Welcome back to the start of a new week, one that, unfortunately, has begun with sweltering temperatures and dangerous flooding across much of the United States.

Here’s what you need to know today:

The Tres Birds-designed Art Preserve opened in Sheboygan, Wisconsin

It’s been a long time coming, but the Tres Birds-designed Art Preserve, a satellite campus of Sheboygan’s John Michael Kohler Arts Center, is finally open to the public. AN previewed the 56,000-square-foot, three-story complex back in March, and visitors can tour the art center, which focuses specifically on “art environments.” The preserve has been built into the hillside on a 38-acre campus just a few miles from the original Arts Center. Visitors wishing to check out the expansive collection will have to reserve their spot in advance.

Theaster Gates is getting a series of London shows highlighting his ceramics

Multidisciplinary artist, urbanist, and educator Theaster Gates will design the Serpentine Pavilion in 2022, but this year, his ceramics will also go on display as part of a series of exhibitions across London. The series, The Question of Clay, includes the pavilion, but also a show at the Whitechapel Gallery called Theaster Gates: A Clay Sermon that will run from September 29 of this year through January 9, 2022. The initiative springs from Gates’s recent tenure as a research fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum, focusing on historical ceramics, colonial expansion, global trade, and slavery.

H/t to The Art Newspaper

Deadly heat is wreaking havoc on Pacific Northwest infrastructure

The Pacific Northwest is currently being battered by record-breaking heat, with highs of over 112 degrees Fahrenheit in Portland, over 115 in parts of British Columbia, and over 102 degrees for typically mild Seattle. The Portland streetcar canceled service as the heat melted power cables along the route, thousands have lost power as the grid buckled under increased load, and fears of depleted hydroelectric power generation are mounting.

Columbus, Ohio, was supposed to become a smart city. Why didn’t it?

Columbus, Ohio, won the Department of Transportation’s 2016 Smart City Challenge and received $50 million to help turn the city into a technology hub. So what happened? The autonomous shuttles were scuttled, route planning kiosks placed around the city were only used eight times from July of 2020 through March of 2021, and an urban mobility app called Pivot was terminally underused. The pandemic didn’t help, but much of the difficulty came from wrangling unreliable private companies like Lyft; now the city is taking what it learned to heart and will continue the programs from the challenge that got off the ground.

H/t to Wired

IKEA releases an assembly manual for aliens

On Friday, June 25, U.S. intelligence agencies released a scant 9-page, unredacted report on unidentified flying objects that both piqued interest and was something of a letdown for those hoping for concrete details on alien life. But just in case extraterrestrials have visited Earth before, IKEA has “translated” a selection of its furniture assembly manuals into an alien language reminiscent of the one from Futurama.

H/t to Designboom

Habitat for Humanity is slowing down due to high material costs

Although much hay was made over Habitat for Humanity’s first 3D printed home (stateside) in Tempe, Arizona, the closure of the nonprofit’s in-person stores and soaring construction material prices have been hitting the organization where it hurts. Each affordable housing project is tightly budgeted, and as prices rose and remain high, Habitat’s regional offshoots have been cutting back on projects. Donors have been stepping up with their giving and the group has received federal grants, but it’s unclear whether this will be the new normal.

H/t to the AP