainable farming
At Mineral’s core is an electric-powered rover
that collects granular data about soil health and crop
development. Software will then help food produc-
ers address issues with individual crops instead of
entire fields, reducing costs and curbing the use of
harmful fertilizers and insecticides.
Delivering the project in October 2020 required
“To grow
food
sustainably
using AI and machine learning. a pandemic pivot: Lockdowns were preventing the on a global
Such agtech innovations can’t come soon enough: team from sending the robot to collect timely images scale, new
The number of people suffering from hunger has of plants as they emerged from the soil. Rather than tools will be
nearly doubled since the pandemic—and could delay the project by a full growing season, the team needed to
PHOTOS COURTESY OF X DEVELOPMENT LLC
reach 840 million by 2030. And the United Nations’ fashioned smaller versions of the vehicle that could
manage the
Sustainable Development Goal to eliminate hunger be shipped to farmers to gather the necessary data.
is trending in the wrong direction. Mineral’s project That shift vividly demonstrates that solving the
staggering
leaders say the world needs as much food in the next hunger crisis will require farmers, scientists, tech-
complexity
50 years as was grown in the previous 10,000. nologists and project leaders to embrace an adapt-
of farming.”
“To grow food sustainably on a global scale, new to-reality mindset, Grant says. Or, as one team —Elliott Grant, PhD, X
tools will be needed to manage the staggering com- member told him: “You can declare it a disaster and
plexity of farming,” Elliott Grant, PhD, project lead wait until next year, or you see it’s a problem you just
at X, wrote on the company’s blog. haven’t solved yet.”

18
Al-Nouri Mosque
Complex
Reconstruction
A
IMAGE COURTESY OF SALAH HAREEDY, KHALED EL-DEEB, SHERIF FARAG AND TAREK ALI
fter the Iraqi government reclaimed For the design of the complex, UNESCO
For using
Mosul from ISIS in 2017, it was faced launched a global competition, and an indepen-
architecture with destroyed and damaged structures dent jury selected the design of a team of Egyptian
to help rebuild throughout the city. As team members began architects based on a concept inspired by the
a community to restore Mosul’s nearly 850-year-old Al-Nouri Quranic verse “…and made you peoples and tribes
emotionally and Mosque complex, they knew they had to think that you may know one another.” Although the
beyond bricks and mortar to address the emotional start of the design phase was delayed in June when
economically recovery of residents as well. one of the lead architects, Salah El Din Hareedy,
“Landmarks are very important in the recovery died from COVID-19, the team remains commit-
process, because they embody the values and the ted to the goal of restoring the mosque’s aesthetic
identity of the community,” says Maria Rita Ace- and spiritual connection with residents.
toso, conservationist and senior project manager “It’s not only a matter of the authenticity and
at UNESCO, which is guiding the project to restore integrity of the materials, but it’s also about recon-
historical landmarks in Mosul. “For the new gen- stituting an image that fits with the memory of the
erations who grow up in a context of extremism community that ultimately will maintain and use
or violence or conflict, there’s often a bit of dis- that rebuilt historical landmark,” Acetoso says.
connection with their own identity and with their The complex will include courtyards, an amphithe-
“Landmarks own history. Restoration projects can foster those ater and a new Institute for Islamic Art and Architec-
are very reconnections.” ture. An expansive public plaza creates a shared space
important in The mosque rebuild is part of a larger initiative for all the city’s residents, including non-Muslim
the recovery launched in 2018 by UNESCO to revive the his- visitors. By design, the mosque’s main entrance opens
process, torical, educational and cultural fabric of Mosul. At onto a street that historically has connected Mosul’s
the heart of it all is reviving the mosque, a project Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities.
because they
funded by the United Arab Emirates and guided by Project leaders are focused on collaborating with
embody the UNESCO, with support from the Iraqi Ministry of local stakeholders both to build trust in the reno-
values and Culture and Sunni Endowment. vation and to secure the community’s long-term
the identity With so much damage—and so much significance investment in maintaining the rebuilt mosque, Ace-
of the at stake—the team broke the Al-Nouri project into toso says. So after some Iraqi architects publicly
community.” parallel pursuits. One team is reconstructing the rebuked the design for not aligning enough with
—Maria Rita Acetoso, mosque’s iconic Al-Habda minaret, while another is Islamic architecture, UNESCO met with represen-
UNESCO reimagining the mosque’s sprawling complex. tatives of the group to consider changes.

19 Tiangong
For building a space station
for the future
W
ith more and more space exploration
Expanding
on the books, China is setting up a
new base for astronauts. Slated to Outer Limits
be complete by the end of 2022, the 60-metric-ton Tiangong is just the
latest signature project
Tiangong will be the only crewed orbital station
from China’s rapidly
apart from the International Space Station (ISS), growing space program:
which is likely to be retired in the next decade.
Tiangong is just one-fifth the mass of the ISS, Tianwen-1
but it’s still too big to be put into orbit all at once. China’s first mission to
Mars hit paydirt in May
So, China National Space Administration (CNSA)
2021 when CNSA put a
launched the station’s first core module in April rover on the red planet.
2021 and sent astronauts for a visit two months later.
“The more we can actually involve them in any To complete the project, CNSA plans 11 launches Xuntian
step of the process, the more they will feel owner- that will include crewed missions and the delivery CNSA plans to add a
ship,” she says. of two additional modules to the low Earth orbit massive telescope to its
space station by 2024.
During the first phase of the project when rubble station.
Xuntian will have a
was being removed, the team asked the Ministry of Once complete, Tiangong will be capable of field of view 300 times
Culture to deploy archaeologists at the site to collect hosting three astronauts for extended stays and greater than NASA’s
and salvage historical fragments so they could be will include a lab with 14 experiment racks and 50 Hubble—a vast perspec-
reintegrated in the construction process. external ports to study the environment in space. tive that will allow it
to observe up to 40
UNESCO team members also formed a techni- CNSA says it will be taking on everything from
percent of the sky over
cal committee that included University of Mosul development of spacecraft rendezvous technology to 10 years.
specialists in engineering, restoration, architecture, the testing of next-gen orbit transportation vehicles.
landscape and archaeology that has been meeting at If future construction proceeds as planned, Solar power station
least quarterly since the early phases of the project. CNSA might double the number of modules to six In June 2021, China
And project leaders have encouraged active par- and hope to add a powerful telescope to the station unveiled plans to put a
solar power facility into
ticipation by Iraqi workers. For instance, plans call this decade.
orbit by 2030 that could
for rebuilding the minaret where it was, on the still The space station could also spark a new era of beam energy back to
standing bases. So UNESCO deployed Italian struc- global collaboration: Russia has expressed interest in Earth via microwaves
IMAGE COURTESY OF THE CHINA MANNED SPACE ENGINEERING OFFICE
tural engineer Stefano De Vito to evaluate materi- sending astronauts to Tiangong, as well as building a and lasers by 2050.
als, then had him train local engineers to perform lunar base with China.
subsequent tasks.
When the team needed to install a network of
sensors on the minaret, Acetoso signed off on a plan
to train local workers to perform the task—even
though it added a week to the project.
The benefit? More enthusiasm for the project and
a greater sense of ownership among local stakehold-
ers, Acetoso says. “It’s a matter of job creation, of
helping people understand that culture can be a
source of income, and also of increasing their skills
and competencies—which goes back to the sustain-
ability of what we’re doing.”

20 Al Dhafra Solar
Photovoltaic Plant
For helping the UAE diversify its energy—and its economy
T
he United Arab Emirates is getting serious
about alternatives to fossil fuel: setting out
to build what’s being billed as the world’s
largest single-site solar power plant. Located 35
kilometers (22 miles) south of Abu Dhabi City, the
US$1 billion Al Dhafra project is the brainchild of
Abu Dhabi National Energy Co.—which sees it as
a gamechanger. When project financing closed in
December 2020, group CEO and Managing Director
Jasim Husain Thabet called it a “benchmark project
for our nation and the global energy sector.”
The multinational team—which includes Masdar,
EDF Renouvelables and Jinko Power—isn’t only
pushing for bigger, but also better. For instance,
bifacial panels will capture solar energy from both
sides and increase efficiency at the plant, slated to be
operational by 2022.
For the UAE, which generates 30 percent of its
GDP from oil, the 2-gigawatt plant could play a
major role in helping fulfill its National Climate
Change Plan, which calls for 50 percent renewable
energy use by 2050.
Solar Statement
>4 million 2.4 million

Number of solar panels installed across 20 Metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions the
square kilometers (7.7 square miles) of desert plant will eliminate per year—the equivalent
of taking 470,000 cars off the road
VECTORPOCKET / ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS
Source: Abu Dhabi National Energy Co., EDF Renouvelables

21
Clubhouse
For unfollowing the leaders in

the social media space
C
onsidering Clubhouse now boasts mil-
lions of users and a market value of US$4
billion, it’s hard to believe the social
media app was—by design—hard to join. After
the voice-based platform debuted in March 2020,
its buzz skyrocketed in part because of customer
How Clubhouse Turned Up the Volume
craving for real conversation during pandemic lock-
downs, along with a push to bring in Black creators March 2020: After testing an January 2021: In the same
and celebrities. experimental voice-driven social month Clubhouse reaches
network for months, Davison unicorn status with a US$1 billion
It wasn’t long before venture capitalists and tech
and Seth launch Clubhouse valuation, Elon Musk makes an
billionaires began making cameos on its audio chat- with a few hundred users—just appearance on the app’s The
room channels, lending Clubhouse cachet during its as the world shuts down amid Good Time Show. A week later,
beta phase and fueling demand for an app outside its the pandemic. For standout UX Mark Zuckerberg shows up as a
iOS framework. from the start, a team gathers guest. A surge in global down-
feedback by listening to users loads follows—9.6 million in
This year, parent company Alpha Exploration
every day through the app, host- one month, up from 2.4 million
Co. dramatically expanded access by introducing ing town-hall-style events on the month prior. But the rapid
an Android app, adding a direct-messaging system the platform, and encouraging growth takes a toll, leading to
and dismantling the invitation-only model. By July, users to share concerns and ask widespread outages and notifica-
an additional 10 million people lined up to join questions. tion failures.
Clubhouse. (Even PMI is using the channel to share May 2020: A month after it May 2021: As Clubhouse re-
“better ways to work, advance power skills and drive launched on Apple’s App Store, leases its app for Android users,
meaningful change.”) the company receives a fresh its global popularity skyrockets,
round of private investments, particularly in India. By July, 10
As with many social media innovations, the app
boosting the startup’s valuation million new users join.
has inspired audio-focused clones, like Twitter’s to US$100 million. July 2021: The team finally drops
Spaces and Spotify’s Greenroom, Reddit Talk and
October 2020: The team begins the invite-only model. It also
Facebook’s Live Audio Rooms, and sparked poten- to experience—and solve for— unveils a new logo and website,
tial copycat moves by LinkedIn and Slack. the challenges of hosting live, as well as a direct messaging tool
For all the success, some media pundits are unmoderated conversations. In called Backchannel. Clubhouse
already declaring Clubhouse dead, though the com- October, days after one conver- ramps up efforts to highlight
sation turned hostile, Clubhouse monthly influencers, such as
pany’s leadership is intent on keeping the party
unveils stronger moderation and Brazilian human rights activist
going, albeit on its own terms. safety guidelines, including real- Dandara Pagu and music entre-
“We’ve always taken a measured approach to time investigations into reported preneur Justin “Meezy” Williams.
growth, keeping the team small … and getting feed- incidents. The site also steers August 2021: The app reaches
back from the community along the way,” founders users to recently added features, 600,000 active chatrooms per
Paul Davison and Rohan Seth wrote. “When you including blocking, muting and day, double the rate from three
reporting tools. months prior.
scale communities too quickly, things can break.”

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22 Expo T
he pandemic postponed the original sched- expected to boost Dubai’s economy by US$33 billion
IMAGES COURTESY OF EXPO 2020 DUBAI

ule, but it couldn’t stop Expo 2020 Dubai. and create about 300,000 jobs.
2020
Project leaders for the US$8.2 billion mega- Held every five years, the World Expo sees hun-
project regrouped, pushing back the global spectacle dreds of countries showing off the latest in architec-
by a year to open in October 2021 and run through ture and technology in meant-to-impress pavilions.
Dubai March 2022.

Organizers expect the event to pull 25 million vis-
itors to the region, helping spark a rebirth for global
This year’s marks the first to be held in the Middle
East, Africa or South Asia, and it’s also the first time
that each of the more than 190 participating coun-
For working around travel. And that’s a win for project leaders and politi- tries will have its own pavilion.
COVID-19 to make cal stakeholders alike, as government leaders look to Here’s a look at some of the wow-worthy attrac-
a mega-event even diversify the country’s economy and shake off one tions at the long-anticipated expo—and what it took
bigger of the worst recessions in five decades. The event is to turn those wildly ambitious ideas into reality.
Sprawling Scale
Massive feels like an understatement
when describing the Expo 2020 Dubai’s
project site. Located on the outskirts of
the city, it spans 4.4 square kilometers (1.7
square miles)—roughly the size of 600
football pitches. With a master plan cre-
ated by U.S. architecture and engineering
firm HOK, the project includes dedicated
public transportation lines and highway
exits, an exhibition center capable of hold-
ing 20,000 attendees at a time and more
than 200 pavilions.
PMNNovDec2021 b-Middle.indd 34 11/10/21 9:55 AM

Immersive Innovation
Situated near the center of the expo
is the Al Wasi Dome, a tech-laced
gathering space nearly as wide as
two Airbus A380 aircrafts laid
wing to wing. Designed by Adrian
Smith + Gordon Gill Architec-
ture, it boasts the world’s largest
360-degree projection surface. The
world got a glimpse of its dazzle
factor on 9 February when Dubai
officials used more than 250 laser
projectors to illuminate the dome’s
interior a deep, ruby red to celebrate
the UAE Space Agency’s Hope
probe reaching Mars’s orbit.
Bird’s-Eye View
The host country turned to Spanish architect Santiago
Calatrava to build a pavilion that reflects the UAE’s evolving
influence and ambitious goals for the future. Located near
the center of the expo, the four-story, 15,000-square-meter
(161,459-square-foot) pavilion also meets LEED platinum
sustainable building standards and features exhibitions
throughout that showcase UAE culture and achievements.
UAE minister of state for international cooperation and
director general of Expo 2020 Dubai H.E. Reem Ebrahim Al
Hashimy said it evokes “the pioneering spirit and power of
connections that transformed the UAE from a collection of
small, desert communities, into a global connection point.”
Purpose and Repurpose Starting With a

From the very start, project Celebration
leaders have been planning Dubai’s more-is-
for the project’s post-expo more philosophy
legacy. To that end, the was evident right
200,000 square meters from the expo’s
(2,152,782 square feet) of start: For the
LEED-certified structures built for Expo 2020 will be repurposed 90-minute opening ceremony, project leaders man-
into District 2020, an integrated, mixed-use community that easily aged an elaborate, culturally diverse team of more than
slots into the Dubai 2040 urban masterplan unveiled in March 2021. 1,000 performers and crew members. To balance all
Siemens, Accenture and Atlas Holdings have signed on as project that optimistic togetherness with the realities of a global
partners for the undertaking, including integrating Internet of Things pandemic, project leaders are requiring—in a change
sensors and blockchain technology throughout District 2020. And from earlier policies—all participants and attendees to
Route 2020, a 14.5-kilometer (9-mile) extension of the Dubai Metro show proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test within
built to connect expo visitors to the bustling city center, will seam- the previous 72 hours (with free tests available on site for
lessly transition from attendee to resident riders. those who don’t have either when they arrive).

23 S
Perseverance
For heading back to Mars—helicopter in tow
eeking to definitively answer the question

of whether there was ever life on Mars,
NASA launched the US$2.4 billion Per-
severance robotic rover. After blasting off 30 July
2020 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, it
finally landed on the red planet in February. But the
journey from concept to reality was fraught with
risk—not only did a pandemic thrust much of the
U.S. space agency team into remote work overnight,
but the team had to navigate a first-of-its-kind
own Twitter feed. (Hobbies: photography, collecting
rocks, off-roading.) Its aim is to look for signs of
ancient microbial life, collecting rock and soil sam-
ples that can be collected by a future mission that
will return them to Earth for analysis. On its belly
is Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, which since April has
been busy making the first-ever powered, controlled
flights outside of Earth, testing out how an aerial
reconnaissance vehicle might be able to help future
missions and the Perseverance rover team.
technology, as well as the sheer complexity of the Collecting geological samples and getting them
project. Entry, descent and landing is often dubbed back to Earth could “provide the best chance of
the “seven minutes of terror” because of the answering these big science questions, specifically,
“The pressure precision required—and Perseverance was could there have potentially been life in the ancient
surrounding a headed to “the most challenging Martian ter- past on Mars?” said George Tahu, NASA’s program
Mars launch is rain ever targeted,” according to NASA. At executive for the Mars 2020 mission. “That’s the
almost beyond the same time, the mission’s launch period big one. But we also have other questions about the
believable.” was hard and fast: missing it would mean history and evolution of the planet from a geology
waiting another 26 months for the right plan- standpoint, the history and current nature of the
—Jennifer Trosper, NASA
etary alignment. climate, and also, how can we best prepare for future
“The pressure surrounding a Mars launch is human exploration?”
almost beyond believable,” said Jennifer Trosper,
project manager for the Perseverance mission. “No The Power of Good Enough
matter how hard we try, we almost always under- NASA spent roughly US$2.4 billion to build and
estimate the time it takes to do something of this launch Perseverance, and project leaders knew they
level of complexity. So the schedule is of the utmost had to make the most of that budget, while still
importance to the management team.” going in with a controlled vision.
With a strong focus on managing and mitigating “You don’t get an opportunity to go to Mars that
risks, the team made sure that pricey two-year delay often and there can be some really compelling ideas
never happened. out there, but you can’t do everything,” said Tahu.
Riding on top of an Atlas V-541 rocket, the Per- “You have to really work through what the real
severance rover landed safely—and now even has its objectives are and what’s most feasible with accept-

able risks. You may have a brand-new instrument
proposal that promises a lot of great new measure-
ments, but it’s never been built before or may have a
higher risk. You have to make those trade-offs.”
Perseverance’s engineering design is based on
Curiosity, which landed on Mars in 2012—but the
team added some souped-up features. The rover’s
autonomous capabilities have been vastly improved,
and, in preparation for future human missions,
MOXIE (the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Uti-
lization Experiment) is testing the ability to make to go for launch. You just have to make a call based on
oxygen from the tiny amount of carbon dioxide in the data and experience you have.”
the red planet’s atmosphere.
Like any organization, NASA’s budgets and time- Leading Through Uncertainty
scales are finite, so the team worked through how Working out of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
much time to spend when—inevitably—issues arose. Trosper has been part of the Perseverance team for
For example, deep into the project, a problem was eight years, taking on a variety of roles, which she
detected during a test of one of the arms. The flight says has given her better insight into what happens
unit was sealed within Perseverance. But accessing it on the ground. “I know all the pieces and also how
and taking it out to inspect might have jeopardized things are put together, which makes it easier for me
the whole mission. to be more effective in helping folks when they may
“We had to kick off a bunch of parallel activities to have problems or need guidance on a difficult situa-
understand whether it was because the test itself was
IMAGES COURTESY OF NASA
tion, because I’ve been in their shoes.”

flawed, or the hardware was flawed because there was The pandemic shook that confidence to the
something we didn’t understand about the design,” core. Suddenly, the many teams that Trosper over-
said Trosper. “In the end we convinced ourselves that sees—engineering operations, robotics operations,
we could avoid the problem if we operated the flight
arm at a higher temperature on Mars, making it good Continued on the next page

instruments and science operations—were faced

with strict lockdown requirements, just a few
months before the launch deadline. Most of the
rover was already in Florida, largely built and get-
ting ready to integrate into the launch rocket. But
the team had to complete critical prelaunch tests
and a significant set of work required for landing
and the surface mission, while learning a com-
24
pletely new way to work together.
“A lot of what we do is highly collaborative, with
someone showing you something, or you’re peering
at someone else’s monitor,” she said. “Suddenly, we
had to work remotely and still have everybody be part
of the conversation, even if they weren’t in the room.”
Some staff flew back and forth to Florida to com-
plete the vehicle preparations for launch. Meanwhile
Trosper worked on a triage system that would deter-
mine what final prelaunch testing needed to be done
and what could be deferred until after launch or even
after Perseverance landed safely on Mars.
When launch time finally arrived, “I
“If we remember I showed up for work that day
can study thinking: How can so much be resting on
ancient this one day?” she said.
rocks on
Maldives
All that agility and resilience paid discovery
Mars, we dividends. The landing site, Jezero crater, once
can better held water (and therefore life), making it a
understand great spot for collecting telling rock samples.
how planets With a sampling and caching system that
like ours uses more than 3,000 individual parts, the
Floating City
evolved.” Perseverance rover in September took the first
For boldly shoring up a more
sample of Martian rock, a core slightly thicker
—George Tahu, NASA
than a pencil, from the Jezero crater. The resilient future for coastal cities
samples are now candidates for NASA and the Euro-
A
pean Space Agency’s Mars Sample Return campaign. floating city might sound like something
Perseverance is also exploring South Seítah, a out of a utopian manifesto. But government
geologic unit within Jezero crater filled with sand leaders in the Maldives are about to make it
dunes, intriguing ridges, rocky outcrops and boul- a reality—an urgent response to the risk of the island
ders. Analyzing those results may take years—but country being swallowed by the effects of climate
could unlock untold secrets. change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
“Rocks are nature’s time machine. The ancient Change predicts sea levels could rise a half meter (1.6
surface of Mars can provide a window into the early feet) by 2100, a scenario that would submerge 77 per-
history of the solar system, whereas plate tecton- cent of the South Asian archipelago’s land area.
ics have largely erased that history on Earth. So if Launched in partnership with Dutch architec-
we can study ancient rocks on Mars, we can better ture studio Waterstudio and construction com-
understand how planets like ours evolved,” said Tahu. pany Dutch Docklands, the massive infrastructure
“And by studying extreme environments on Earth project could serve as a scalable blueprint for other
and the potential for life on Mars, that knowledge can coastal communities.
intersect and intertwine and really inform our under- Slated to be built in a warm-water lagoon just
standing of habitability in the solar system.” outside of the Maldives’ capital of Malé, the new

4 island city will be powered by renewable energy and
provide space for thousands of homes, a hospital,
a school and commercial properties. To minimize
its impact on the area’s reefs, the city is modeled
on the geometric patterns of local coral, with every
property facing the water in hexagonal patterns.
How did the project site inform the design?
The Maldives is a remote country in the middle of
the Indian Ocean. If we built in Amsterdam, there
are all these construction companies around you.
Here you are in the middle of nowhere. So, you have
to find a way to plug and play and bring all these ele-
Construction is scheduled to begin in 2022, with ments together, like a Lego system.
work completed in phases over the next half decade. “It will prove
Waterstudio co-founder Koen Olthuis talks about Do you see this project transforming the future that we can
of cities?
what it takes to turn the world’s largest floating
build, design
structure into a livable city. It will prove that we can build, design and have
fantastic livability in a floating city. This will be the
and have
How did you approach the design for this project? benchmark for other cities around the world.
fantastic
If you’re going to build a floating city, you have to What I like about this project is that it is the first
livability in
make sure it will be there for the next 100 to 150 of a kind. We are not talking about 50 or 100 floating a floating
city.”
IMAGES COURTESY OF MALDIVES FLOATING CITY
years. But you need the ability to adjust the design. houses, but 5,000 floating houses. The idea of a big
Having this modular system made that possible. city floating can be brought to places like New York, —Koen Olthuis,
Normally you have one floating structure, and Miami, Tokyo, Shanghai. If you can do it here, with Waterstudio
you have to stabilize that building. The innovation this coral, you can do it in any waterfront coastal
here is that you make a network—a very large land- city worldwide.
scape of floating structures that together become Every city and country next to the water has to
rigid in a sense. There’s a controlled flexibility of be resilient, has to be working with climate change.
the whole structure. And that’s really new. This is We see water as an asset, as an opportunity, as a
the largest floating structure in the world, almost a benefit for the economic systems of these countries
kilometer by 600 meters [3,280 feet by 1,968 feet]. and cities.

25
For outfitting a global pop culture phenomenon
I
t was pretty much perfect pandemic viewing—as
the numbers show. Netflix’s sultry period drama
Bridgerton captivated 82 million viewers around
Bridgerton
Costume
Design
dresses to jewelry to … breathe in … corsets. Work-
ing against a rigorous schedule, they purchased
fabrics and coordinated with top artisans to build
the world within the first months of its December wardrobes worthy of royalty. The team had five
debut. Part of the show’s appeal was undoubtedly the months to prep and deliver costumes—an experi-
need to swap stuck-at-home monotony for Regency- ence Mirojnick called “exciting and daunting.”
era lust, wealth and scandal. But the show also made “When [Shondaland] came to us, we said from the
quite the fashion statement, a delightfully frothy treat get-go that this was no small affair, and we needed a
arriving at a time when even the most diligent fashion lot of resources,” she said. “And they had a choice to
followers were sticking to track suits and sneakers. walk away at that point. But they didn’t.”
Delivering that kind of style would require a massive Like the show’s first season (spoiler alert), the
wardrobe creation and curation project. project had a happy ending. The team delivered a
Production company Shondaland collaborated staggering 5,000 costumes, including 104 alone for
with costume designer Ellen Mirojnick to re-create protagonist socialite Daphne Bridgerton, as well as
the style of early 1800s London society but with 2,500 accoutrement, such as hats, shawls and over-
a contemporary high-fashion sensibility. Yet after coats. The visual feast satisfied not only viewers, but
scouting costume houses for rentals and discovering critics, too, with the show earning an Emmy nomi-
they wouldn’t entirely fit the series’ desired aesthet- nation for outstanding period costumes.
ics, Mirojnick decided to go custom. The team of Here’s how Mirojnick and other project leaders
more than 200 people would create everything from pulled off the fashion fantasy:
They chose to divide and conquer.

As Mirojnick and her co-designers
raced against the production clock, they
divided the team by specializations: pat-
tern cutters, tailors, milliners, embroi-
derers, a world-renowned corset maker
and an entire team dedicated to fittings.
They went in with a fashion playbook. They decided to lose the bonnet. To ensure the show’s high-society
To create a shared and readily accessible vision for Bonnets were ubiquitous during this ladies had no shortage of bling, project
the show’s statement style, the team created a look- period, but the shape shielded actors’ leaders brought in a jewelry designer
book that depicted both period clothing and luxuri- faces and made them look older. to create pieces on demand, with other
ous modern twists, as well as styles that combined “There’s something psychological items sourced from dealers in the U.S.
the two. Inspiration for images in the book came about the bonnet that would never and Europe. With an array of back-
from paintings, online images and even a museum have worked in this show,” said co- ground characters and secondary play-
exhibition—Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams at designer John Glaser. “Bonnets bring ers to dress, the team filled a warehouse
London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. everything down. So instead, the team with racks of clothing from costume
“It was a way to keep everybody in the entire crafted hair accessories with a subtle companies. That large collection of
crew and cast on the same page and to give a feel- nod to the bonnet, including straw sourced clothing served main charac-
ing of the look without defining each character,” half-moon-shaped pieces with feather ters too, as designers tapped it for quick
said Mirojnick. or flower accents. changes.

They took inspiration from the color of money.
Costumes helped distinguish the show’s two promi-
nent families. For the Bridgertons, a family of old
money, designers chose a powdery palette with pale
blues, greens and
silvers to reflect an
understated, refined
They resolved material issues with visual magic. air. For the nouveau
Clinging to historical accuracy of 19th century London riche Featheringtons,
through an haute couture lens would have required designers opted for
dressing the actors in cotton as luxurious fabrics were an attention-grabbing
scarce during the Regency era due to the Napoleonic aesthetic with exces-
Wars. To give dresses a serious style boost, designers sive embellishments,
experimented with overlays, embellishments and drap- bold patterns, and
PHOTOS COURTESY OF NETFLIX
ing fabrics. Artisans also practically created their own bright colors like lime
fabric, using laser cutting and laser printing as well as green, orange and
hand embroidery. vivid pink. “There’s so much contradiction between
Costumes were “always meant to create an illusion of these two families, so we looked at how we could
romance, of fluidity,” said Mirojnick. “There’s hardly any- bring them together and how we could separate
thing with a hard line—it’s all illusion and visual magic.” them,” said Mirojnick.

26 Propel
Center
For challenging systemic racism by fueling
next-gen thinking at Black universities
A
s protests for racial justice echoed around
the world last year, Silicon Valley’s biggest
players vowed to increase the disturbingly
low number of people of color in tech. In January,
Apple took action, joining forces with energy com-
pany Southern Co. to build the Propel Center. Funded
with US$25 million from each company, the proj-
ect will deliver a first-of-its-kind 50,000-square-foot
(4,645-square-meter) campus
in the historic Atlanta Uni-
versity Center district as well
IMAGE COURTESY OF ED FARM
27
as a digital learning platform
for students and faculty at
more than 100 historically
Black colleges and universities
(HBCUs) in the United States.
The center is being “imag-
ined and designed” by Ed
Progress Report
Farm, building on the non-
People of color (POC) in the tech
industry see improvement toward profit’s partnership with the
equality—and work still to be done: tech giant. The “extraordinary
65% say there are more POC in project” will help “cultivate
tech versus 10 years ago. leadership and drive inno-
43% reported issues at work due to vation in tech and beyond,
their race or ethnicity. acting as a springboard for
67% say companies should be doing change in communities across
more to address racial inequality.
Burberry
America,” says Anthony Oni,
63% of Black tech professionals
Ed Farm’s founder and chair-
say they have a problem finding a
mentor, versus 28 percent of whites. man of the board.
How would POC prefer tech

companies support them?
Diversity recruitment............... 52%
The Propel Center will
employ custom curriculum
across myriad education
Open Spaces
tracks—from AI and aug- For creating a tech-forward retail space,
Task forces................................... 40%
One-on-one support ...............32% mented reality to social justice complete with social currency
and entertainment arts—as
C
Source: TrustRadius, 2020
well as learning labs tricked onverting digital native shoppers into
out with the latest tech to foster innovation. Students brick-and-mortar visitors has been an
can also participate through on-site HBCU ideation elusive quest for retailers. But U.K. luxe
labs at partner institutions nationwide. fashion brand Burberry and Chinese tech giant Ten-
And to make sure that education leads to employ- cent may have slain the dragon, turning the in-store
ment—and moves the needle on building a more experience into an app-driven interactive playground.
equitable workforce—the Propel Center’s plans Burberry’s first so-called social retail store, Open
include fellowship, internship and mentorship Spaces, opened last year in Shenzhen with 10 areas
opportunities, as well as career prep courses. that merge consumers’ online and offline brand

Here’s a snapshot of how Burberry and Tencent reimagined retail.
Chat Strategy
Instead of making users download another app, the team
strategically chose to have the store’s app exist within
WeChat—a decision driven by data. There are 1.2 billion
monthly active users of the popular messaging, social
media and mobile payments app in China.
Incentivized Interaction
Developers loaded the app with activities meant to get shoppers
sharing. Take the interactive window at the store’s entrance: Patterned
after a mirrored catwalk from a past runway show, it responds to body
movement to create the kind of immersive
moment that users will want to share. And
as a reward for doing so, they earn social
currency that provides entrée to exclusive
store experiences. That includes the Trench
Experience, a hidden room with interac-
tive elements that tell the history of the
brand’s iconic trench coat.
The incentivized approach creates a vir-
tual marketing cycle. As customers share
their store interactions via the Burberry
app, they unlock even more share-worthy
moments—and entice more people to visit the boutique.
Let the Games Begin

Burberry had already created an online game called BBounce to
promote a new line of puffer jackets. But by working with Ten-
cent—which owns 40 percent of Fortnite maker Epic Games—the
company leveled up on its gamification. When customers log in, an
animal character inside an egg pops up and eventually hatches as
they use the app for in-store interactions or social media sharing.
As app use increases, new characters emerge, along with digital
clothes to style them in.
Tea Time
To foster community (and extend visit times), the
team created Thomas’s Café. The space is billed
experience. Customers use a bespoke WeChat pro- as “unique celebration of English and Chinese tea
gram by Tencent to book appointments, try on culture,” though it’s not just a place for customers to
items, learn about products, get customer service, nosh and recharge as shoppers hunt for the perfect
s
trench. The brand sees it as a nod to company
share content, and even customize in-store playlists
founder Thomas Burberry’s legacy of bringing com-
and lighting in the 5,800-square-foot (539-square- munities together: It offers workshops, lectures, ex-
meter) store. Actions earn them social currency, hibitions and live performances. But Burberry hasn’t
e, which they can use to unlock insider exclusives. neglected the social retail piece. Along with creating
The push to pivot came after Burberry discovered infinitely snappable surroundings, it gives customers
who accumulate social currency access to secret menu items.
80 percent of its customers have a digital touchpoint
PHOTOS COURTESY OF BURBERRY GROUP PLC
before making a purchase. With 40 percent of the Social Meets Sustainability

company’s revenue coming from China, the iconic Burberry took all its stores in China carbon neutral this year. And as
U.K. brand turned the Shenzhen shop into an incu- customers and investors alike demand more sustainable approaches
bator, testing cutting-edge concepts and experiences from the fashion industry, the Shenzhen location helps drive aware-
to potentially scale across other stores. ness for Burberry’s efforts.
Every item in the store includes a tag with a QR code that, when
Burberry CEO Marco Gobbetti said the store
scanned, provides customers with additional product information, in-
was designed to “push the boundaries of what’s pos- cluding its eco-friendly bona fides. That info could cover how production
sible” and “marks a shift in how we engage with our facilities are working to meet carbon emissions standards or the amount
customers.” of recycled fibers used in materials.

29 National
Wildlife
Census

For generating hard data to save Kenya’s
animals—and its tourism sector
T
he rhinos, lions, wildebeest, elephants and
leopards wandering the plains of Kenya aren’t
just majestic—they’re a revenue stream that
28
can deliver powerful economic benefits. Tourism
Business Alliance fuels 8 percent of Kenya’s GDP. But poaching, climate

change and a human population explosion are putting
to Scale Climate many of the country’s most well-known animals—and

economic growth—at risk. So three government agen-
Solutions cies launched the country’s first systematic census this

year, a three-month, US$2.3 million project to better
For giving big business its own climate collective track where Kenya’s most threatened species live and
to glean conservation insights and strategies for some
N
o one company can fight climate change of its 25,000 species.
alone. But eight of the world’s biggest busi- By establishing a national wildlife database and cre-
nesses are betting they can make progress ating a repeatable framework for future animal counts,
together. Amazon, The Walt Disney Co., Google, the team aims to bolster tourism and establish guide-
Microsoft, Netflix, Salesforce, Unilever and Workday lines for redeveloping parts of the country. Kenya’s
combined forces in 2021 with the World Wildlife Fund, human population has grown nearly sixfold in recent
the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and the U.N. decades, leading to a surge in demand for land to meet
Environment Programme to create a new virtual col- residential, infrastructure and agricultural needs.
lective aimed at radically accelerating climate solutions. “Kenya had done wildlife censuses before but
The goals for the Business Alliance to Scale Climate just for key species like elephants and rhino that
Solutions (BASCS) extend far beyond offsetting emis- have been affected by illegal trade and poaching for
sions. To build an ecosystem of changemakers, the ivory and rhino horn, but we’d never undertaken
collective of heavy hitters is vowing to share ideas, a nationally coordinated census for all our wildlife
resources and lessons learned “across and beyond resources,” said Patrick Omondi, PhD, director of the
value chains”—meaning they’ll be exerting some peer Wildlife Research and Training Institute.
pressure to invest. COVID-19 helped spur the government to action.
EDF Managing Director Elizabeth Sturcken called Pandemic-related border closures blocked tourists
it “the kind of visionary leadership and action we need from paying to see elephants, giraffe and other wild-
from the world’s biggest and most influential com- life roam the wild. The resulting economic hardships
panies,” saying the group “can help close the climate sparked an increase in poaching for bush meat, par-
funding gap.” ticularly plains species like Thomson’s gazelle and
By creating a neutral space where companies can dik-diks, and the poaching was evolving toward com-
share what they learn, the founders are hoping to push mercialization, Omondi said. In addition, humans were
business investment to the level necessary to achieve farming and settling in areas that wildlife had ranged.
what they call a just and sustainable future. Launching a census was the only way to truly
“Transitioning to a low-carbon economy demands measure the impact. Working with the Ministry of
fundamental changes in the way society, including the Tourism and Wildlife and the Kenya Wildlife Service
private sector, operates and innovates,” said Vijay Sudan, as well as some private conservation organizations,
Disney’s executive director, enterprise social respon- Omondi’s team sought to establish a baseline count
sibility. “Collaborating with other members of BASCS for key land, marine and freshwater wildlife species in
will create opportunity to scale high-quality climate the country, particularly under-the-radar species that
solutions necessary to drive a more sustainable future.” are just as threatened as big-game rhinos.

30
Daunting doesn’t fully capture the scope of the
Voyager
undertaking. The team of about 100 people used
camera traps, light aircraft, helicopters, boats and
Station
four-wheel-drive vehicles to navigate approximately
360,000 square kilometers (138,997 square miles),
or nearly 60 percent of the nation. The survey
For taking space tourism closer to reality with an
area included the country’s 58 national parks and
out-of-this-world luxury hotel in low Earth orbit
reserves in addition to private and community con-
servation lands.
E
For areas surveyed by light aircraft, project leaders ven before billionaires Richard Branson and
divided the study area into transects as big as 600 Jeff Bezos headed out on their private space
square kilometers (232 square miles). Pilots flew for up junkets in July, the next dimension of space
to six hours a day at low altitudes so on-board census tourism was already underway: a high-end hotel
data recorders could spot the wildlife, log it into their accommodating travelers making low orbit more
records, and document the GPS coordinates for each than a day trip. Once complete, the Voyager Station
sighted animal. In the larger ecosys- would be the first commercial space station operat-
tems like Tsavo, there were as many
At-Risk ing with artificial gravity and the largest human-
as 15 planes in the sky at once, which made structure in space.
The National Wildlife Census
required intense on-the-ground coor- calculated which species are Taking one small step for space tourism, Orbital
dination so pilots didn’t overlap and most threatened. Assembly Corp. unveiled plans in February to con-
animals weren’t double-counted. struct a smaller, ground-based assembly system on
CRITICALLY ENDANGERED
“It was like having an air control Earth. But the real deal—a three-ring station—will
Black rhino: 897
center in the bush,” said Omondi. be built in orbit using automation and telerobotics.
Hirola: 497
Results of the first census, in “We’re learning and drawing on all the technol-
August, revealed 14 species are Roan antelope: 15 ogy and research done by NASA and its interna-
nationally endangered, including five, Sable antelope: 51 tional partners,” said Tim
such as the black rhino, that are criti- Tana River mangabey: 1,650 Alatorre, co-founder and
cally endangered. This data will help COO of Orbital Assembly.
ENDANGERED
wildlife officials develop conserva- The station will feature
Bongo: 150
tion policies to enhance conservation 125,000 square feet (11,600
and management of Kenya’s wildlife Lion: 2,589 square meters) of habitable
resources, study how climate change Cheetah: 1,160 space, enough to accom-
is affecting their habitats and migra- Sitatunga: 473 modate up to 440 guests
tion patterns, and help the central White rhino: 842 in 24 pressurized modules.
government and local authorities Elephant: 36,280 Given the cutting-edge
plan infrastructure projects in ways nature of the project, the station will be equipped
Grevy’s zebra: 2,649
that mitigate damage to wildlife. with 44 emergency return vehicles with automated
Wild dog: 865
Now Kenya’s government plans flight controls. The team behind the project—NASA
to conduct a wildlife census every Nubian giraffe: 768 veterans, pilots, engineers and architects—aims to
three years. Going forward, Omondi pull in casual space travelers with the swanky digs
said the team needs to invest in (and a reported US$5 million price tag for a three-day
technology such as drones and arti- trip), while also fostering partnerships with busi-
ficial intelligence, which are better nesses, manufacturers and national space agencies
suited for surveying smaller areas Source: Kenya Wildlife Service conducting low-gravity research.
like the rhino sanctuaries, and ther- The timeline is ambitious. In June, Orbital unveiled
mal imaging cameras, which could be used from the the robotic fabricator that will help the team build in
air to identify animals in heavily vegetated areas. space. And a 2023 mission aims to put a robot in space
“You can only manage better what you know,” said to build a ring truss, with construction of the hotel
Omondi. “Now that we know where the animals are beginning by 2025. With the company aiming to wel-
and how many we have, we anticipate that we will come guests as early as 2027, the project could mark
plan better for ensuring that the wildlife conserva- a turning point in the space economy that Bank of
tion is enhanced in Kenya.” America predicts could reach US$1.4 trillion by 2030.

ence those brands that we
work with,” said Alannah
Weston, Selfridges group
chair, at the project launch
in August 2020. “Through
those conversations, we’re
able to change the industry.”
With Project Earth, Sel-
fridges has committed to
transitioning to certi-
fied, sustainable sources
for those materials with
the greatest environmen-
tal impact by 2025. For
instance, all feathers used
in products such as duvets
and eyelash extensions will
be byproducts of poultry
production. In the first year,
Selfridges bestowed its Proj-
ect Earth label on 9,000 products, meaning they
meet the company’s sustainability requirements.
The team also analyzed sustainability feedback
from more than 600 suppliers, leading to new
partnerships and new products. Case in point: The
31
team worked with Prada to debut the Italian fashion
giant’s expanded line of garments using Econyl, a
PHOTOS COURTESY OF SELFRIDGES

textile made by upcycling nylon waste such as fish-
ing nets and carpets.
“This collection will allow us to make our contri-
bution and create productions without using new
resources,” said Lorenzo Bertelli, Prada’s group head
of marketing, at launch.
To get the word out, Selfridges hosted Project
Earth virtual events that attracted 157,000 views.
Project Earth
The retailer also spun customer feedback into new
shopping experiences, such as clothing rental and
repair services. Within a year of launch, the store
For reinventing retail through sustainable shopping had sold more than 1,000 refillable beauty products,
while the Resellfridges online resale shop boasted
E
xecutives at luxury department store Self- more than 7,000 transactions.
ridges aren’t content for the store’s influence Each element of Project Earth is a ripple in a tidal
to stop at style trends. They also want the wave of “radical action in response to the climate
U.K. retailer to lead the way on sustainability, bucking crisis,” said Daniella Vega, director of sustainability
the status quo in an industry that—through its supply for Selfridges. Selfridges aims to reduce the carbon
chain and other operations—has a historically large impact of purchased goods by 30 percent and green-
carbon footprint. By collaborating with brands and house gas emissions by 64 percent by 2030.
environmental changemakers including the Wood- All those efforts are paying off—and customers
land Trust and WWF, Selfridges is advancing a bold are taking notice: 60 percent see the retailer as an
five-year plan to highlight how the fashion biz as a industry leader for sustainability.
whole can deliver real positive social impact. “Sustainability is—it’s the right thing to do … but
“We’re in such an amazing position to influ- it also makes business sense,” Weston said.

32 Microsoft Game Accessibility
Testing Service
For leveling up on inclusion in video games
V
ideo games are meant to be challeng- taloni. “Accessibility should
ing—but they also need to be accessible. be considered from the very
There are nearly 46 million gamers with start of product design.”
disabilities in the United States alone, and those The testing service solves
PHOTOS COURTESY OF MICROSOFT
kinds of numbers are driving Microsoft to develop two major problems for
a better experience for both players and developers developers. Those without
around the world. experience in tailoring their
After the company worked with members of the games to players with dis-
gaming and disability community in 2019 to create abilities will now have more
the Xbox Accessibility Guidelines (XAGs) for its help to create more inclu-
own platform, the company received requests from sive designs. The service also
game studios for additional context, clarity and helps game makers keep their projects on track. “Accessibility
guidelines. Getting feedback in the middle of the development
should be
So the tech giant began working on a first-of-its- process helps teams flag accessibility issues earlier,
kind testing service that has subject matter experts which keeps schedules and budgets on target.
considered
and gamers with disabilities vet the games against The debut of the new service in February was an
from the
revised XAGs, including good practices for text dis- immediate hit for developers. Within one month
very start
plays, visual cues and haptic feedback. That feedback of launch, the team had tested five titles and of product
is then provided to game makers. logged 177 concerns. Players are reaping benefits, design.”
“Designing for the billions of people on this planet too, with bone-deep accessibility built into user —Anita Mortaloni, Xbox
starts with designing for just one and extending to interface navigation, difficulty settings and com-
many,” said Xbox accessibility director Anita Mor- munications experiences.
33 A Wasteless
For helping supermarkets reduce waste and giving shoppers a good deal
pproximately 40 percent of food goes

uneaten, including 931 million metric tons
wasted at retail and consumption, accord-
ing to a report by WWF and U.K. retailer Tesco. And
Wasteless claims its tech can reduce food waste
by 40 percent and says the number could eventually
reach 80 percent after deployment, as the platform
learns and adapts. The company first began working
as food insecurity spikes even higher with COVID, the on the project in 2017, running pilots in Italy and
world is hungry for solutions. Israeli-Dutch startup Spain. And when Italy’s Iper stores tested the system
Wasteless is serving up one option: an AI-powered in 2020, 41 percent of shoppers chose the item with
dynamic pricing engine that automatically reduces the shorter shelf life. Wasteless next partnered with
the cost of perishable food items as they spend more NX-Food in May to scale the software with wholesaler
time on store shelves: The closer Metro as part of its efforts to halve food waste by 2025.
a product is to its “best before” Wasteless CEO Oded Omer called the platform
PHOTO COURTESY OF WASTELESS
date, the cheaper it will be to buy. an evolution of the industry’s inventory control sys-
The tool could be a gamechanger tems, but the secret ingredient is offering an ROI for
for grocery stores, where the retailers—and shoppers.
company estimates roughly 87 “Wasteless helps save money by shopping more
percent of food waste is due to sustainably,” he said. “There’s a lot of talk about sus-
products languishing past their tainability in business, but it only really works if it’s
expiration date. also profitable.”

ts l
2 1 ec ti a
Pr flu st
20 oj en
In o
M
PHOTO BY NICK OXFORD FOR THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES
34 Tulsa Race
Massacre
Excavation
For helping bring closure to a community
I
t happened a century ago, but the scars of the
1921 Tulsa Race Massacre still run deep. What
started with a young Black shoeshine vendor
accused of assaulting a white elevator operator in
Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA escalated over the next few
days into the razing of the city’s prosperous Black
neighborhood, Greenwood.
Few records of the days’ events exist, and there’s
no official count of lives lost during the massacre,
though historians believe the number may be as
high as 300. A 2001 government report concluded
that city officials had provided firearms and ammu-
nition to white individuals, effectively authorizing
them to commit violence.
Looking to answer lingering questions, govern-
ment leaders have launched an interdisciplinary
program, using methods including survivor inter-
views and ground-surveying technology to locate
and recover the bodies of those killed.
Headed by Oklahoma state archaeologist Kary
rocked by racial violence Stackelbeck and forensic anthropologist Phoebe

A test excavation of the
Tulsa Race Massacre
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE UNITED STATES LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

graves at Oaklawn
Cemetery in Tulsa,
Oklahoma, USA.
At right, destruction
during the 1921 Tulsa
race massacre.
Stubblefield, the project broke ground with a test crime scene, and our excavation techniques were
excavation in 2020, followed by a full dig this year. tailored to maximize the ability of the forensic
Here, Stackelbeck discusses the project, efforts to team to ascertain any indicators of trauma. For
engage the community in the process and how the example, rather than carefully clean off all skeletal
team is building trust through transparency. elements and remove them individually, we applied
consolidant to some of the more fragile remains
Who’s involved in this project? and removed them as a block with the surrounding
An interdisciplinary team of researchers was soil. The forensic team could then X-ray them in our
amassed about 20 years ago to tackle this subject of on-site lab before the bones started to degrade from
the mass graves, but their work was stopped short the exposure.
before they could conduct any excavations. Several
of those researchers are engaged in our effort, which What did you discover in the latest excavation?
involves three committees. We’re in the early phases of pulling the forensic
A Historic Context Committee has compiled analysis together, but our excavations revealed evi-
historical records, documentation, oral histories and dence of 34 burials, of which we recovered 19. We
other anecdotes being provided by members of the had one individual who is definitely a gunshot vic-
community. The Physical Investigation Committee tim, and other individuals who were buried in a dis-
is charged with taking those site leads and executing respectful manner. Our working hypothesis at this
the process of the actual physical excavation work. location was that if we found one massacre victim,
My job is principally trying to find where the graves we should find others immediately adjacent—and
may be. Upon locating burials, the forensic team that may not be the case here.
analyzes the remains to determine the extent to In archaeology, you’re flying blind a lot of the
“You have which they may represent victims. A third team, the time, and you’re going to encounter information
to be nimble Public Oversight Committee, is populated largely and data patterns different than what you maybe
enough to with descendants of survivors and other members anticipated. So, you have to be nimble enough to
adjust your of Tulsa’s African American community. At every adjust your excavation strategy to accommodate
excavation stage, we address their concerns, and we don’t pro- new information as you encounter it.
strategy to ceed until we get their approval. During the peak of
accommodate this latest round of excavations, on any given day How are you measuring the project’s success?
new we’d have about 30 people on site who were partici- I feel like our most recent effort was a success in the
information as pating in the process. sense that I feel good about the collaborative model
you encounter between our multiple disciplines and our workflow.
it.” What’s one way this is different than a typical The unfortunate thing is that we just need more of
project you might work on? the victims to cooperate, if you will—we need to find
—Kary Stackelbeck, Oklahoma
While archaeologists are used to collaborating with them in the right place. Our methods will ultimately
Archeological Survey
forensic scientists, the circumstances of this case are work. It’s about having the patience and the fortitude
very different. Here, we’re looking at a 100-year-old to keep moving forward.

35
E
xpectations for PlayStation 5 (PS5) were
ridiculously high—and few would have
blamed Sony if it stuck with its winning
formula. Instead, the Japanese company rewrote
the gaming playbook with a radical departure from
its previous console iterations. The PS5 was bigger,
more powerful and way more immersive.
PlayStation 5
For literally changing the game
Here’s a look at a few ways the team made PS5 stand apart:
Remote Control
An innovative DualSense
controller features adaptive
triggers and advanced haptic
feedback that mimic physi-
Music to Your Ears
Immersive, lifelike
sound is nothing new
to PlayStation, but
the team rolled out
But it was also being released within days of cal resistance, vibrations and Tempest 3D AudioTech,
subtle tension—allowing users which simulates sounds
Microsoft’s Xbox Series X—prompting what the
to “feel” in-game experiences from all directions to
gaming biz gurus quickly dubbed the “console war.” give users better situ-
like walking on sand, diving into
The definitive winner of that contest is still hotly water or pulling on a rope. ational awareness.
debated. But within five months of PS5’s November
2020 debut in North America and Europe, Sony had
sold 7.8 million of the machines—which PlaySta-
tion’s president declared the biggest console launch
in history. That record is even more impressive in
the context of a global chip shortage and aggressive
secondhand scalper market that created inventory
headaches in the first half of the year. And they’re
still a hot commodity.
Gamers who managed to get their hands on the
PS5 are playing—a lot. Sure, many of them are just
spending more time in front of the console because
of COVID, but this is no small blip. According to
Sony, users logged 81 percent more time on the
PHOTO COURTESY OF SONY INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT
console in early 2021 than they did during a similar

post-launch period for the PS4.
Of course, at the beginning of the project, no one
knew how the public would respond to such a radi-
cal rethink of the mega-popular console.
“It was kind of a tough decision in the begin-
ning,” Yujin Morisawa, senior art director, told The
Washington Post. “Should it look like the PlayStation
4’s successor or should we go beyond whatever we
designed before? We decided to go beyond, because
everybody’s trying to achieve something beyond
what we had.”

36 Multi-Node
Lighter Load
A lightning-fast
825-gigabyte hard
drive means minute-
long load times have
Quantum Network
been slashed to For taking another step closer to an unhackable internet
seconds.
G
overnments and scientists have been dreaming of it for
decades: a large-scale quantum internet that would open the
Hot Air aperture on a range of applications, like unhackable com-
Sony began shipping
munications, cloud computing with complete privacy and warp-speed
a lightly revised PS5
in August, featuring a computations. And that’s just the stuff they’ve thought of.
smaller, lighter heat sink Researchers had previously only been able to connect two quantum
that more efficiently processors that shared a direct physical link. But a truly scalable quan-
removes heat from the tum network must be able to relay quantum information through inter-
console. mediate nodes, like to routers in the regular old internet. Then in April,
a team at Dutch research center QuTech—a collaboration between
Delft University of Technology and TNO—made
the jump: Using a complex system of mirrors and
laser light, it created a rudimentary quantum
Quantum
network by connecting three independent nodes Basics
(named Alice, Bob and Charlie) across 10 to 20 While conventional
computers store and
meters (32 to 66 feet).
process data as a
The QuTech team wasted little time on cel- series of 0s and 1s,
ebration. It’s now at work on a project to make a a future quantum
link between greater distances: connecting Delft internet will make
and The Hague, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) use of quantum bits
Down and Dirty
apart. Researchers are also working on adding that can be 0 and 1
Cleaning the ducts and
at the same time.
vents of a console can help more quantum bits to their network and eventu-
extend its life—but doing ally making it more accessible.
so can be a time-consum- “Once all the high-level control and interface layers for running the
ing drag. The PS5 team
network have been developed, anybody will be able to write and run
made it a little easier, with
two dust-catching holes a network application without needing to understand how lasers and
that can be easily reached cryostats work,” said Matteo Pompili, PhD student and a member of the
with a vacuum. research team. “That is the end goal.”

star Leonardo DiCaprio, the project includes restor-
ing Floreana Island, home to 54 threatened species.
A project led by Re:wild, Galápagos National Park
Directorate and Island Conservation, along with local
communities, plans to reintroduce 13 locally extinct
species (including the Floreana mockingbird, the first
mockingbird described by Charles Darwin).
“To reverse the climate crisis and ecosystem col-
lapse, we need to focus on a ‘technology’ that took
billions of years to refine, that is free and that sustains
us every single day: nature, in its most wild form,” said
Wes Sechrest, Re:wild chief scientist and CEO.
The project also includes plans to establish a
captive breeding program to prevent the extinction
of the pink iguana. It aims to strengthen measures
that protect marine resources and improve eco-
tourism, a critical component of the Galápagos and
Ecuadorian economy.
“These kinds of partnerships that leverage techni-
cal, social and financial innovations are exactly what
we need around the world to restore the health of
37
our planet,” said Marcelo Mata Guerrero, Ecuador’s
Minister of Environment and Water.
But before the team can revive native spe-
cies—including penguins, iguanas, snails and the
ATOSAN / ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS

Floreana giant tortoise—it first has to deal with the
invasive rodents and feral cats wreaking havoc with
the local ecosystem.
The team will rely on lessons learned from past
restoration projects. “We know how to prevent
these extinctions and restore functional and thriv-
ing ecosystems—we have done it—but we need to
replicate these successes, innovate and go to scale,”
Galápagos
said wildlife veterinarian Paula Castaño.
And the scale is ambitious. Over the next 10 years,
the team will launch an unprecedented push across
Islands Rewilding Latin America’s Pacific archipelagos—from México

down to Chile. The coalition aims to double the areas
under protection and protect at least 30 percent of
For restoring delicate ecosystems while developing each country’s waters while reversing the decline of
sustainable economies more than 250 globally threatened species.
Along with providing financial support, DiCaprio
T
he Galápagos Islands are going wild (again). has traveled to the Galápagos site to meet with
A coalition of nonprofits and a certain eco- some of the project leaders. And thanks to his social
conscious celebrity are joining forces to media star power, an Instagram video featuring
restore the spectacular array of biodiversity of one Castaño discussing the rewilding efforts had racked
of the first UNESCO World Heritage sites—which up 770,000 views within just the first few months.
will also serve to bolster the economy through “The environmental heroes that the planet needs
ecotourism. are already here,” DiCaprio said. “Now we all must
Fueled by a US$43 million pledge from movie rise to the challenge and join them.”

38 T Daylight
For listening to LGBTQ+ customers—and then delivering
a banking experience for their needs
he global LGBTQ+ community boasts an
estimated total household wealth of US$23
trillion, according to LGBT Capital. Yet the
“What we did was
revolutionary: We
financial services industry has created few products
started designing
tailored to the market’s specific needs. Looking for LGBTQ+ folks.”
to fill that void, Rob Curtis developed Daylight, a — Rob Curtis, Daylight
digital platform built on the kind of bespoke specs
that can only come to light through conversations team decided to offer customers Visa-branded cards
with LGBTQ+ consumers. For example, after learn- in their preferred name.
ing that one of the biggest issues for individuals of The project was developed as part of Visa’s Fast
transgender experience was having to match the Track program aimed at assisting startups in scaling
name on their bank cards with their legal ID, the fintech innovations. Yet even with all its prep work,
the company had to go agile once COVID-19 hit. Not
only was it trying to build Daylight with a brand-new,
all-virtual team, it also faced slowdowns in govern-
ment approval. To recover the lost time, the team ran
development and design projects in parallel.
What started as a small group of pilot users at
launch in November 2020 is now projected to hit
10,000 users by the end of 2021. And Curtis isn’t
stopping there—he wants to turn Daylight into the
largest LGBTQ+ lifestyle and financial services busi-
ness in the world.
PM Network talked with Curtis about his project
motivation—and how it’s already changing the rules:
What inspired you to create Daylight?

When we spent time looking at the long-term
financial outcomes for LGBTQ+ folks, we realized
that banks weren’t doing a very good job. There is
a significant LGBTQ+ wealth gap. LGBTQ+ people
are less likely to use financial products, less likely to
take advisory, have lower levels of education. That’s
because those things aren’t designed for them. What
we did was revolutionary: We started designing for
LGBTQ+ folks.
What guided your strategy?

PHOTO COURTESY OF BE MONEY, INC.
In 2017, I was approached to do a financial turn-

around on an LGBTQ+ consumer business that was
losing a lot of money. At its core, I had to under-
stand the product and its value. I did that the old-
fashioned way, by sitting in chatrooms and watching

LGBTQ+ folks talk. I learned that when they get to

some of the high-stakes decisions, they have impor-
tant needs that in some cases are completely unmet.
What’s one banking need that Daylight meets?

Trans people need to be protected at the point of
sale, because if you present the wrong gender, you’re
often threatened with refusal of service, accusations
of criminality and so on. So we disaggregated the
person’s legal name from their chosen name. We built
that in six weeks, and it meant implementing changes
to the system we use for identity verification, to the
39
platforms that our banks use and to the platforms
that our middleware partners use. There was a lot of
complexity, but we succeeded in building an ecosys-
tem that’s hyper-designed for our community.
You were determined to launch in 2020—even in

the middle of a pandemic. How did that impact
schedules?
Hitting milestones meant building a lot of things in
parallel, and it also informed our vendor decisions.
We needed partners that had the right culture to
work with us—and it wasn’t just that they needed to
be queer-friendly—that’s a minimum. Can they move
as fast as us? Are they interested in trying innovative
things? From a delivery perspective, it taught me the
importance of aligning cultures. When you’re work-
ing with partners who are innovators and who are Hot Heart
hungry and who are passionate about the same space For pioneering an AI-powered
as you, those relationships can be incredibly powerful.
renewable energy solution that
Why was community interactivity such a prior- doubles as an urban playground
ity for Daylight?
W
One of the innovations that we created was Social Sav- hen government leaders in Helsinki
ings. The idea is that we’re a community, so we should dangled a €1 million prize for “radi-
help each other out. So every time you set money aside cally new energy solutions,” Carlo
to save for a trip, it’s shared into that community feed, Ratti Associati (CRA) went bold. The Italian design
which allows people—in a depersonalized way that firm conjured up Hot Heart, a floating archipelago
maintains the protection and safety of your identity— of basins that act as giant thermal batteries—and a
to cheer you on, to contribute advice and to learn from recreational destination.
watching the behaviors of others like you. The project cracks a major conundrum for
In one case, someone created an emergency fund, sustainable storage: how to keep energy until it’s
which is the least sexy thing in finance and some- needed. With Hot Heart, excess renewable energy
thing nobody wants to talk about. But because it was will be converted to heat, stored in 10 seawater-filled
role-modeled for our community, about 30 percent basins and rerouted into the city’s heat distribution
of our customers created an emergency fund after channels as demand dictates.
watching that one person do it. These social dynamics “We proposed affordable, reliable thermal energy
are allowing us to do peer-to-peer education. There’s storage at an unprecedented scale—taking a proven
never been anything like that in finance before. technology principle and scaling it up to solve a big-

ger, more-pressing challenge,” said James Schrader,
CRA project manager and senior designer.
In an era of offshore wind and solar farms,
Hot Heart’s tech advantage is an AI-fueled system
designed to synchronize production and consump-
tion. The CRA team achieved this by working with
a global cohort of experts from Ramboll, Transsolar,
Danfoss, Schneider Electric, OP Financial Group,
Schlaich Bergermann Partner and Squint/Opera.
For a city that gets more than half of its district
heating from coal, the project would mark a sig-
nificant step toward reinforcing the national energy
grid. When project leaders unveiled Hot Heart
in January, they said it will cover the full heating
demand of Helsinki (an estimated 6,000 gigawatt
hours) by 2030. And it will do
it without carbon emissions—bol- “Why
stering the city’s goal to be car- not raise
bon-neutral by 2035—and at a 10 awareness
percent cost reduction compared and
to conventional methods. knowledge
Along with the sustainability about
and economic benefits, Hot Heart
climate
will also function as an oasis for
change in
urbanites looking to escape sub-
zero Nordic temperatures. LED
addition
technology will help turn four of
to actually
the basins into domed forests that fighting
mimic tropical ecosystems from it with
the world’s rainforest zones, with technical
IMAGES COURTESY OF CARLO RATTI ASSOCIATI SRL
dedicated spaces for beaches and solutions?”

other recreational spaces. — James Schrader,
“We strongly believe that infra- Carlo Ratti Associati
structure should not just be per-
forming its functional task hidden in the background
somewhere, but rather should be front and center,
inviting the public to engage with it and understand
it,” Schrader said. “Why not raise awareness and
knowledge about climate change in addition to actu-
ally fighting it with technical solutions?”

40
IMAGES COURTESY OF ADJAYE ASSOCIATES
Edo Museum of
West African Art
For creating a space to welcome home long-dispersed artifacts
G
hanaian-British starchitect David Adjaye Bronzes, the pieces are currently scattered in muse-
has a vision for the Edo Museum of West ums around the world—spoils of colonial plunder-
African Art in Benin City, Nigeria. He ing. France and Germany have vowed to return
wants to immerse visitors in objects, while “undo- those in its possession, while the British Museum,
ing … the objectification” of African art from the which houses the world’s largest collection, might
Western perspective. But before even the first brick lend its 900 bronzes for exhibition.
is laid for the three-story structure, the project site With support from project partner Legacy Res-
and other parts of the city will be excavated, a US$4 toration Trust, the new structure will be modeled
million undertaking slated to begin this year. after traditional Benin architecture and incorporate
The building will sit atop the ruins of the capital pieces of historic compounds, including restored
of the Kingdom of Benin, which the British sacked walls, moats and gates of the former capital. A public
in 1897. Archaeologists, working with the British garden will be shaded by indigenous trees, and there
Museum, will unearth parts of the fallen city, and will be an educational space and a gallery dedicated
the artifacts they uncover will be housed nearly in to contemporary West African art.
situ at the museum. By integrating archaeology into the project design,
The team also aims to reclaim thousands of the museum underscores how the past informs the
artifacts, including brass plaques depicting the present—and offers visitors an opportunity to truly
kingdom’s powerful history. Known as the Benin appreciate the culture of Benin City.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE PRIME MINISTER’S
41
OFFICE, GOVERNMENT OF INDIA

Overture
For taking supersonic
flight to new heights
I
42
t’s been nearly two decades since the Concorde
made its final flight, but it still stands as an
icon of aviation innovation: the first aircraft to
deliver supersonic commercial flights. And while sky-
Atal Tunnel
For moving mountains to improve
high ticket prices, fuel-guzzling engines and a deadly
crash combined to doom the U.K.-French project,
transportation in the Himalayas
H
the appeal of ultrafast air travel won’t go away. Now eavy snowfall blankets the main roads to and
Boom Supersonic is using US$270 million in funding from India’s Lahaul and Spiti Valley for six
to reimagine the concept for a more environmentally months each year, isolating towns and vil-
minded jet set. lages from supplies and services, and stifling economic
The company is promising its still-in-the-works progress. The solution? A 9-kilometer (5.6-mile) highway
Overture aircraft will fly at speeds of Mach 1.7— tunnel through the Rohtang Pass, high in the Himalayan
twice the speed of today’s fastest airliners. But Boom mountains.
isn’t just out to build the fastest commercial airliner. Yet the project to build the tunnel proved as treach-
The company also wants it to be the most eco- erous as it was transformative. Feasibility plans for the
friendly, with the developing Overture to run on 100 Atal Tunnel date back to 1990, but only 1.3 kilometers
percent sustainable fuel and to minimize noise—a (0.8 miles) were completed by 2014. When Prime Minis-
big complaint against the Concorde. Boom is also ter Narendra Modi took office that same year, he resur-
working with Rolls-Royce to explore ways to embed rected and fast-tracked the project.
sustainability in Overture’s propulsion systems. From there, Border Roads Organisation joined forces
The first demonstration flight is scheduled for late with contractors Strabag and Afcons to build 1.4 kilo-
this year or early next year, with production tenta- meters (0.86 miles) each year. To accelerate progress, the
tively slated for 2023. Pending regulatory approval, team often tapped innovative techniques, such as sequen-
commercial flights could tial excavation, in which workers spray concrete on walls
begin as early as 2029—but to optimize reinforcements as they dig.
IMAGE COURTESY OF BOOM SUPERSONIC
like the Concorde, Overture Despite blizzards, mudslides, freezing temperatures

won’t be cheap, with Boom and, of course, the pandemic, the horseshoe-shaped
suggesting tickets will cost double-lane passage opened in October 2020 as the
US$5,000 per seat. world’s longest high-altitude tunnel.
The high prices, ambitious While the US$438 million project went more than six
project specs and lengthy times over the original budget, there’s expected to be a
timelines haven’t slowed cus- deep and long-term payoff. For instance, a journey from
tomer interest in the project. Manali to Lahaul and Spiti Valley that once required
Japan Airlines has been a more than four hours now takes just 15 minutes. By slash-
strategic partner since 2017, and the U.S. Air Force ing travel times, the tunnel serves as a year-round eco-
signed on in 2020. And in June, United Airlines nomic artery for the region, allowing the flow of essentials
inked a deal to buy 15 of the super-fast, carbon- like food and fuel, and giving farmers and horticultural-
neutral planes, with the option to purchase 35 ists easier access to the capital of Delhi and other markets.
more—bringing a supersonic rebirth that much The team incorporated safety features for end users,
closer to reality. too: Phones, fire hydrants and air-quality monitors were
“Overture doubters are equating all of superson- placed throughout the tunnel, along with emergency
ics with Concorde—and assuming anything fast will exits every 500 meters (1,640 feet) and cameras every
fail for the same reasons,” Boom CEO Blake Scholl 250 meters (820 feet) to monitor.
tweeted in June. “It’s as if we had stopped building “Infrastructure should be developed at a fast pace
computers after the Univac—and then claiming we when the country needs to progress economically and
can’t have smartphones because mainframes were socially,” Modi said at the opening ceremony. “Atal
big and expensive.” Tunnel is going to be a lifeline.”

43 Aeson
For bridging the gap between heart failure and a transplant
F
or some of the 26 million people with heart can help reduce the risk
failure, a transplant is the best option— of blood clots or strokes
which can mean waiting years for a donor. in implant patients. The
PHOTO COURTESY OF CARMAT

French medical device maker Carmat has been team also designed the
working on a solution since its founding in 2008, unit to be self-adjusting
finally unveiling Aeson, an artificial heart that can by incorporating pressure
replace the whole organ for up to six months. sensors, reducing the need
Patients have traditionally had limited options. for patients to meet with
SynCardia was the first artificial heart to be approved doctors for post-implant
in Europe and the only one that has U.S. Food and adjustments.
Drug Administration approval for sale in the United The European Union approved the device in
States. By offering another option, Carmat has the December 2020, and in July, surgeons completed the
potential to bridge a massive gap: Among the 1.3 first implants in patients in Italy, Germany and the
million people with advanced-stage heart disease, United States. As the company continues to ramp
only 5,500 receive a transplant each year. up production and build up inventories to scale the
Collaborating with technological experts from device across Europe and the United States, Carmat
Airbus Group, Carmat developed the unit’s lining CEO Stéphane Piat said the project’s initial results
from preserved bovine pericardium tissue, which “makes us very confident that our Aeson artificial
has been used for heart valve replacement and heart is a gamechanger.”
44
Wufengshan Yangtze
River Bridge
For combining high-speed rail and road transportation
T
he Wufengshan Yangtze River Bridge in It also ranks as China’s first suspension bridge
China’s Jiangsu Province offers a peek into that combines a railway and highway. The 1,092-
what might be the future of ultra-fast, ultra- meter (3,583-foot) bridge links the cities of Yang-
efficient transport. The world’s first high-speed zhou and Zhenjiang with an eight-lane upper-deck
railway suspension bridge, it slashes travel between expressway and a lower four-lane railway designed
PHOTO COURTESY OF CHINA RAILWAY ENGINEERING COOPERATION

Shanghai and Lianyungang from 11 hours to three. to run at 250 kilometers (155 miles) per hour.
And while the vision for a double-decker bridge at
the site reportedly stretches back 60 years, technical
limitations shelved early project plans. Advance-
ments—from massive foundation-pit excavation
techniques to land-caisson construction—allowed
the project to move forward, with construction
starting in 2015 and wrapping in December.
Designed by China Railway Major Bridge Recon-
naissance & Design Institute and built by China
Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group and China
Communications Second Aviation Bureau, the new
structure is the highest-loading, largest-spanning
and fastest-running bridge of its kind.

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45
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Museum
of the
Future
For embedding its future-
focused purpose into
its next-gen design and
construction
T
o the naked eye, Dubai’s Museum of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, VP and Prime
Future looks as though it’s been lowered Minister of the UAE and the ruler of Dubai. And
from space, gently floating alongside the the building’s unusual ringlike shape? That’s meant
busy Sheikh Zayed Road. In actuality, the building to represent humankind’s understanding, with a
is firmly grounded—structurally and strategically. hollow void at its center to acknowledge what’s still
The AED500 million project, sponsored by unknown, according to architecture studio Killa
the Dubai Future Foundation, will deliver a com- Design.
munity site for exhibits, immersive theater and Even in a city full of iconic architecture, the
themed attractions. Its mission—to explore today’s museum is already gaining attention, earning a
most pressing threats while highlighting possible cameo in a Dubai tourism video starring Zac Efron.
solutions—is literally etched into its facade. The Despite opening delays, officials still hope to
78-meter-high (255-foot-high) structure is deco- welcome the museum’s first visitors this year. Here’s
rated with thoughts on the future from Sheikh what they can expect:
PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE DUBAI FUTURE FOUNDATION
Glimpses of What’s to Come

The 30,000-square-meter (322,917-square-foot) museum
comprises six floors of gallery space, along with three
stories in the greenscaped mound that forms its base
(including a lobby, restaurant and 420-seat auditorium).
Exhibitions will have a forward-looking bent, focusing on
near-future technologies, outer space and bioengineer-
ing—and there’s even a kids’ space for “future heroes.”

Windows on
the Word
The museum’s shim-
mering facade is made
up of more than 1,000
stainless steel and glass
fiber polymer panels.
The intricate Arabic
writing that decorates
the building’s exte-
rior does double-duty
as its windows, with
each piece of script
3D-mapped onto the
exterior’s curved surface
and carefully placed
to adhere to the rules
of calligraphy without
exposing any of the
1,000 nodes of the
diagrid beneath.
The Future Is Digital

The engineering and design teams used building infor-
mation modeling at every stage of design and construc-
YUEN MAN CHEUNG / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
tion. The technology required a shift in culture and

workflow but was integral to achieving the museum’s
geometric feats. It also helped keep the structure on
target to achieve
LEED platinum
certification.
Using a 3D
energy model,
engineers came
Taking Shape up with more
To create the museum’s unique torus shape, engineering firm Buro than 50 eco-
Happold wrote a customized growth algorithm to determine the friendly design
optimal arrangement for the structure’s underlying steel diagonal solutions, includ-
grid framework. This allowed the team to minimize connection ing passive solar architecture and water- and energy-
points and standardize the diameter of the beams, making sourc- recovery strategies. The result: a 45 percent reduction
ing simpler while reducing total weight and steel materials. in water use and total energy savings of 25 percent.

46
Pandora
Brilliance
For taking lab-created
diamonds into the mainstream
47
“D
iamonds are not only forever, but for every-
one,” says Pandora CEO Alexander Lacik.
As part of its strategy to bring in new cus-
tomers, the company recently wrapped a project to
develop an entirely lab-created diamond jewelry col-
lection. The move was a direct response to increas-
ing concern from consumers—especially younger
ones—who have criticized the environmental toll
and poor labor conditions considered part and parcel
of mined diamonds.
Pandora execs say they launched the project
because it was the “right thing to do,” but also
admit it will mean a substantial drop in cost
Airlander 10
and production time—which the retailer is For promising premium air travelers a
also hoping will lead to increased sales. Its smoother, eco-friendly upgrade
manufactured stones cost roughly one-
H
third that of mined ones and can be pro- ybrid Air Vehicles (HAV) is on a mission to
duced within weeks, versus the billions reinvent a bygone mode of travel. Creating
of years the Earth’s natural geological processes take. its own more eco-friendly take on an air-
The lab-grown diamonds are also made with more ship, the team says its Airlander 10 hybrid craft will
than 60 percent renewable energy, with greenhouse produce just a fraction of the emissions of conven-
gas emissions offset through a CarbonNeutral cer- tional airplanes, with reduced fuel burn, noise levels
tification. And when the collection goes global next and turbulence. But the team isn’t skimping on the
year, Pandora expects to be using 100 percent renew- luxury that was once a signature of airship travel, with
able energy. the 100-seat, hybrid-electric air vehicle offering floor-
US$64 As part of the project development, the Danish

jewelry company also hired consulting firm Sphera
to-ceiling panoramic windows set inside a blimp-like
exterior. And because it’s designed to take off and land
billion to identify environmental and social impacts in the

value chain created with the chemical vapor deposi-
anywhere, the Airlander 10 will not only give passen-
gers an eco-conscious luxe means to travel to even
Size of the tion technology used to make the product. the most remote spots, it also means they can skip all
diamond The company tested customer reception with a that wait time at the airport. Even the aircraft’s slower
market U.K. rollout in May, but Pandora’s plan is already travel times are being marketed as a plus—offering
Source: Bain & Co. having a ripple effect across the diamond jewelry all the more time for passengers to take in the views.
retail industry. A report by Bain & Co. estimated “For many decades, flying from A to B has meant
the market at US$64 billion, and while the sector sitting in a metal tube with tiny windows—a neces-
fared better than some luxury industries during the sity but not always a pleasure,” says George Land,
pandemic, the consulting firm uncovered many of HAV’s commercial business development director.
the same sentiments influencing consumer behav- “On Airlander, the whole experience is pleasant,
ior—and pointing to a new direction. even enjoyable. And in the hybrid-electric and future
The tide seems to already be turning. Silicon Val- all-electric configurations, Airlander is fit for our
ley’s Diamond Foundry hopes to quintuple its produc- decarbonized future.”
tion of lab-grown diamonds by 2022, after securing Despite all the benefits, the project will likely
a US$200 million investment in March 2021. And need some serious stakeholder buy-in to get past
mined-diamond giant De Beers Group completed a comparisons to the most famous aircraft of its
new US$94 million production facility for its Lightbox type: the ill-fated Hindenburg. To that end, the
lab-grown collection in October 2020. company has lined up an impressive lineup of
PMNNovDec2021 c-Back.indd 62 11/10/21 10:07 AM

48 Thinking Hut v1.0
For trying to end educational inequalities with
a school that can be built in under a week
T
he pandemic brought an astounding digital
transformation in the education sector. Yet
more than 30 percent of children around
the world are unable to access remote learning plat-
forms, according to UNICEF. The lesson? The world
needs more classrooms. To close the gap, Thinking
Huts is proposing a new vision, unveiling plans
earlier this year to create one of the world’s first
3D-printed schools.
Created in partnership with Hyperion Robot-
ics and architecture firm Studio Mortazavi, the
school—complete with all foundational, electrical
and plumbing essentials—will be built in less than a
week and with limited skilled labor.
The pilot was initially scheduled to be completed
TOP LEFT, IMAGE COURTESY OF PANDORA INC. TOP PHOTOS COURTESY OF HYBRID AIR VEHICLES. BOTTOM RIGHT, IMAGE COURTESY OF STUDIO MORTAZAVI
in December on the campus of Ecole de Manage-

supporters, receiving backing from the European ment et d’Innovation Technologique in Fianarant-
Union, U.K. government and U.S. Department of soa, Madagascar. But the pandemic threw a wrench
Defense. And although one of HAV’s early pro- in that plan, and Thinking Huts must now close a
totypes crashed during landing in 2017, positive US$180,000 funding gap for the project. Maggie
developments have followed. In July, the electric Grout, who started the nonprofit six years ago when
motor created in collaboration with Collins Aero- she was 15, has a plan to adapt.
space and the University of Nottingham passed its To keep costs down, the team will locally source
critical design review. the 3D printing material, which also will reduce the
Along with its venture into commercial travel, project’s carbon footprint. And the design features a
HAV is pitching the aircraft for surveillance, search beehive configuration that allows for the attachment
and rescue, defense and security applications— of multiple schools, with eco-friendly features like
pointing to its ability to land almost anywhere and vertical farms and solar panels.
stay airborne for up to five days. The team plans to iterate beyond the pilot project
HAV is targeting passenger flights by 2025, but and even beyond Madagascar, envisioning an active
it won’t have the skies to itself. A handful of other exchange of ideas between multiple huts through an
companies already have joined the race, including online portal. The
Lighter Than Air Research (started by Google co- ultimate goal: end
founder Sergey Brin) and Flying Whales, a French educational dispari-
company developing an airship capable of loading or ties and make qual-
unloading up to 60 tons of cargo while staying aloft. ity education more
With competitors circling, it’s no surprise that accessible through
HAV is looking to gain an edge. Swedish aviation creative thinking.
startup OceanSky Cruises plans to use the Air- “Education is at
lander 10 for Arctic tours in the years ahead. And the root of tackling
HAV has another project in the works: the fully many problems the
electric Airlander 50. Targeting a 2033 delivery, the world faces today,
company is promising it will use lessons learned such as inequality,
from its first airship to transform the future of heavy health epidemics
lift freight transport for everything from remote and economic growth,” Grout said. “To cross the
mining to humanitarian aid. frontier, we must embrace innovation.”

49 P
ublic toilets are more than a matter of con-
PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE NIPPON FOUNDATION

venience. They’re an essential part of making
cities cleaner, healthier, more accessible and
more tourist-friendly. Yet they’re often treated as an after-
thought, left dirty and in disrepair—if there are even any
to begin with. As cities invest in improving the state of
public restrooms, perhaps none can do it with the elevated
style of The Tokyo Toilet.
A creative collaboration by The Nippon Foundation, the
Shibuya City Government and the Shibuya Tourism Asso-
ciation, the project recruited 16 creators—including high-
profile architects and designers—to dream up their own
take on public water closet installations. Scattered through-
out the busy Shibuya district, they all prioritize accessibility,
ensuring wheelchair access and a gender-neutral option, but
The Tokyo
each one also makes its own design statement.
“Just as Shibuya is a cultural center of fashion and
music, I hope that the project will send a message to the
Toilet
country and world about a new style of public toilets,” said
Ken Hasebe, the ward mayor.
Construction partners Daiwa House Industry and toilet
For giving public restrooms a maker Toto have completed more than half of the 17 toi-
much-needed makeover lets to date. Here’s a tour:

 A Walk in the Woods
The restroom at Nabeshima Shoto
Park isn’t just a restroom—it’s a “toilet
village,” said designer Kengo Kuma.
Five separate huts are swathed in cedar
board louvers and connected by a rov-
ing path that cuts through the park’s
landscape. Each one focuses on a dif-
ferent set of needs, such as families
with children, wheelchair access, and
dressing and grooming (allowing peo-
ple attending the park’s many events to
easily change clothes).
 Toilet in the Round

“It was vital for me to make a space
that was comfortable and safe,”
said Tadao Ando, of the cylindrical
restroom he designed for Jingu-Dori
Park. The entry to the circular floor
plan is surrounded by an engawa, a
traditional exterior hallway, which
lets in light and air from the cherry
tree-dotted environs.
Say Hi
Japan is an established  No Surprises
global leader in toilet For a pair of park facilities, architect
technology, so designer Shigeru Ban addressed two primary
Kazoo Sato used that concerns—whether a toilet is occu-
familiarity to dispel pied and how clean it is—with one
the idea that public ingenious design trick. The smart-
restrooms are dark glass exterior makes it easy to peek
and dirty. After three inside before you enter and turns
years of research, plan- opaque when you lock the door.
ning and design, the Hi
Toilet was unveiled in  Everyone Welcome
August as a hemispher- Streetwear legend and recently
ical building that allows named Kenzo artistic director Nigo
people to control every- describes his Jingumae project as a
thing—from doors and “friendly, house-shaped facility that
toilets to sinks and feels casual and inviting.” Located
musical speakers—with at a bustling Harajuku intersection,
their voice. the room includes an ostomate toilet
designed for people with ostomy
bags as well as a baby chair to keep
little ones safe and secure while
caregivers use the facilities.

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50
Zeena Ali
Operational
PHOTO COURTESY OF NEW ZEALAND POLICE

Hijab Design
For creating a hijab that
improves job performance—
and boosts inclusion
F
or many Muslim policewomen, a hijab is University to develop a fit-for-purpose hijab. Over
a fundamental part of their uniform. Yet 16 months, the team iterated extensively while
without headgear specifically made for use staying true to strict project specs: The hijab had to
in the line of duty, many women made do with be comfortable during long shifts, provide a clear
improvised solutions—which meant that they didn’t field of vision, and not interfere with driving or
always feel welcome. For the New Zealand Police using a firearm.
in Christchurch, the issue took on added import in New recruit Constable Zeena Ali—a Muslim
the aftermath of the deadly 2019 woman who decided to join the New Zealand Police
“To have a mosque shootings—forcing the after the Christchurch attacks—wore prototypes
section of our department to rethink inclusion in during her training, with her feedback used to shape
community its own ranks. the final version. Officers often wear an earpiece, for
not be able “There was a part of our commu- example, so the team adapted the hijab design. And
to join us nity we inadvertently had locked because traditional fabric wrapped around the neck
out from serving,” said Inspector could present a choking hazard, the hijab includes
because of
Braydon Lenihan, operations man- magnetic fastenings that can easily release during
the dress ager of the New Zealand Police’s an altercation.
code just national response and operations The project was completed in November
didn’t feel work group. “To be a true police 2020—and Ali became the first officer to wear
right.” service for the community we the official hijab.
—Braydon Lenihan, New serve, we have to represent that “Doing something like this could have been very
Zealand Police community. To have a section of polarizing. The fact that it’s been normalized so
our community not be able to join quickly is the positive I take out of this,” Lenihan
us because of the dress code just didn’t feel right.” said. “It’s just another uniform, it’s just another piece
The department collaborated with the Nga Pae of clothing, and Zeena is just another New Zealand
Mahutonga Wellington School of Design at Massey police officer.”

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In os
M
1. mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines 27. Burberry Open Spaces
2. The Great Work From Home 28. Business Alliance to Scale
Experiment Climate Solutions
3. Give It 100% 29. National Wildlife Census
4. Covax 30. Voyager Station
5. Sand Dollar 31. Project Earth
6. 2022 Winter Olympics 32. Microsoft Game Accessibility
Testing Service
7. Riyadh Metro
33. Wasteless
8. When You See Yourself NFT
34. Tulsa Race Massacre
9. Energy Island
Excavation
10. Crew-1 Mission
35. PlayStation 5
11. Regenerate Australia
36. Multi-Node Quantum
12. Perlmutter Network
13. Mumbai Metro Line 3 37. Galápagos Islands Rewilding
14. Atala Prism 38. Daylight
15. Andes Renovables 39. Hot Heart
16. Operation Trojan Shield 40. Edo Museum of West
17. Mineral African Art
18. Al-Nouri Mosque Complex 41. Overture

Reconstruction 42. Atal Tunnel
19. Tiangong 43. Aeson
20. Al Dhafra Solar Photovoltaic 44. Wufengshan Yangtze River
Plant Bridge
21. Clubhouse 45. Museum of the Future
22. Expo 2020 Dubai 46. Pandora Brilliance
23. Perseverance 47. Airlander 10
24. Maldives Floating City 48. Thinking Hut v1.0
25. Bridgerton Costume Design 49. The Tokyo Toilet
26. Propel Center 50. Operation Hijab Design
Dive deeper into PMI’s Most Influential Projects by visiting PMI.org/most-influential-projects

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ANDREYPOPOV / ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS

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for the hybrid era. The company known for provid-

zhen, China, the smartphone maker is working

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ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN DEVOLLE

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payments electronically from a digital wallet using

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From Steel Mill to Snowboarders’ Domain Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

(Re)planting for the Future

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When You See Yourself NFT

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Station, designed by the Norwegian archi-

T album—one that drove decisions for the type of

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PUBLIC MEETS OFFSHORE INNOVATIONS THINKING BIG

IMAGE COURTESY OF TENNET

LAUNCH PHOTO COURTESY OF SPACEX. CREW PHOTO COURTESY OF NASA

“This decision marks the start of a new era